Arbitrum proposes controlled restart for Stylus activations

Offchain Labs posted the proposal on October 23, 2026 — exactly three weeks after the Security Council paused Stylus contract activations on both Arbitrum One and Nova. The primary documents are the Constitutional AIP for the Stylus Activation Contract and the Stylus Sprint retrospective.

The pause began October 2. The retrospective says the Security Council acted as a precaution after AI-assisted tooling contributed to a rise in attacks using hand-crafted WASM programs built outside the standard Stylus toolchain. The proposed fix is an eligibility gate: before a new contract can be activated, it has to clear a limited security audit focused on whether it threatens Arbitrum’s network stability and security.

Neither document provides a date for a temperature check or an on-chain vote.

What the AIP changes

The Constitutional AIP would authorize a new Stylus Activation Contract and hand the Arbitrum Foundation the right to approve activations for contracts that have passed that limited audit. The scope is narrow — not a general review of contract logic, just a check of whether the contract endangers the stability and security of the Arbitrum network.

One specific audit requirement speaks directly to the failure mode behind the October pause: confirmation that a contract was built from source code using the standard Stylus compiler toolchain and contains no hand-crafted WASM. Contracts clearing that bar would receive an activation signature from the Foundation confirming eligibility.

The signing right sits with the Arbitrum Foundation through a multisig. Developers seeking activation would submit requests by contacting [email protected]. The proposal doesn’t disclose the multisig’s addresses or signer configuration.

On-chain, the proposed Stylus Activation Contract would execute four steps atomically: verify caller authorization, temporarily lower activation gas, activate the contract, and restore restrictive activation gas. One transaction, not a sequence of separable actions.

The ArbitrumDAO would remain the sole administrator of the contract and could change or revoke the Foundation’s delegation through a constitutional vote at any time. Day-to-day authorization sits with the Foundation; structural authority stays with the DAO.

The proposal applies to Arbitrum One and runs on capabilities already present in ArbOS 61. No ArbOS upgrade required. A third-party security audit of the Stylus Activation Contract, conducted by Trail of Bits, will be published before the on-chain vote, per the current filing.

What remains live

Already-active Stylus contracts weren’t touched by the emergency action. The retrospective says they continue to run and can be renewed; EVM contracts are unaffected. The AIP confirms that existing and activated Stylus smart contracts are not impacted by either the proposal or the Security Council action.

For active contracts on Arbitrum One, execution continues until expiration — defined as 365 days after the last activation or renewal. They keep operating through their current period, but the proposed process governs what happens when new activations or renewals are needed once governance adopts it.

Nova is a different story. The October 2 action paused new Stylus activations on both chains, but this AIP only proposes a resumption path for Arbitrum One. No comparable restart path for Nova appears in the current filing.

What the retrospective says

Entropy, writing on behalf of the Stylus Sprint Committee, drew a line between chain availability and user-fund exposure: “Known Stylus bugs affected chain liveness and did not put user funds at risk.”

Offchain Labs’ proposal uses the same framing: “No known and reported bugs have affected or put at risk any user funds. Known bugs have affected chain liveness (denial of service).” Both documents describe the documented impact as a denial-of-service risk to normal chain operation, not a reported loss of deposited or contract-held funds.

Stylus is designed to let WASM-based smart contracts run on Arbitrum. Offchain Labs wrote that “Stylus gives developers more ways to build on Arbitrum and enables chain owners to customize their networks and optimize key contracts.” The activation process is the gate into that execution environment, which is why the proposed new route matters for anyone building outside EVM.

Where things stand: developers with new Stylus contracts can’t activate them through the old route while governance deliberates. Developers with already-active contracts have up to 365 days from their last activation or renewal. EVM users see no change. If the AIP passes after the Trail of Bits audit is published, the Foundation’s multisig becomes the authorization point for eligible new activations on Arbitrum One, subject to DAO oversight.

When that vote happens, what the final activation terms will look like, and when Nova’s pause gets revisited — none of that is answered in the current filing.