The Optimism DAO has opened a landmark vote on a proposal that would mandate the Optimism Foundation to use 50% of all revenue generated through the Superchain to buy back OP governance tokens every month. The voting period, which began on Thursday, January 23, 2026, will run for six days, concluding on January 28.
The proposal aims to create an automatic capital return program, directly tying the growth of the Superchain—a network of blockchains built using Optimism's OP Stack software—to recurring demand for the OP token. This comes as the OP token has struggled, trading down more than 93% from its all-time high and hitting a record low of $0.25 just last month.
The vote has sharply divided the DAO's delegates. Early tallies show overwhelming numerical support, with more than 3.8 million votes cast in favor and just over 19,000 votes against. However, the debate reveals deep philosophical and strategic rifts within the community.
Supporters, including delegate Milo Bowman, argue the buyback program is a powerful signal. "The meme of the buyback is important," Bowman stated. "It allows people to clearly project what would happen if the Superchain grows 100x." They emphasize that Optimism's underlying technology is widely adopted, powering major chains like Coinbase's Base, Uniswap's Unichain, and Kraken's Ink, and believe the token should reflect this infrastructure footprint.
Critics, led by voices like PaperImperium, a governance liaison for delegate GFX Labs, contend the plan is financially unsound. "Optimism is a net seller of OP (grants, payment-in-kind, etc) and it makes little sense to spend precious hard assets and shorten runway to buy back OP while still net selling," PaperImperium argued on X. This skepticism is bolstered by research from crypto market maker Keyrock and intelligence platform Messari, which suggests buybacks often divert funds from growth initiatives without meaningfully impacting token prices.
Further controversy surrounds the proposed over-the-counter (OTC) execution of the buybacks, rather than using open market purchases. Critics, including delegate Michael Vander Meiden, warn that OTC trades won't directly lift market prices and could create a concerning scenario where "employees or investors are using the OTC buybacks to offload their tokens as they unlock." The Optimism Foundation has defended the OTC approach as "the simplest path to shipping the buyback programme" and committed to publicly reporting all OTC trades.
At its core, the debate pits immediate price support mechanisms against long-term financial sustainability. As GFX Labs summarized in a forum post, "We would prefer to see more focus on crafting and publishing a business plan to get Optimism to financial sustainability... a buyback does nothing to address this, and may in fact make it worse."
