Proposal to Sunset Router Chain

5 min readSep 19, 2025

Proposal Live: September 19, 2025, 2 PM UTC — September 24, 2025, 2 PM UTC

Context

With the launch of the Open Graph Architecture (OGA), Router’s long-term direction has shifted from maintaining an independent L1 chain to powering onchain liquidity and rebalancing infrastructure!

Router Chain powered multiple products and experiments that shaped where we are today. But as we’ve grown, the landscape has changed. Running our own L1 introduced heavy infra costs, validator inflation, and security risks. And while Router Chain helped us prove our ideas, the broader aggregation ecosystem remained fragmented and controlled by a few centralised players, reinforcing why we needed to pivot toward a more open, permissionless, and scalable model.

That’s why we built the Open Graph Architecture (OGA), the natural next chapter. OGA lowers integration effort, removes centralization risks, and makes liquidity routing open and programmable, positioning Router as the infra layer for both institutions and retail users.

Hence, maintaining a separate chain today diverts resources away from OGA, the framework that now anchors our roadmap.

After extensive community discussions and feedback, it is time to decide whether to formally sunset the Router Chain.

What This Proposal Is About

This DAO proposal seeks community approval to:

Sunset the Router Chain.
Migrate all remaining Router Chain tokens back to Ethereum.
Transition token utility and ecosystem functions to align with the OGA framework.

Proposal Options

Yes → Approve the sunset of Router Chain as outlined below.
No → Reject the sunset proposal; Router Chain continues to operate.
Abstain → No opinion recorded.

What Happens If “Yes” Passes

Immediate Actions (within 1 week of proposal passing)

Router Chain inflation will be set to 0 to stop further minting of tokens for validator rewards.
The undelegation period will be reduced to 1 day.
All foundation-delegated tokens will be redelegated to foundation validators to maintain stability during the transition.

Migration Period:

Users will be able to migrate their ROUTE tokens from Router Chain to Ethereum using the Nitro app.
Only migration to Ethereum will be supported (not Polygon).
Manual migration window: until October 15, 2025.

TENTATIVE Timeline:

September 30, 2025: All users are advised to undelegate their tokens from the validators by this time.
October 15, 2025: Bridging to and from Router Chain is paused. CEXs pause deposits/withdrawals on Router Chain.
October 16, 2025: Snapshot of all Router Chain token balances is taken and shared with the community. Community has 3 days to review.
October 20, 2025: Airdrop of migrated tokens on Ethereum to the equivalent Ethereum addresses of Router Chain holders. Metamask/Keplr users will see their updated balances automatically.
October 31, 2025: CEXs fully migrate ROUTE deposits/withdrawals to Ethereum. Router Chain is formally closed.

Token Supply Transparency

As of 19th September 2025, Total Current Supply: 979,943,795 ROUTE

Ethereum → 136,069,650
Polygon → 52,986,002
Router Chain → 790,888,143

When Router Chain launched, the community approved a comprehensive ROUTE 2.0 tokenomics upgrade. This included a token split (1 v1 ROUTE → 33.33 v2 ROUTE), a new total supply of 1B, and fresh allocations across the Foundation, Ecosystem, and Team. The design was meant to ensure sustainability, incentivize builders, and foster long-term ecosystem growth.

As part of that upgrade, 333M tokens were specifically minted for Router’s next growth chapter. These tokens were not random inflation, they were carefully allocated to bootstrap the chain’s lifecycle:

Foundation, to support growth, fundraising, and listings,
Ecosystem Building, to drive adoption, liquidity, and integrations,
and the Team, to align long-term incentives.

With the proposed sunset of Router Chain, these allocations remain highly relevant. They will continue to fuel Router’s next phase under OGA, supporting liquidity operations, incentivizing partners, and ensuring the team and community stay aligned for the long haul.

Here’s the breakdown of the 333M tokens and how they’ve been used (or will be used) going forward:

Breakdown of 333M tokens minted for Router Chain:

The total supply of 333M tokens was allocated across three key buckets:

Foundation — 30% (100M)
Ecosystem Building — 60% (200M)
Team — 10% (33M)

Let’s dive into each category and the current/future plans.

1. Foundation — 30% (100M)

Already utilized: ~40M tokens were used during the strategic raise. Proceeds went towards team growth and marketing efforts, especially around the chain mainnet launch.
Remaining: ~60M tokens.

Planned usage:

Future fundraising with strategic partners to support long-term building.
Potential use for future listings (not immediate, but as traction grows and more distribution is required).

We’ve been building for over 4.5 years, pivoting from a PoA-based bridge → a chain → the OGA framework. To sustain this journey, the remaining foundation tokens will be crucial for growth and long-term partnerships.

2. Ecosystem Building — 60% (200M)

Currently, these tokens remain unused and locked (vesting pushed by 6 months). They are essential for community and ecosystem growth, especially as OGA continues expanding.

Breakdown:

MM Operations on CEX/DEX — 67M

For liquidity provisioning and supporting MM operations on exchanges where $ROUTE is listed.
Also used for Uni v3 pools on Ethereum to ensure smooth trading.
In future: to be extended to HL listings and liquidity.

Ecosystem / Community Building — 133M

Governance safeguard: Any campaign/grant requiring >5M ROUTE will go to community vote before execution.

Planned usage:

Community traction: Campaigns on Router App to drive users, transactions, and volume. Includes direct campaigns + partner-led campaigns (where Router is integrated).
Ecosystem integrations: Incentivizing B2B partners, devs, and projects integrating Router APIs/widgets for cross-chain solutions.
Incentives may be milestone-based (transactions/volumes).
Long-term revenue-sharing models where applicable.

These tokens are critical for growth, enabling Router to continue building strong community engagement and an active ecosystem around OGA.

3. Team — 10% (33M)

Dedicated to team incentives and to keep builders motivated with long-term ownership.
Vesting was pushed by 6 months earlier in July 2025, and now, as part of this proposal, we are pushing the vesting period by 6 more months. This means that the team tokens will start unlocking only in July 2026.

Voting Mechanics

Snapshot Date & Time: September 19, 2025, 11:00 AM UTC
Eligibility: 1 ROUTE = 1 vote (across Ethereum, Polygon, and Router Chain). ROUTE staked on Router Chain also counts 1:1.
Weighted Voting: You can split your vote across options if desired.
Voting Period: September 19, 2025, 2 PM UTC — September 24, 2025, 2 PM UTC
Quorum: Option with the highest % of votes wins.

Where This Will Be Announced

The proposal and results will be communicated across all official Router Protocol channels:

Cast Your Vote here

Closing Note

This proposal is not about ending something, it’s about evolving. Router Chain gave us the foundation. OGA gives us the future.

By consolidating resources, removing unnecessary overhead, and aligning everything with OGA, we can position Router to scale as the most powerful onchain infrastructure layer.

Let’s make this transition together, in a way that is fair, transparent, and community-driven.

For migration support or proposal-related queries, please reach out to us on Discord or Telegram.