We acknowledge the logic behind this proposal and understand the benefits of disabling the legacy USDT bridge, particularly in reducing UX friction and preventing edge cases involving smart contracts and delayed withdrawals. From a technical maintenance perspective, this makes sense.
However, we’re choosing to abstain from this vote in alignment with concerns raised by @Sinkas
While the migration to USDT0 has already happened and most liquidity has moved accordingly, the decision to adopt LayerZero’s OFT-based bridge was made unilaterally by Tether and Offchain Labs, without any involvement from Arbitrum DAO. As a result, the DAO no longer controls the bridging infrastructure for one of the most widely used stablecoins on Arbitrum.
This proposal may appear procedural, but in effect, it formalizes a shift toward a bridging model with new trust assumptions, around lockbox ownership, verifier networks, and protocol-level upgradability, that were never openly discussed or approved by the DAO.
We are not opposed to cleaning up unused or problematic infrastructure, but we believe it’s important to be cautious about what our votes may implicitly signal. In this case, while disabling the legacy bridge seems reasonable, fully endorsing the current USDT0 setup without broader discussion on governance, control, and risk is something we’re not yet comfortable with.
For that reason, we’re abstaining.