Collective Grant Policies

Grant Policies

No Sale Policy for Growth Experiments

OP received through Growth Experiments Grants, or any grants made to distribute OP direclty on to end users, should not be sold by the grant recipient. This “no sale” rule:

  • Includes the grant recipient, their affiliates and any other related persons. These persons cannot receive OP for the purpose of selling (or if the grant recipient knows they intend to sell) the tokens.
  • Includes the direct exchange of OP for crypto or fiat, whether done publicly or privately. Think selling OP in exchange for fiat or crypto, regardless of whether done on a CEX, DEX, OTC desk, at your local park, or otherwise.
  • Includes any other transaction that is an “effective sale,” as defined below.
  • Does not include using OP to incentivize usage. Providing OP as liquidity mining incentives is not restricted by these parameters.
  • There is no expiration to this rule for Growth Experiments Grants

Lock-Up

OP received through Builders Grants, including Missions that do not pass OP directly on to end users, should not be sold by the grant recipient for a period of one year. The prohibition against selling includes any transaction that is an “effective sale,” as defined below. After a holding period of one year, Builders Grant recipients have full discretion over how they utilize OP, so long as it coincides with the objectives outlined in their proposal.

Effective Sale

An effective sale includes selling, offering to sell, contracting or agreeing to sell, hypothecate, pledge, use as collateral, or creating derivatives of the OP tokens. It also includes entering into any arrangement that transfers to another person or entity, in whole or in part, any of the economic consequences of owning the OP tokens.

You can read more about the reasoning behind the token locks here .

No Self-Delegation of Grants

Token grants must not be self-delegated for use in governance. The primary purpose of these token grants is to incentivize sustainable usage and growth of the Optimism ecosystem. Accordingly, for partners interested in increasing their voting power, the preferred route is by encouraging users to delegate their rewards to your governance representatives.

Critical Milestones and Clawback

Critical milestones demonstrate good faith effort to accomplish the aims set forth in a proposal.

Critical milestones are meant to provide the Optimism community with satisfaction that the proposer has taken actions consistent with those outlined in an approved proposal.

Non-completion of critical milestones will be grounds for clawback of any remaining locked tokens, as outlined in the Operating Manual.

On-chain data or other publicly verifiable information is favored for the determination of critical milestones.

An example of a critical milestone is: “We will deploy X smart contract on Y date.”


Violation of these policies are violations of the Code of Conduct. Given the importance of these policies, the Optimism Foundation can also enforce them and claw back any grants found to be in violation.

Note that these grant policies do not apply to Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RPGF) grants.

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Thanks for the info and insight. We are very excited to build on Op Network and contributing to its growth in a large manner. -Jon W CEO RYI Unity

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I understand from the RFP the current Foundation Missions #1 #2 are subject to these policies, yet I remain unsure as to how I should apply these. Can I clarify, please

Q: Is Foundation Mission funding subject to

  1. Strict No Sale, as per Gov Growth Grants
  2. 12 Month Lock Up, as per Gov Builders Grants
  3. Both Lock Up & No Sale

I have searched for information on the Partner Fund and found only a mention in the docs Is there additional information you could link to?

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Yes, Foundation Missions and Proposed Missions are both subject to the same grant policies. For all user incentive / growth grants, the no-sale policy applies. For any builders grants (which should constitute the majority of Missions), the one-year lock-up applies. After the one-year lock-up, builders may use the tokens at their discretion.

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Hello! This also applies for the RetroPGF grants?

Updated to provide clarification around effective sales, the Foundation’s ability to enforce these policies, and the exemption of RetroPGF grants from these policies.