Optimism proposes ownership shift for five OP chains

The filings cover Unichain Mainnet, plus Mode, Metal, Zora and Dust, and put security and upgrade authority at the center of the change.

The Unichain governance proposal would replace Unichain Mainnet’s current 3-of-3 Safe, made up of the Chain Governor, Foundation Upgrade Safe and Security Council, with Optimism’s standard 2-of-2 governed model. Unichain Mainnet has chain ID 130.

The second filing proposes returning control of Mode, Metal, Zora and Dust to Conduit through designated Safes. Mode uses chain ID 34443, Metal L2 uses 1750, Zora uses 7777777 and Dust uses 55378. The Mode, Metal, Zora and Dust proposal describes the transfers as administrative.

Optimism Governance’s own account is that the changes do not alter how the protocols operate today. The Unichain filing says, “These changes are administrative and do not modify protocol behavior or affect end users.” The second proposal uses similar language: “These changes are purely administrative: no protocol behavior changes and no impact on end users or other Superchain members.”

That is the immediate position for users and traders: the documents do not announce a contract behavior change, token action or end-user migration. The control plane does change, however. ProxyAdmin ownership determines who can administer upgrade paths, while the Mode, Metal, Zora and Dust proposal also covers the owner of the DisputeGameFactory.

For Unichain, the proposed L1 ProxyAdmin Owner, or OP Governed L1PAO, is0x5a0Aae59D09fccBdDb6C6CcEB07B7279367C3d2A. Its proposed L2 ProxyAdmin alias is0x6B1BAE59D09fCcbdDB6C6cceb07B7279367C4E3b. The filing frames that move as part of Optimism’s planned interop upgrade, stating that participating chains must share a common security model so they can be upgraded atomically while preserving the safety of the shared messaging layer.

That creates a direct trade-off. Unichain would move from a chain-specific 3-of-3 arrangement into the standard 2-of-2 Optimism governance structure, concentrating the ownership format around the Collective’s established model while making it consistent with the interop requirement described in the proposal. The exact execution date remains unknown in the filing.

For the other four chains, the current Mainnet L1PAO and DisputeGameFactory owner is the same OP Governed L1PAO address:0x5a0Aae59D09fccBdDb6C6CcEB07B7279367C3d2A. Their current L2PAO, the L1 alias, is0x6B1BAE59D09fCcbdDB6C6cceb07B7279367C4E3B.

The proposed Conduit safe would take over as L1PAO and DisputeGameFactory owner at0x4a4962275DF8C60a80d3a25faEc5AA7De116A746. The proposed L2PAO alias would be0x5b5A62275DF8c60A80d3a25FAeC5aA7De116b857.

The practical beneficiary of that side of the transfer is Conduit, which would regain direct control of the chains it operates. The proposal states, “Returning the keys to Conduit lets the chains be managed independently going forward.” The parties worse off in the narrow administrative sense are the Optimism-controlled entities that currently hold the keys; the chain operators gain control over future upgrades and dispute-game administration.

The timing follows a support handoff. OP Labs provided security monitoring and upgrade support for Mode, Metal and Zora, then delivered written notice on July 30, 2026, to each chain’s governor that the support would end after a 30-day notice period. The governance proposal was published on September 2, 2026, which is 34 calendar days after that notice date, or four days beyond the stated 30-day period. The filing does not specify whether each transfer had already executed by publication.

Dust has a separate history. It was inadvertently deployed with the Optimism Security Council holding its L1 ProxyAdmin keys. The proposal would move those controls to Conduit as well. Dust will not be part of the Superchain Registry, although all four chains currently reference OP Mainnet’s SuperchainConfig.

That produces a concrete scope split: Dust is one of the four chains in the Conduit transfer, or 25% of that group, and it will remain outside the Superchain Registry. Mode, Metal and Zora are the chains tied to the documented end of OP Labs’ monitoring and upgrade support.

On the desk’s read, these filings mark a real decentralization step because authority moves in two directions: Unichain toward a more distributed Optimism governance model, and the other four chains back to Conduit’s designated Safes. The immediate user-facing effect is stated to be zero, but the future security and upgradeability of each chain will depend on the new owner arrangement. The proposals still leave one operational question open for positions and protocol integrations: when governance will vote on and approve the transfers.