Linea, the Ethereum layer-2 scaling network incubated by Consensys, announced on Wednesday the launch of a nonprofit organization to support the network—with plans to roll out a token by the end of Q1 2025. 

The Linea Association will support the development of the Linea mainnet, work to foster its decentralization, and encourage the growth of “stronger communities of real people” on the network. It will pursue these goals through initiatives like the LINEA token, which will allow holders to participate in the network’s governance. 

The LINEA token will be airdropped to ecosystem contributors at some point in the coming months, based on criteria that has not yet been announced and a snapshot that has not yet occurred, according to the Linea Foundation.

The Foundation itself will be based in Switzerland and governed by a multi-layer structure consisting of a board of directors, a general assembly, employees who will report to an executive director, and the aforementioned body of LINEA token holders. 

Despite that semi-corporate structure, the newly minted Association insists that decentralization is at the core of its mission.

“Linea must be owned and governed openly by all as a public good, just as layer-1 Ethereum is,” the network’s founder, Nicolas Liochon, said in a statement. “The establishment of the Linea Association ensures that the protocol's future lies in the hands of its community, empowering users and developers to shape its trajectory collaboratively and transparently.”

Linea has attracted scrutiny in the past over centralization concerns. In June, when a top decentralized exchange on the network suffered a massive hack, Linea’s leadership team decided to manually freeze all on-chain activity in a bid to prevent further losses. 

While the move worked, it also attracted significant backlash from users worried about how a few executives could halt all activity on a supposedly decentralized blockchain.

Despite those concerns, Consensys—one of 22 investors in an editorially independent Decrypt—claims that Linea has become the fastest-growing zkEVM network on Ethereum, eclipsing 250 million transactions since its launch in August 2023.   

Today’s announcement constitutes one step in Linea’s recently released, multi-year roadmap to full decentralization. The network says it is currently on step one of four.

Edited by Andrew Hayward