S4 Intent: Spread Awareness of the Optimistic Vision (Intent 3)
Proposed Mission: Spread awareness of the Optimistic Vision among protocols and their communities not yet deployed on Optimism (and onboard them to Optimism!)
[Proposal Tier](Collective Trust Tiers - #2 38): Phoenix
Please verify that you meet the qualifications for your Tier: Velodrome Finance is a Partner Fund grant recipient
Baseline grant amount: 100,000 OP
% of total available Intent budget: 10%
Alliance: Velodrome Finance team
Alliance Lead: Alexander
Contact info: Telegram - @wagmiAlexander; Discord - alexander.#4210
L2 recipient address: 0xb074ec6c37659525eef2fb44478077901f878012
Please list the members of your Alliance and link to any previous work:
- Alexander: Background in politics, technology, and consulting, including time working for the Obama campaign, Apple Inc, and consulting with numerous Fortune 500s.
- Tao: Background in economics and finance; experience as strategy lead for a large asset manager in Switzerland and at Big Three consulting firm.
- Jack: Optimism delegate and growth council member
- Stas: Open Source contributor to Ubuntu, Mozilla, WordPress. Tech lead and maintainer of multiple open source projects on Github. Prior to Velodrome I led the architecture and integrated able.com with multiple banking/fintech services and wrote their initial US tax calculator.
- ZoomerAnon: Software developer working in crypto on dapps, analytics, and open source tools since 2019. Maintaining free wallet tracking software and publicizing information about smart contract exploits.
- GuyWithKeyboard: Long background in both traditional finance and decentralized finance, former financial advisor and large asset manager whoMast built a $1.2b practice.
- Nick: Military aviation background, now investor with Spaceship and Onchain Angels, erstwhile developer and growth strategist.
- Methodic: Enterprise tech sales background; experience across the full sales cycle, sales development team management and recruitment.
- Dan: Data strategist with experience in the U.S. education sector at public, non-profit and private organizations. Educational background in economics and public policy.
Previous projects:
- veDAO
- cielo.finance
- gmStudios
- able.com
- raidguild.org
- defisafety.com
- metokens.com
- valorem.xyz
- aavegotchi.com
- bywassies.com
- metastreet.xyz
Open source projects we contributed to (PRs):
- multicall.py (OP support, performance optimizations)
- Dune Spellbook (pricing data)
- Rainbowkit (Gnosis Safe connector)
- Rabby Wallet (hardware wallet support)
- smatcontracts/Simple Optimism Node
- alchemy-web3.js (RPC retries support)
Our own open source projects:
- API written from scratch (backwards compatible with Solidly forks)
- Discord bots for trades, bribes and deposits
- Sugar project (easiest way to build on top of Velodrome)
- Protocol documentation
Our repository changes from Solidly:
- Solidly dApp fork: ~497 commits, 120 files changed, 4768 insertions(+), 6690 deletions(-)
- Solidly contracts fork: ~414 commits, 45 files changed, 3660 insertions(+), 1483 deletions(-)
Please explain how this Mission will help accomplish the above Intent:
- As Optimism’s largest and most prominent native protocol, Velodrome has a demonstrated track record of successfully spreading the Optimistic Vision across a variety of channels:
- We currently have 233.9k followers on Twitter and produce content on a daily basis focused on highlighting Optimism, its vision, and its broader ecosystem
- We are frequently tapped to represent the vision on Twitter spaces, podcasts, and panels with partners and crypto outlets like Bankless (average 1-2 per week)
- We host blogs with technical (Velodrome Development Journal) and strategic (Velodrome (🚴,🚴) – Medium) thought pieces aimed to educate users, emerging builders, and established protocols to Optimism
- Our business development efforts are entirely focused on direct outreach to protocols and builders across DeFi, sharing the broader vision with the goal of onboarding valuable protocols to the ecosystem, attracting value-aligned users and builders.
- What we have found in this work is that the best ways to drive awareness of the Optimistic Vision and the opportunity it represents for builders (and their users) is to drive actual trial and usage of network and ecosystem: deploying their token, building liquidity on it, engaging with other ecosystem projects, getting engaged in governance, etc. It makes the Optimistic Vision tangible and gets projects (and their users) invested in it. Protocols have a choice of where to deploy and Velodrome and matching our efforts with targeted incentive programs provide the most compelling case for a focused investment in the Optimistic vision.
- That is why we believe that to grow awareness and engagement with the Optimistic Vision, we need to employ every avenue at our disposal to get access to those builders that could be of interest to Optimism. And in our experience, no amount of words or guides alone can compare with direct, in-person engagement. This grant would support Velodrome’s own considerable efforts to grow the ecosystem and provide the tools to continue to attract the best and brightest in Web3 and get them invested in the Optimistic Vision.
- We propose 100,000 OP to be used as bounties to incentivize individuals in the Optimism community to surface and introduce new protocols to Velodrome to onboard to the Optimism Collective. We would target bounties of roughly 2k per referral. Bounties would not go to people currently employed by Optimism Labs, the Optimism Foundation, or any affiliates, nor would they go to currently titled and compensated people on the Grants Council.
- We will pair these incentives with our ongoing efforts to promote the Optimistic Vision and ecosystem through our official comms channels (Twitter, Discord, etc), our business development activities (50+ protocols onboarded to date), and our partnership support that helps projects get engaged in governance and connect with other ecosystem builders.
- This grant request is about equipping those already doing the work of spreading the Optimistic Vision with the demonstrated effective tools they need to be successful.
What makes your Alliance well-suited to execute this Mission?
- Our Alliance’s combined experiences make us well prepared to execute on this Mission
- Velodrome is the single largest protocol on Optimism and the largest DEX on Layer 2 Ethereum, it is the most prominent public advocate for the Optimistic Vision across the DeFi landscape
- Velodrome has a proven record of persuading builders and users to embrace the Optimistic vision, attracting, onboarding, and retaining protocols / builders / and their communities to Optimism (50+ and counting)
- Velodrome has a demonstrated track record of running successful grant programs and delivering results, holding ourselves accountable to the metrics we lay out
Please list a critical milestone. The critical milestone should be a measure of whether you’ve made best efforts to execute what is outlined in this proposal or not. If you fail to achieve your critical milestone, your grant may be clawed back.
- Onboard 5 new protocols to Optimism within 12 weeks of the receipt of grant funds.
- Kept records of distributions and reasons for such distributions.
How should Token House delegates measure progress towards this Mission: These should focus on progress towards completion. Including expected completion dates for each is recommended.
- Onboard 1 new, unreached protocol by week 4, 2 protocols by week 6 and 5 protocols by week 12 of 5 new projects to Optimism (or 10% of existing opportunities in biz dev pipeline)
- Recorded Twitter space or community call with each newly onboarded protocol to spread the Optimistic Vision across their community of users
How should badgeholders measure impact upon completion of this Mission? These should be focused on performance and may be used by badgeholders to assess your Misson’s impact in the next round of RetroPGF.
- Any performance beyond the above specified metrics
- Positive feedback or testimonials from onboarded protocols
- Records of additional composability with Velodrome or enhanced protocol activity
Breakdown of Mission budget request:
- We propose 100,000 OP to be used as bounties to incentivize individuals in the Optimism community to surface and introduce new protocols to Velodrome to onboard to the Optimism Collective.
• We would target bounties of roughly 2k per referral, but bounties could scale based on the quality on onboarded protocols participation in Optimism
• Bounties would not go to people currently employed by Optimism Labs, the Optimism Foundation, or any affiliates, nor would they go to currently titled and compensated people on the Grants Council
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
