Collective Trust Tiers

Collective Trust Tiers

Collective Trust Tiers are the very first step towards establishing a connection between one’s positive impact in the ecosystem and access to different types of work, grants, and roles within the Collective. Over time, Trust Tiers will become more robust as they incorporate Attestations and impact scores derived from one’s activity in the ecosystem.

This is the first iteration of Collective Trust Tiers, which we will run as an experiment in Season 4. Both Tiers and their criteria are subject to change based on feedback. If continued for future Seasons, they may be ratified by the Token House. Over time, we expect Tiers to be based on Collectively agreed upon trust scores, calculated using Attestations.

Initially, Trust Tiers will be used to:

  • Establish transparent standards for contribution and grant eligibility, specifically:
    • Determining appropriate grant sizes for grants made by the Grants Council
    • Determining funding eligibility for different Alliances proposing Missions
    • Specifying which Alliances may apply for Foundation Missions (RFPs)
  • Help people understand the types of contributions (and, over time, Attestations) we think are important for establishing the basis of reputation in the Collective

Ember Tier - Eligible to receive up to 100k OP

  • Has never done work for or with the Optimism Collective before or has never received retroPGF

Fledgling Tier - Eligible to receive up to 350k OP

  • Has done work for or with the Optimism Collective at least once before or previously received retroPGF

Eagle Tier - Eligible to receive between 350k OP and 1M OP

  • Has repeatedly done work for the Optimism Collective or has received over 50k OP via retroPGF

Phoenix Tier - Eligible to receive over 1M OP

  • Has repeatedly done work for the Optimism Collective, at the Eagle Tier level, or has received over 100k OP via retroPGF

OR

  • Falls into one of the below categories:
    • Councils
    • Core developers
    • Partner Fund grant recipient
    • Employees of OP Labs or the Optimism Foundation
    • Strategic Partners of the Optimism Foundation, as determined internally
22 Likes

Looks really cool - a great way to continuously reward the teams building on Optimism, especially those with a history of contribution to the ecosystem.

For the difference between Eagle and the Phoenix tier: are the bullets conditional for Phoenix?

As it reads now there doesn’t seem to be much difference between these two tiers (esp. the first lines.) At quick glance, it looks like they both require more than 50k OP funding from the retroPGF rounds.

Phoenix just allows for greater funding.

If Phoenix is conditional - it requires RetroPGF funding greater than 50,000 OP AND falls into one of the outlined categories that may make more sense.

But still a bit confused as many of these proposed categories were ineligible for retroPGF funding.


TLDR: Seems to be an exciting concept, just need more clarity around Phoenix vs. Eagle tiers.

4 Likes

Thanks for flagging, have updated the Phoenix Tier to better clarify the difference between Eagle.

“But still a bit confused as many of these proposed categories were ineligible for retroPGF funding.”

The criteria stipulate that a project may qualify for a tier if they’ve done work for the Optimism Collective before (including via Token House or Partner Fund grant) OR they have received RetroPGF but they do not need to have done both (it’s not an AND statement.)

Please let us know if still unclear :slight_smile:

Thanks @lavande! Looks great now.

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@lavande Has there been more info posted somewhere about the Contribution Paths mentioned above?

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Hi, may I ask which tier does governance grant recipient that hasn’t received any RetroPGF yet falls into?

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That sounds like Fledging! Receiving and executing on a grant constitutes working with the Collective

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Now that we’ve gone through one round of Missions using the Collective Trust Tiers, we’d like to request delegate feedback and/or any suggestions for potential improvements to the Tier criteria for Season 5. Please leave below :pray:

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Our main suggestion would be to ratchet down the amounts accessible for each tier, or alternatively add a fifth tier to make it more granular.

Particularly at the Ember Tier, 100k seems quite high. Not necessarily because of the funding itself, but because 100k is high enough they may be tasked with building/doing something very important or sensitive that would be better handled by a vendor or grantee with a track record.

I would like to see smaller tiers to promote small experimentation.

X 10k 2 approvals (gets next tier when critical milestones are completed)
Y 25k 2 approvals (gets next tier when critical milestones are completed)
Z 50k 3 approvals (gets next tier when critical milestones are completed)
Ember 100K 4 approvals
Fledgling 350K 4 approvals
Eagle > 1M 4 approvals
Phoenix < 1M 4 approvals

3 Likes

The potential problem I see with the Trust Tier system is that it assumes that a team deserves trust based on how much you trust an individual on that team. Right now, the trust tier of a team is the highest trust tier of any individual on that team. But team performance has less to do with the individuals of the team and more to do with the chemistry of the team as a whole. I think we should try to develop a trust tier system that looks at the teams as opposed to just the individuals.

One potential counter argument here, is that individuals with high trust tiers will not put themselves in a disfunctional group, but how will the know unless they have worked together before? Also, why would they worry if there is no penalty to your trust tier for poor performance?

A follow up questions: are there any ways that a trust tier can go down? How will we measure the success/failure of the trust tier system as the work of these missions concludes?

2 Likes

GM! I believe that one of the issues we faced this season was the difficulty in self-categorizing within a Collective Trust Tier. For instance, what would happen if the alliance leader was also the founder of a project that had already built something before? Would they inherit the Tier from the project or start from scratch? Where could one check which tier would be applicable? Additionally, I think the amounts were quite high. I agree with Gonna’s point that there could be smaller Tiers for alliances applying for the first time. Assuming there is no one-year lock, I would divide it as follows:

Ember Tier
10k - 3 approvals
30k - 3 approvals
50k - 4 approvals

Fledgling Tier
100k - 4 approvals

Eagle Tier
300k - 4 approvals

Phoenix Tier
500k - 4 approvals

GM! I agree with @Gonna.eth and @brichis on the value of implementing lower tiers with reduced approval requirements.

There are many activities that can be carried on with less than 15 or 10k and still have great impact. But most importantly, being able to grant small amounts could be an excellent tool to onboard promising teams to the ecosystem. By adding a low tier / fast approval category, the Collective can impact a larger array of builders accelerating grow and future “deal-flow” on higher tiers and more complex projects. Additionally, in agreement to what @GFXlabs outlined, lower tiers could act as a “testing” instance, upon which the Collective tries out new teams and “vendors” before trusting them with very relevant or sensitive work.

I participated on the last season with a mission on intent 4 and found it difficult to reach the 4 approvals despite the amount requested was significantly lower than other proposals. While the process was overall quite smooth, I believe it would have been more efficient if requirements were lowers for lower amounts.

On regards to the point raised by @chaselb, I still have some doubts on what should be the case when a “high-tier” member teams with lower tier folks. My initial intuition is there would be some sort of inheritance, but that could easily lead to perverse “mechanisms”, in which high-trust individuals could get paid for including their names on an alliance only so that the alliance can aim for a higher tier. It’s indeed an interesting debate, I have began to think of it quite recently so I’d be more than happy to learn from whoever has devoted more thinking time and effort to the problem and the possible solutions.

2 Likes

*our mission was under intent 3, not 4. Got mixed up with season 4. Here’s the link for reference.

This sounds great as a way to consolidate long-term relationships and ensure alignment!

Something that caught my eye is the section within the Phoenix Tier, which states: “Falls into one of the below categories.
I understand this is a way to give the Foundation and people related more freedom to move faster. And probably at this stage makes a lot of sense.
On the other hand, coming from Argentina, I know how these can be misused for cronyism in the long term if it becomes the norm. It would be good to have it revised at some point in the future to avoid this.


Blockquote
I would like to see smaller tiers to promote small experimentation.

I agree with @Gonna.eth and @santicristobal, about supporting lower tiers.

1 Like