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Proposed · Draft ECIPs · Activation block TBD

The Olympia Upgrade

Olympia is a proposed upgrade to Ethereum Classic, targeted for mainnet activation in 2027. Its ECIPs are drafts, and the ECIPs repository holds their current text.

  • EVM alignment (ECIP-1121): Would advance the execution layer through Dencun, Pectra and Fusaka, and carry that work into Glamsterdam.
  • A base fee market (ECIP-1111): EIP-1559 and EIP-3198, with the base fee credited to a permanent address rather than destroyed, as it is on Ethereum. Block rewards and priority-fee tips would be unchanged.
  • A treasury and its governance (ECIP-1112, ECIP-1113): The Sovereignty Vault, the address where the base fee would accumulate, and Olympia DAO, the only way to spend it.

Countdown to the 2027 Target

Until the activation block is set, the countdown runs to , a placeholder target rather than an activation date.

Proposed · Draft ECIPs · Activation block TBD

The ECIPs

Each Olympia ECIP under its own title, grouped by when it would take effect.

Process

Procedures that run on the governance contracts and change no consensus rule.

Each ECIP is a draft. The ECIPs repository holds its current text, and ecips.ethereumclassic.org can show an earlier version.

Activation

Proposed · Draft ECIPs · Activation block TBD

Olympia is a proposal, targeted for mainnet activation in 2027, and its activation blocks are TBD. Under ECIP-1121, they would be decided at the Olympia Core Devs Call.

The order the ECIPs set

  1. 01

    The governance contracts would be deployed on Ethereum Classic before the fork, in dependency order and with no address predicted or reserved: first the Timelock behind the Treasury proxy, then CoreNFT, then the Governor, the only contract granted the Timelock's roles to propose, execute and cancel.

    ECIP-1113 §"Deployment and Activation"

  2. 02

    Their security review and multi-client testing on the Mordor testnet would be finished before the activation block is scheduled, rehearsed while the Treasury still holds nothing.

    ECIP-1113 §"Audit and Testnet Rollout"

  3. 03

    The Treasury's address would be published in its final configuration before the activation block is scheduled, so the network commits only to an address anyone could inspect first.

    ECIP-1112 §"Deployment and Publication"

  4. 04

    The activation blocks for Mordor and mainnet would be set through open coordination and recorded only in ECIP-1111, where both read TBD. Clients must be shown to behave identically on Mordor before a mainnet block is scheduled.

    ECIP-1111 §ImplementationECIP-1111 §"Test Cases"

  5. 05

    At the activation block, EIP-1559 would begin, with each transaction's base fee credited to the Treasury's address, and the core EIPs ECIP-1121 adopts would take effect.

    ECIP-1121 §Activation

ECIP-1116 is not part of this sequence: it would be a separate hard fork after Olympia, scheduled on its own.

ECIP-1121

EVM Alignment

Spiral, in 2024, brought Ethereum Classic’s execution layer up to Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade, except for the Proof-of-Stake changes and the London fee market, which Mystique left out. ECIP-1111 would add that fee market, and ECIP-1121 classifies every execution-layer EIP of the four Ethereum upgrades since Shanghai, giving each a disposition.

  1. 01

    London

    the fee market, through ECIP-1111

  2. 02

    Dencun

    Cancun-Deneb

  3. 03

    Pectra

    Prague-Electra

  4. 04

    Fusaka

    Fulu-Osaka

  5. 05

    Glamsterdam

    Gloas-Amsterdam

    Blocked by a dependency: EIP-2780, EIP-8037, EIP-8038, EIP-7708

ECIP-1121 adopts 28 EIPs; an asterisk marks each one adopted with a modification that another Olympia ECIP states. Another 4 are blocked by a dependency that is out of scope, which leaves them tracked rather than rejected. The 9 tied to blob data availability are deferred, and 20 are excluded: 17 as Proof-of-Stake and 3 with no client behavior to adopt. A further 21 were already in force before Olympia. Glamsterdam is included, and ECIP-1121 adopts part of its set.

Tools that assume EIP-1559 need an Ethereum Classic path of their own today. ECIP-1111 records that Foundry sends a type-2 (EIP-1559) transaction to any chain missing from its list of legacy chains, Ethereum Classic included, so a deployment here passes --legacy. Activating EIP-1559 would make that workaround unnecessary.

Every EIP ECIP-1121 classifies, by disposition →

The Treasury and Olympia DAO

The base fee would accumulate at one permanent address, the Sovereignty Vault, where an unmodified OpenZeppelin proxy would hold it as the Olympia Treasury (ECIP-1112, ECIP-1113). Only Olympia DAO could spend that balance, through a funding proposal its members vote on, queued in the Timelock and executed after a public delay. There would be no admin key, multisig or committee.

From Proposal to Execution

As ECIP-1113 specifies it, a proposal would move through the stock OpenZeppelin Governor lifecycle, every step on-chain and public.

Propose

A proposal lists the calls it would make, with a description for voters that no contract reads. It is submitted through the Governor's standard propose function.

Vote

Core Contributors holding CoreNFT vote during the voting period, one vote each. The vote cannot be delegated, bought or transferred.

Queue

A proposal that passes is queued in the Timelock, the contract at the Treasury address, and waits out its delay in public.

Execute

After the delay, the Governor, the Timelock's only executor, carries it out. Value moves only from the Treasury's own balance.

Record

Each step emits the contracts' standard events, so every governance action can be reconstructed from event logs alone.

Ethereum Classic DAO and Olympia

ECIP-1114 names Ethereum Classic DAO LLC, Wyoming Filing ID 2025-001671865, as the legal wrapper it contemplates for Olympia DAO. An on-chain organization has no legal personality: it cannot sign a contract, engage an auditor or pay a contractor in fiat. A registered entity supplies that personality for the off-chain acts, without acquiring authority over the on-chain organization.

Once Olympia DAO is operating, Ethereum Classic DAO would carry out the off-chain obligations a passed proposal has fixed. If Olympia DAO votes to fund a security audit, for example, Ethereum Classic DAO signs the engagement with the auditing firm; the proposal, not Ethereum Classic DAO, set the auditor, the scope and the amount. In ECIP-1114’s words, Ethereum Classic DAO is downstream of Olympia DAO in authority: Olympia DAO is not its subsidiary, and Ethereum Classic DAO holds no position in the ECIP process, which is ECIP-1000’s.

No off-chain entity can unilaterally approve or veto a governance action, Ethereum Classic DAO holds no on-chain role, and the Treasury’s balance moves only by a passed, timelocked proposal. Donations Ethereum Classic DAO receives off-chain are its own and are accounted for separately. Until Olympia DAO is operating, Ethereum Classic DAO holds no role in anything ECIP-1114 specifies.

ECIP-1114 §“Off-Chain Legal Interface and Donations”ECIP-1113 §“Prohibited Features”

The Olympia proposal

Frequently Asked Questions

No. Olympia is a proposal: its ECIPs are drafts and its activation block is TBD. It is targeted for mainnet activation in 2027, and no released client implements it.
It is targeted for mainnet activation in 2027. The activation blocks for Mordor and mainnet would be decided at the Olympia Core Devs Call and recorded in ECIP-1111, where both read TBD. Before an activation block is scheduled, the governance contracts would be deployed, reviewed and rehearsed on Mordor, and the Treasury's address published.
At the activation block, ECIP-1111 would activate EIP-1559 and EIP-3198, crediting each transaction's base fee to a permanent address rather than destroying it, as Ethereum does, and ECIP-1121 would align the EVM with Ethereum's upgrades through Dencun, Pectra and Fusaka, carrying that work into Glamsterdam. Before the fork, the Treasury at that address and Olympia DAO, the only way to spend its balance, would be deployed and published (ECIP-1112 and ECIP-1113).
ECIP-1111 would activate EIP-1559 and credit each transaction's base fee to the Sovereignty Vault address within that transaction's own state transition, at the point where Ethereum destroys the fee. The credit runs no contract code. Ethereum Classic has no base fee today, so nothing is taken from what miners earn now.
No. ECIP-1111 leaves block rewards and priority-fee tips unchanged, and the base fee it introduces would go to the Treasury rather than to miners. Paying miners from base-fee revenue is the subject of ECIP-1115, through ordinary funding proposals, and of ECIP-1116, a separate hard fork after Olympia.
Only Olympia DAO, by a funding proposal that passes a vote of CoreNFT members, waits in the Timelock and executes after its delay. The Governor would be the Timelock's sole executor, with no admin key, multisig or committee. The Treasury's address would be permanent, and the logic behind it could be repaired by a proposal.
Core Contributors holding CoreNFT, a soulbound token that carries one vote per member and cannot be transferred or delegated (ECIP-1113). The first members would be the people who verifiably contributed to the Olympia ECIPs or their reference client implementations by a published cutoff date. After that, contributors would apply, and Olympia DAO would vote on each admission.
No. Protocol change remains with the ECIP process, ECIP-1000. A funding proposal can pay for work on Ethereum Classic without conferring any authority over its specification, and an upgrade takes effect only when client teams release it and the network runs it.
Bodies that ECIP-1117 specifies for growing what is built on Ethereum Classic, open to anyone. Each season, Olympia DAO would decide whether to seed one and with how much. A seeded body would then use its own published model, a conditional market among them, to choose among the destinations the seeding proposal named. Client development, network security and critical infrastructure stay with Olympia DAO.
ECIP-1114 names Ethereum Classic DAO LLC as the legal wrapper it contemplates for Olympia DAO, for the off-chain acts an on-chain organization cannot perform, without acquiring authority over it. Once Olympia DAO is operating, Ethereum Classic DAO would carry out the off-chain obligations a passed proposal has fixed, such as signing the engagement for a security audit Olympia DAO voted to fund. Ethereum Classic DAO is downstream of Olympia DAO in authority, holds no on-chain role and no position in the ECIP process, and holds no role in anything ECIP-1114 specifies until Olympia DAO is operating.
Ethereum Classic's core developers and community contributors do the work. Ethereum Classic DAO maintains and funds the public goods kept in the ethereumclassic GitHub organization as their funder of last resort, and it does not control or lead Ethereum Classic. The ETC Cooperative funded much of it from 2017 and is winding down. Olympia proposes a source the network would raise from its own use.
No. ECIP-1121 includes Glamsterdam and adopts part of its set. Some of its EIPs are blocked on a dependency that is out of scope, and those tied to Proof-of-Stake or blob data availability are excluded or deferred. The upgrade guide lists every EIP by its disposition.