[DRAFT] RetroPGF 4 Onboarding & Support Program

Governance Fund Missions 🏹
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Delegate Mission Request Summary:

From the feedback that the @retroPGF community twitter/X account received via DMs & comments, we believe there is a need for a RetroPGF Onboarding & Support. The goal of this program is to provide comprehensive support for projects participating in RetroPGF 4, ensuring they have the resources, knowledge, and guidance needed for success. The program may focus on organizing showcases, sharing best practices, offering marketing assistance or any other creative approach to make RetroPGF 4 easier for projects.

S5 Intent:

Intent 4 - Improve governance accessibility

Proposing Delegate:

griff.eth

Proposal Tier:

Fledging Tier

Baseline grant amount:

60,000 OP

Should this Foundation Mission be fulfilled by one or multiple applicants:

One

Submit by:

To be set by Grants Council

Selection by:

To be set by Grants Council

Start date:

Upon receiving the grant

Completion date:

A few weeks after RetroPGF 4 Results are announced

Specification

How will this Delegate Mission Request help accomplish the above Intent?

  • Large projects with marketing teams and VC funding have a huge advantage in RetroPGF, we would like to level the playing field and offer support to projects that need it at every stage of the RetroPGF cycle.
  • This initiative would be designed to enhance the RetroPGF application experience for participating projects aiming to empower small, less funded projects to create more robust applications. The focus is on providing comprehensive insights into the voting process, step-by-step guidance through the application journey, and fostering a deeper understanding of the RetroPGF and how to market your project.
  • This aligns with the intent to improve accessibility and knowledge sharing within Optimism Governance.

What is required to execute this Delegate Mission Request?

The only requirement is to design and execute a program that will support smaller projects in their RetroPGF journey, this could include:

  • Showcasing what impact means in the Optimism context, explaining impact measurement using on-chain metrics and defining clear impact metrics for different types of projects, building off of the foundational work @LauNaMu did for RetroPGF 3.
  • Conducting targeted marketing campaigns to identify potential projects that should apply for RetroPGF 4 and encourage their participation.
  • Assisting projects in completing RetroPGF applications.
  • Providing guidance on optimizing application quality and completeness.
  • Supporting projects in raising the awareness of their proposals to badgeholders.
  • Providing resources and assistance for proper project promotion during the voting phase.
  • Assisting projects with KYC completion.
  • Supporting projects in marketing their success stories and achievements.

NOTE: It should be clear to the projects supported and to the public that the program is not run by the Optimism Foundation but instead being run by an external party.

How should the Token House measure progress towards this Mission?

The winning project should be reporting their progress on the forum using the impact stats outlined in the next section as well as other stats that are relevant to their program. Also they should be requesting feedback from the organizers of RetroPGF 4 as well as projects they are supporting and sharing the feedback publicly. The integration of this feedback into the program will also be indicative of their progress.

How should badgeholders measure impact upon completion of this Mission?

  • Number of actionable on-chain metrics adopted by supported projects, demonstrating clear cause and effect on the mission, and surpassing the influence of vanity metrics in measuring impact.
  • Number of potential projects identified through targeted marketing for RetroPGF 4.
  • Number of projects effectively assisted in completing RetroPGF applications.
  • Number of projects optimizing their applications with detailed guidance.
  • Number of resources provided for project promotion during the voting phase.
  • Number of projects efficiently completing the KYC process with streamlined support.
  • Number of projects effectively marketing their success stories.

Have you engaged a Grant-as-a-service provider for this Mission Request?
No

Has anyone other than the Proposing Delegate contributed to this Mission Request? If so, who, and what parts of this application did they contribute to?

This mission was co-authored by Anamarija who runs the @RetroPGF Twitter and flagged this need,

We also received feedback from Brichis and Jonas.

Brichis left various comments throughout the document and we integrated most of them.

Jonas suggested we add the note that it should be clear that the program is not run by the Optimism Foundation.

4 Likes
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idk it kinda seems like the projects did just fine? plenty of projects and individuals who completely phoned in their applications in many cases got great payoffs

more guidance and tooling appears to be needed for badgeholders

there is already a very robust support network on optimism generally

3 Likes
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I think what you point out here is important, my doubt is that the amount of funds requested may be excessive or not sufficient. It probably depends on the number of projects. Perhaps it could be tiered by number of projects e.g. 10 projects - 10k, 20 projects -20k, etc.

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Simply put I would not encoruage RPGF, especially onborading, to a third party project. RPGF is not perfect but there is a huge improvement and learning from past season will only make the process smother and collective stronger.

5 Likes
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I like the general idea but share @AxlVaz’s concern with the difficulty of establishing an amount of funds for the mission. I think a way of making the Mission Request better would be outlining more clear and defined tasks. I understand that this would be “designing a plan”, which is part of the Mission’s JTBD as presented by @Griff, but I believe we could agree on a few expected outcomes to make the Mission more concrete, instead of leaving the design of the program 100% up to the team that will execute.

Griff already included a few very interesting points that we could define as expected tasks to make the result more predictable:

  1. Onboard XXX projects to RetroPGF.
  2. Establish weekly office hours to support any project that needs help with retroPGF.
  3. Host 10 sessions to showcase projects participating in RetroPGF 4.
  4. Creating documents or video tutorials explaining how to participate of RetroPGF.
  5. Create additional documents, videos or live sessions going deeper into what impact means.

All that said, I also believe this is work worth doing even without a Mission Request, since it can be rewarded with RetroPGF. I even ask myself is selecting a specific team to carry this Mission wouldn’t act as discouragement to people that might tackle the same problem and expect to receive RetroPGF.

1 Like
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In my opinion, the last thing we need is more projects applying for RPGF. Over 600 projects applied and received funding last round and I would say the impact of those projects was questionable at best. This looks like a proposal trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist so I won’t be giving my approval but wishing you the best!

1 Like
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There were a lot of very high quality projects that did not apply, and I think we could do a better job at onboarding them. Sure lots of low quality projects applied, but thats not the problem we are trying to solve.

That said, I think it also makes sense for this, or something like it, to be a Foundation RFP as RetroPGF is more of a Citizens house thing as @OPUser mentioned.

1 Like
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The point is that the barriers to applying to RPGF were very low, which makes this at worst a visibility thing more than an accessibility thing

which makes an OP-funded external support structure a bit redundant

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I think it’s worth trying to understand the problem in more depth.

I agree with @katie that we had many low value projects, and with @Griff that we had a lot of high quality projects not applying.

This sounds as a Type 1 / Type 2 error situation.

Do we prefer to have 1000 projects knowing that will imply people getting money they might not deserve BUT (hypothetically) ensure all high quaility projects are onboarded and join the Collective

or instead have say 100 projects knowing this will (hypothetically) eliminate low quality projects BUT meaning high quality projects are left outside?

My personal view is that the first scenario should be preferred. I would rather have more projects applying, even though we know many of them will not be worthy. I think this could be fixed with stronger filtering by the Foundation and Community.

On the other hand, assuming we want more projects, what is the way to get them? Is it really necessary to do onboarding and support or should increasing visibility be enough (as suggested by @jackanorak)?

1 Like
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Hey @Griff – just wanted to flag this as a proposal that still needs delegate approvals in order to move to a vote. If you are no longer interested in pursuing this proposal – please disregard this message. In order to see the delegates assigned to your proposal those can be found here. The deadline to provide feedback and approvals for Mission Requests is February 7th at 19:00

Cheers!

1 Like
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I tend to agree that there is a LOT of support available for projects wanting to apply to RetroPGF. I think there’s a risk of fragmenting that support network too much, it could make things more confusing for applicants if there is this one through the mission but also the official channels.