Grants Council - Cycle 19 (S5 R1) Preliminary Review Roundup

Governance Fund Missions 🏹 Grants Updates
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The Cycle 19 Preliminary Review has been completed. From the 314 applications we received, 252 were scored by 2 reviewers randomly selected depending on the subcommittee involved following the specified rubric. The 314 applications submitted during cycle 18 surpassed the entire Season 4 with 306 applications in total.

The Grants Council congratulates the 106 proposers that will be considered for Final Review.

Here is the list by mission request of proposals for Final Review organized by the Sub-Committee. Next to the mission request title we specify if:

  1. Continue: Finalists are going to be chosen and submission will open again for round 2
  2. Push forward: Submission will be open again and finalists from round 1 will be considered at the end of round 2. The mission request stays open with no grantees elected.
  3. Closed: The Grants Council considers there are enough applications to cover the objective of the mission request. The finalist will be elected and announced by the end of this round.

A few mission requests have no applications moving to final review. These will all be open for new application submissions and be marked as “Continue”.

Cycle 18 preliminary roundup list:

INTENT 1
Alternative CL/EL client Push Forward

  1. op-besu - an OP Stack execution client based on hyperledger besu

Decentralized rollup-as-a-service Continue

  1. Decentralized rollup-as-a-service - WakeUp Labs
  2. Open RaaS - Open Sourced Rollup-as-a-Service

Fraud Proof CTF Continue
No finalists reopening submissions

Implement a prototype of an OP stack chain with mempool encryption. Push Forward

  1. Generalized mempool encryption interface for OP Stack chains and deployment of a mempool encrypted OP Stack testnet using threshold encryption.

OP Stack Research and Implementation Continue

  1. Extend the Availability of EIP-4844 Blobs by Integrating OP Stack with EthStorage
  2. Research and development on multi-section dispute game
  3. Research on Alternative OP Stack Zero Knowledge Fraud-Proof using Wasm
  4. Velodrome Finance - OP Stack Research
  5. OPcity stack

Open Source OP Stack Developer Tooling Continue

  1. Amphitheatre Developing Platform
  2. Developer Tool - Reclaim Protocol
  3. Lightweight Open Source Explorer for the Superchain
  4. Optimism sdk in rust
  5. PermaDA: Utilizing Arweave as a low-cost permanent data availability solution
  6. Veldrome Finance - OS Developer Tooling

INTENT 2

Builders grants program mission request Continue

  1. aDeal network
  2. Community builder: IRL Age of Empires Governance Platform
  3. Dark Forest ARES
  4. EasyRetroPGF.xyz
  5. Enhancing Decision-Making with Quadratic Voting on Optimism
  6. ERC-7265 Security Tooling
  7. ERC-7412 Tooling + Education
  8. Fractal Visions
  9. Karma GAP - RetroPGF Project Discovery and impact evaluation
  10. LOGX: Aggregated Orderbook Perp DEX
  11. Lumio - AltVM on Superchain
  12. Mississippi Game Hackathon
  13. Namespace
  14. On-chain DAO Committee
  15. RADAR Launch Future Pools
  16. Synthetix IPFS Node
  17. xOPTokens: enabling xERC20 on OP Mainnet Messaging Layer

Growth and experiments grants program Continue

  1. [OmniBTC] $100K Growth Grant Request
  2. Ajna permissionless lending protocol optimism expansion
  3. AlienSwap, leading NFT trading layer
  4. Angle Protocol - A USD-yield bearing asset on Optimism to create network effects
  5. Contango.xyz
  6. Exa App Aplication
  7. Gamma Strategies - Growth Experiments
  8. Gearbox Protocol
  9. Gyroscope growth on Optimism
  10. LOGX: Aggregated Orderbook Perp DEX
  11. Rage Trade Perp Aggregator
  12. Spongly Sports Markets Growth Proposal
  13. Synthetix Growth Grant Request
  14. Thales Protocol
  15. The Showdown
  16. Timeswap
  17. TLX - Leveraged Tokens Protocol
  18. Velodrome Finance - Growth Experiments

Layerwide new project support Continue
No finalists reopening submissions

Additional Revenue Sources to Fund RetroPGF Rounds Push Forward

  1. Conjure - Revenue Sources for RetroPGF
  2. EntityDAO
  3. Glo Dollar - upgrade to funding RetroPGF
  4. Opti.domains RetroPGF Revenue Sharing
  5. Velodrome Finance - Revenue Sources for RPGF

Smart contract auditing services Push Forward

  1. Halborn - Smart Contract Auditing
  2. Sherlock - Smart Contract Audits Mission Request

ZK Toolkit for ZK Application Developers Continue

  1. zk Toolkit by Reclaim Protocol
  2. ZK Toolkit for ZK Application Developers - WakeUp Labs
  3. zkPassport tooling - PinSave

INTENT 3

Advancing Optimism Anonymous Community and Governance Tooling Continue
No finalists reopening submissions

An Optimistic Future for Art Closed

  1. Audio Galleries
  2. Burrito In NFT NYC
  3. Edge City
  4. Optimistic Future of Art in Seoul

Deliver a Best-in-Class Perp Dex Mission Request Closed

  1. Elixir - Supercharging orderbook liquidity
  2. Synthetix Mission Request for Perps DEX
  3. Velodrome Finance - Perp Dex
  4. LOGX: Orderbook Perp DEX

Incentivize Projects to Integrate the Farcaster Social Graph Continue

  1. BetCaster: The Governance Game
  2. Bytexplorers (ByteLight Experiment)
  3. DelegateKit - A complete Farcaster DAO toolkit
  4. Farcaster Toolkit
  5. HyperArc - Make Social Graphs Great Again
  6. Noun PCs - Zynga for Farcaster
  7. Superchain Evolution: Engaging Users with Farcaster

Making Optimism a primary home of liquid staked eth Continue

  1. Balancer LST and LRT Hub
  2. Boost LST Bridging to the OP Stack
  3. ether.fi - DeFi integrations to Optimism
  4. ETHx on OP
  5. Extra Finance - Unleash L2 LST Efficiency
  6. KelpDAO - Bringing restaking to Optimism
  7. LSTs with leverage by Compound.Finance
  8. Stake Together L2 Staking Products on Optimism
  9. Velodrome Finance - LST Support

Scale ENS to OP Continue

  1. Opti.domains ENS L2 Development
  2. Scale ENS to OP Blockful – Official ENS Service Provider
  3. Unruggable - Scale ENS to OP

Superchain Accounts Closed

  1. Superchain Accounts - WakeUp Labs
  2. Superchain Accounts District Labs
  3. Superchain Accounts Superchain Eco

INTENT 4
AI Assistant for governance Push Forward

  1. AwesomeQA AI: Governance support assistant
  2. GovGuide

Building Identity - Driving Adoption of Attestations Closed

  1. Decentralized Vouching via Attestations
  2. Easy peasy
  3. OPassport - Governance Participants Attestation

Delegation Quest SDK Mission Request Continue
No finalists reopening submissions

Governance Mentorship Program Continue
No finalists reopening submissions

Incentivize and increase governance participation Push Forward

  1. Velodrome Finance - Governance Participation

Integration of Optimism Gov and RPGF Modules into University Courses Continue

  1. Digital Payment Methods, Blockchain and Crypto Assets Unit of the Master’s Degree in Finance at the University of Buenos Aires
  2. Optimism at Boston University
  3. Optimism Gov and RPGF into Latin American University Courses
  4. Public Goods In Crypto Bootcamp

Making Impact Evaluation Accessible Closed

  1. Impact Visualization Platform
  2. Optimisms Impact Tree - Empowering OP Governance Through Accessible Impact Evaluation
  3. WakeUp Labs - Impact Evaluation Framework and Dashboard

Create a grants Supertracker for the Optimism Collective and the Superchain Closed

  1. Grants Super Tracker Application
  2. grants supertracker
  3. Grants Supertracker through Questbook
  4. Optimism Grants Dashboard

For more indepth information on mission requests you can take a look at this doc.

For more in-depth information about the application scores you can take a look at this unformated doc (trying to make this better in the future)

Final Review

Over the next week, the Grants Council will complete a review of each of the final grant applications. During the Final Review, each reviewer in a given sub-committee will consider each remaining application and assign it a score. After each application has been scored by each reviewer, the sub-committee will rank the list by average score and choose the number of applications (“n”) that will receive a grant. Applications 1-n will be finalists eligible to receive grants.

Applicants will be permitted to make edits to their applications based on reviewer feedback; however, all edits should be made by Monday, March 18th, to ensure reviewers have time to consider any updates. Applicants should make sure to comment on their CharmVerse application confirming that they have made updates in order to notify reviewers as well.

Significant attention will be paid to all factors listed on the rubric. The Council will look to grant size requests and attendant plans, along with milestones, particularly closely. Applicants are reminded that Experiments grants greater than 150k OP require a majority vote of all twelve council reviewers (rather than a simple majority vote of the relevant sub-committee) to pass, which presents a higher bar than the typical sub-committee process.

During the preliminary assessment of this cycle, a prominent observation was the commendable professionalism and dedication exhibited by the grant reviewers with more than 70 applications each to score during two weeks (ETH Denver included). Despite a significant influx of applications, all submissions were thoroughly evaluated within the designated timeframe. The sub-committees provided substantial feedback and recommendations regarding the assessment criteria and review procedures for the subsequent cycle.

The Grants Council applications whose submissions didn’t meet the initial criteria or advance to the final review stage within the upcoming week will be marked as declined in Charmverse. As customary in previous cycles, attention will soon shift towards the final review phase. However, proposers who believe they can enhance their proposals are encouraged to reapply for the next round.

Application submission will be open tomorrow March 14th at 7 PM GMT.

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I will be sure to read through this tomorrow

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