[Constitutional] AIP: Stylus Activation Contract

Arbitrum’s Stylus system sits inside the network’s broader governance process, where the Security Council can pause activity and the DAO can later adjust the rules. A constitutional AIP is the kind of change that rewrites how contract activations are handled on Arbitrum One, not just a routine parameter update. The timing follows the Security Council’s emergency action on 2/10/2026, which left new Stylus activations stopped until a replacement framework was proposed.

If the proposal is adopted, developers building on Stylus would still be able to keep existing deployments running and renew them without seeking permission. New activations would move into a gatekept process that depends on the Arbitrum Foundation’s sign-off after a limited audit, so the path for launching fresh contracts would change. That splits the system between what is already live and what still needs authorization, which will matter for teams planning deployments on Arbitrum One.

The trade-off here is between open deployment and an added layer of oversight, and that tension runs through much of crypto governance. Stylus is meant to expand what developers can do on Arbitrum, but a sign-off model places more control in a named foundation and less in permissionless launch behavior. The DAO’s ability to revoke that signing authority shows that this is not just a technical fix; it is a governance choice about who gets to control access to the network’s contract pipeline.