Governance Weekly Recap

Week of October 14th, 2024

:writing_hand: Forum Highlights

  • Retro Funding 6: Impact Attestation experiment

    The forum post discusses a small-scale experiment within Retro Funding 6 by the Optimism Collective, focusing on collecting standardized, verifiable data on the impact of governance projects through attestations. This initiative aims to provide badgeholders with more third-party data to enhance their voting decisions. The experiment, which runs from October 14th to 23rd, involves the top 100 delegates, citizens, and governance leaders issuing impact attestations for contributions within the “Governance Infrastructure & Tooling” category. The experiment’s success will be evaluated through badgeholders’ feedback on the utility of this information in a ballot submission survey. Key components of the attestation process include leveraging reputation through Farcaster accounts and ensuring qualitative data standardization, with the broader goal of integrating impact signals into everyday project interactions.

  • Revenue Opportunities for the Optimism Collective

    Alex Soto discusses the financial challenges facing the Optimism protocol, particularly the concern that sequencer fees may reduce to zero. As these fees are crucial for revenue, Soto suggests exploring alternative income sources to support the collective’s sustainability. He introduces a structured framework for proposal creation inspired by sociocracy, outlining a three-step process: understanding the issue, exploring ideas, and making decisions. This process emphasizes identifying key dimensions, brainstorming creatively, and consolidating ideas into actionable proposals. Soto calls for community input on framing these revenue-generation models, ensuring they align with Optimism’s guiding principles and address technical, security, and user rights considerations.

  • Optimism Working Models for Decentralization

    The post delves into various strategies to enhance the decentralization of the Optimism protocol. Users are engaging in discussions about the documentation’s interpretation, particularly concerning diagram references and their starting points or endpoints. The post has garnered a fair amount of interaction, with contributions aimed at clarifying these details and exploring the broader implications for the protocol’s decentralization efforts. This discussion reflects the community’s interest in refining Optimism’s operational models to maximize its decentralized nature.

  • Voting Cycle Roundup #29

    The Voting Cycle Roundup #29 for Optimism focuses on key developments in the governance process. This session highlights the Standard Rollup Charter ratification for Season 6, emphasizing high-security and decentralized blockspace solutions. The charter adheres to the Law of Chains, promoting secure and sustainable blockchain practices. Engagement with the community is encouraged as these standards set a high bar for operational excellence within the Optimism Collective. Participants are urged to review technical proposals as they prepare for future governance decisions.

  • Governor Update Proposal #3: Enable onchain treasury execution

    Governor Update Proposal #3 introduces a pivotal upgrade to the Optimism token house governance, enabling onchain execution of treasury transfers. This change, facilitated by Agora, allows automatic execution of governance token transfer proposals without the need for manual intervention by the Optimism Foundation, marking a significant step toward decentralization. The proposal incorporates minor patches from previous audits and involves deploying a new Timelock contract to enhance governance functionality. Security audits are ongoing to ensure robustness, with no anticipated disruptions to existing voting or proposal processes. If approved, this upgrade emphasizes Optimism’s commitment to progressive decentralization while maintaining operational continuity.

  • Superchain Product Vision

    The forum post outlines the ambitious vision for the Superchain, a network of individually sovereign yet collectively governed chains under Optimism, aimed at scaling Ethereum technology. Emphasizing decentralization and open-source principles, the vision targets platform developers as primary customers, facilitating ecosystems that thrive on trillions in GDP and billions of users. Key elements include standardization for scalability, robust governance for security and decision-making, and a collaborative effort for sustainable growth. The Superchain begins with 15-50 highly integrated chains and is expected to expand to over a thousand, all benefiting from collective governance and protected by governance mechanisms designed to be representative and capture-resistant. The vision foresees growth driven by the incentivization of public goods and protection against extractive models, aiming for an inclusive, scalable internet.

  • Situation of Non-technical applications and Mission Requests

    In a recent forum post, the discussion highlights challenges faced by non-technical applications in gaining approval for grants within the S6 Grants council. Despite the promising prospects of some projects, non-technical mission requests struggle to secure grants, mainly due to the technical nature of the application scoring system that disfavors them. The post points out that most non-technical mission requests remain unfunded due to rigid assessment criteria designed more for technical applications, placing such projects at a disadvantage. Suggestions are made to revise the scoring rubrics and make them more inclusive for non-technical initiatives, as these projects have shown potential, yet face unfair obstacles in the final scoring rounds. As Cycle 30 approaches, there’s a call for the Grants council to reconsider its scoring criteria to provide a fairer evaluation ground, thus ensuring a more balanced representation of non-technical projects.

  • Mid-Season 6 Grants Council Report

    The Mid-Season 6 Grants Council Report offers a detailed update on the progress of grants in the ongoing season. The council received a total of 222 applications, with 53 grants approved, including 9 Superchain grants. Throughout the season, more than 170 applications overcame the preliminary review, each evaluated by at least six reviewers. Additionally, 47 mission requests were scrutinized, and the Milestones and Metrics subcommittee assessed 148 completed projects for Foundation reporting. The report breaks down the results by cycles, noting specific figures for each, such as the number of applications received, those passing through different review stages, and the cycle-specific approved applications and Superchain projects.

  • Cycle 28 Grants Final Roundup

    The Cycle 28 Grants Final Roundup for the Optimism protocol concludes with successful completion of all milestones. Despite parallel efforts in Retro Funding, 53 applications were received, with 32 passing final review and 8, including a pending 2, earning approval. Mint Blockchain notably secured a Superchain grant. Looking forward, new mission requests have been approved, marking the allocation of the entire seasonal budget. The announcement also highlights appreciation for the Foundation OPs Team and Govnerds for their crucial support, and provides a link to a database of finalists, showcasing significant projects such as the Optimism Dominance in Yield-Bearing Assets and Mint Blockchain’s initiative to enhance the Superchain NFT economy.

:newspaper: Stakeholder News

The section lists Delegate Communication updates within the past 7 days, this is not a list of top delegates within Optimism

:ticket: Upcoming Events

  • Token House Governance Call: Tuesday - Link
  • Office Hours - Wednesday - Link
  • Demo Day - Thursday - Link

:crystal_ball: Upcoming Votes

0 Proposals live at the time of writing this report, no upcoming proposals detected