The proposal that 0xJohn put forward asking for the punishment of people who sell $OP and the support that the proposal has received so far is sadly disappointing. To think that Optimism would become a mechanism for moralized punishment distribution to people who are not only seeking to improve their financial circumstances, but who are only using the tools that have been built for them in the first place, is shocking and goes against the exact ethos that I think most of us are trying to build and nurture.
If people are “free to do what they want” then there should be no “but” that comes after that statement. I did not realize that there are people in this ecosystem who have a better understanding of what other people should do with their own property. Perhaps we should examine each individual’s choices, why they interact with apps on Optimism, and then decide whether their motivations are pure or not? We can track the moves they make and serve out punishment based upon the choices that “smarter” and more “moral” people find offensive. Personally, I have sold some of my original 7500 $OP to mint and purchase a few NFTs (on Optimism btw). I have also used some to LP. Do I deserve punishment for supporting NFT projects and providing liquidity for $OP on Optimism? If so, I offer myself up for punitive correction.
Does this sound like the kind of community that we want to become? If you still believe so then we should immediately:
Stop building anything that gives us the ability to buy, sell, or trade, since these actions are immoral. We don’t need freedom of choice.
Just get rid of coins all together because they are the real evil that tempts us to make immoral choices.
Full stop, just get rid of it all. Optimism, pack up your bags and close shop!
In all seriousness, OP will eventually make its way to the people who want to participate in governance and contribute meaningfully to the community. Some people will buy, some will sell, and eventually everyone will do some of both. If we start punishing people or banning them for wanting to improve their financial situation then we have taken a moral wrong turn. And if we look real closely, and it’s really not that hard to see, the recent impulse to punish is not very different than the impulse of those they want to punish. Can we say this has nothing to do with wanting $OP price to go up?
In conclusion, if Optimism is about distributing punishment then I might need to leave. However, with the inception of the Citizens’ House perhaps there is hope to fight against this kind of thinking. We shall see.
I dont think it was in a proposal state, any one can create a post, just like you did. Also, if it comes to that point, I dont see it getting approval.
I agree that token allocation should not be based on morality (lets save that for the Public Goods funding debates!) and I also agree that we shouldn’t automatically exclude sellers from future airdrops, however…
Why would Optimism issue governance tokens to people who don’t want to participate in governance of the project?
I think you’re viewing the purpose of the airdrop in terms of benefits to the recipients, but in my opinion it makes a lot more sense to think about the allocations from the perspective of the issuer. If Optimism have a set number of tokens to give out, and can see onchain which addresses made use of the tokens as intended (delegating, voting etc) and which ones just sold them, then which accounts does it make more sense to issue them to next time?
I don’t think that the question is anything like as simple as excluding those who sell, because they may have bought back and started participating. Similarly, some addresses may not have sold, but also haven’t delegated or voted and therefore haven’t used the tokens for governance any more than those who just got rid of them.
In general I’m more in favour of choosing criteria for the next drop that reward those who participated up to that point, as opposed to directly blacklisting those who sold their tokens. Maybe you get a bonus equal to the % of your original allocation that you have delegated to someone who is actively voting on proposals (yourself or another delegate)? So if you had some number of tokens and sold 50%, then bought them back you would get the 100% bonus, whereas if you sold everything and never held OP again then you wouldn’t get any bonus, but that wouldn’t exclude you from any allocations based on other factors (such as public goods donations, use of Optimism etc).
Just trying to reframe the issue for you really. TL:DR is that I agree it shouldn’t be about morality, but I also don’t think the argument is based primarily on that anyway.
I agree with you 1000% ! The fact that I was worried that I sold a little bit of my OP for some eth so I could transact and then bought a couple NFTs and to deposit into Beethoven X… I was hesitant to do all that because of 0xjohns post about how terrible of a person I was for doing that…it’s ridicules IMO to punish people for doing what they want with there own property ! I shouldnt have to worry about being punished for using an ecosystem
I agree with many of your points, and just as the first airdrop had criteria, there will no doubt be criteria for the next. However, there are problems when we begin to introduce more and more complexity into the criteria while at the same time ignoring nuance. About a week before the airdrop I believed my wallet was compromised from a contract that I signed. Therefore I created another wallet and planned to immediately transfer the $OP as soon as I claimed. During the claim process it was impossible to delegate. I tried with my new wallet, but to no success. Later I realized I had to delegate from the original wallet that no longer had my $OP. Now, even though all of my property and all of my activity is done from the new wallet, all of the previous interactions, donations, delegations, etc. are tied to my previous wallet. So, even though I may meet all of the criteria I may not meet those criteria in one wallet. Overall, I just think there is more nuance to these things.
To respond to another point, I don’t know of a single protocol or dapp with a governance token who only distributes to people who participate in governance. Governance tokens are farmed, given as revenue share, LPd, etc. I believe their point is to circulate widely to reach many hands. I’m not saying you’re saying this, but if we only gave $OP to people who participated in governance how would anyone new ever come in to participate in governance. Why would we give $OP to dapps like Synthetix, Lyra, AAVE, etc. since a majority of that $OP is probably going to people who will sell it for a profit?
As a point I made in my original post, if $OP price were skyrocketing right now would we be having any of these discussions? I’m not sure. Criteria discussions are good, but reserving $OP strictly for a particular class of participant seems antithetical to crypto and decentralization. Thoughts?
Of course, you definitely wouldn’t want to only airdrop to people who are already involved, I imagine that in any future airdrops there will be plenty of…