[FINAL] Superchain Governance Deep Dive

ARCHIVED & OLD Missions
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S4 Intent: Intent 1: Progress Towards Technical Decentralization

Proposed Mission: Deeply investigate the technical design space around decentralized Superchain governance and produce a white paper that serves as a research-based foundation for implementation.

Proposal Tier: Ember

Baseline grant amount: 20,000 OP

*In addition to the 20,000 OP, we are requesting ideas and feedback from technical experts within the Optimism Foundation, OP Labs, and the Optimism Collective along the way.

% of total available Intent Budget: 2%

Please check here if access to upfront capital is a barrier to completing your Mission and you would like to be considered for a small upfront cash grant: No

Alliance name: Tally

Alliance Lead: Frisson

Contact info: Website: Tally.xyz, Twitter: https://twitter.com/0xfrisson, Discord: Frisson#0409, Email: frisson@tally.xyz, Telegram: Contact @zeroxfrisson

L2 recipient address: oeth:0xec1C77AC05915F099C7c56900D63823Fa4308800

Please list the members of your Alliance and link to any previous work:

Please explain how this Mission will help accomplish the above Intent: The Superchain is a network of chains that will share decentralized governance. To make this a reality, the Optimism Collective needs to extend across the Superchain. Our Mission is to evaluate possible technical implementations of the Optimism Collective across the Superchain, analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each implementation, highlight blockers, and make recommendations. This Superchain Governance Deep Dive will help accomplish Intent #1 Progress Towards Technical Decentralization by establishing a research-based foundation for the implementation of Superchain governance.

What makes your Alliance well-suited to execute this Mission? Our team has deep technical expertise in the area of crosschain governance specifically and the area of onchain governance in general. We built Rollcall, a protocol for crosschain voting from Optimism to L1 DAOs. We are working closely on a technical level with the Uniswap DAO as part of the Uniswap Deployments Accountability Committee as they manage their multichain governance deployment. Tally is the most popular front end of Governor, which is the onchain smart contract primitive that the Optimism Collective uses for governance. Tally supports Token House Governance. We are also closely involved in the development of the technical roadmap of Governor.

How should Token House delegates measure progress towards this Mission?

Please list the critical milestone(s) that should be tracked to determine if you should receive your grant in one year: Critical milestone(s) demonstrates the proposal has been executed (a clawback is possible for failure to execute on critical milestones)

Critical Milestone: All deliverables completed by September 20th, including:

  • Summary and technical evaluation of at least 3 promising technical implementations of Superchain decentralized governance.
  • Explanation of process, including summary of all contributions from the Optimism Collective and links to source.
  • Recommendation on most promising technical implementation of Superchain decentralized governance including key requirements and key risks.

Benchmark milestones

Benchmark milestone 1: Research plan and deliverable requirements established & shared with the Optimism Collective by July 15th, 2023.

Benchmark milestone 2: Open call for contributions completed, with opportunities to contribute from all interested parties in the Optimism Collective by August 1st, 2023.

Benchmark milestone 3: Midway checkpoint report: Progress against research plan and deliverable requirements shared with the Optimism Collective by August 15th, 2023.

How should badgeholders measure impact upon completion of this Mission?

KPI 1: A group of pre-selected experts from OP Labs, the Optimism Foundation, and the Optimism Collective sign off on deliverables as being:

  • A thorough representation of possible implementations.
  • Actionable, in that the recommendations help the Optimism Collective move forward to the next phase of Superchain decentralized governance development.

Breakdown of Mission budget request:

  • Summary and technical evaluation of at least 3 promising technical implementations of Superchain decentralized governance: 10,000 OP
  • Explanation of process, including summary of all contributions from the Optimism Collective and links to source: 5,000 OP
  • Recommendation on most promising technical implementation of Superchain decentralized governance including key requirements and key risks: 5,000 OP

I confirm that my grant will be subject to clawback for failure to execute on critical milestones: Yes

I confirm that I have read and understand the grant policies: Yes

I understand that I will be required to provide additional KYC information to the Optimism Foundation to receive this grant: Yes

I understand that I will be expected to following the public grant reporting requirements outlined here: Yes

19 Likes
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This is a great mission, thank you for sharing! Robust analysis of the technical implementation is going to be an absolute necessity for Superchain Governance. Presenting the different choices and tradeoffs of possible technical solutions will help the Optimism Collective come to the best possible conclusions.

3 Likes
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Edited to remove sample code as a deliverable. Upon further discussion with the team, we don’t think it’s realistic to commit to including sample code on this timeline.

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Updated baseline grant amount based on benchmarking against comparable mission proposals (e.g. [DRAFT] Economic Co-design of Gas Fees for the OP Stack)

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Hi, this question is not answered. If you don’t mind completing the form and let me know I’ll come back and read it again to give approval.

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Hi Gonna,

My intent was for all of the content underneath that question to provide the answer to the question. I included that content below. Is this satisfactory?

Cheers,

Frisson

1 Like
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@Frisson it’s ultimately your choice to determine the OP grant size required to support this Mission – but the Foundation encourages you to size the grant based on the effort and expertise required to execute the Mission as specified, not based on comparison to other proposals.

If this Mission provides substantial impact to the Collective, RetroPGF 3 (scheduled for this Fall) can also provide a source of OP to correct for any discrepancies between impact delivered and grants received.

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Thank you for the feedback, Bobby. The original budget amount of 20k OP was probably not realistic relative to the significant level of effort and technical expertise required to deliver against the milestones in the proposal :blush:. It’s good to be reminded about RetroPGF 3, though. I adjusted the budget back down from 100k to 50k OP with the knowledge that potential discrepancies between impact and grants received could be balanced with RetroPGF.

1 Like
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Feels like this is squarely in RPGF territory + Seed/Partner Fund by Optimism Foundation to get started. Nevertheless, Intent #1 is a bit sparse, and it feels good to seed independent research like this via governance. My general intuition is that a majority of OP stack chains will want to organise their own governance, but some may not, or some may look for joint/collaborative governance. So certainly, an area worth exploring.

I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power , and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

5 Likes
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thank you, @ksett! We need three more delegate approvals to be considered for voting in the upcoming voting period. If you are delegate, would you be willing to approve this proposal?

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Hi @Gonna.eth, just wanted to check in. Are you satisfied with our approach to measuring progress? If so, would you be willing to approve our proposal?

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Hi @Frisson! Wanted to make sure you were aware of the Optimism Season 4 Pitching Sessions to help find the 4 delegate approvals you’ll need by this Wednesday at 19:00 GMT for your proposal to move to a vote.

These sessions are happening in Discord on Monday, 26.06 2pm ET / 6pm GMT / 8pm CET and Tuesday, 27.06 11am ET / 3pm GMT / 5pm CET.

You can sign-up here!

1 Like
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Thanks for sharing this proposal. The 50k OP requested feels on the high end for me and I think should factor more of the retropgf round if the work is helpful to the community. However, I recognize this is important work and the Tally team clearly has a lot of experience in this area.

I am an Optimism delegate [Delegate Commitments - #37 by linda] with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

1 Like
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I believe the grant is a bit high, in the future I’ll give my approval if less is requested with a vision to apply for RPGF if the research is successful.

I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

1 Like
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I am one of the Synthetix Ambassadors, and a Optimism Badgeholder. I am an Optimism delegate [Delegate Commitments - #65 by mastermojo ] with sufficient voting power, and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

1 Like
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I edited this proposal to decrease the budget back to the original 20k OP based on feedback from delegates and the Foundation that this work is a better fit to start with a lower budget, with the possibility of participation in Retro PGF 3 depending upon impact.

2 Likes
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We are an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

1 Like
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Echoing @polynya that chains may have different goals as it relates to their governance, exploring decentralization on a technical level will enable more flexibility and set up the Superchain to be more successful and robust. The team is more than qualified to accomplish this as well.

I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

1 Like
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I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power [Delegate Commitments [OLD] - #174 by ksett], and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote

1 Like
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Thank you for the adjustment!

1 Like