Thank you for this detailed retrospective @Gonna.eth! I wanted to share some feedback on the following section:
As of today, approximately 10M OP has been granted. Grantees have reported using 356,000 OP so far, resulting in a combined $480M in direct TVL. While a large portion of this comes from Spark ($400M), removing that still leaves $80M in TVL driven by early-stage OP incentives, which is highly encouraging. That said, we invite caution when interpreting these numbers, it’s still early, and long-term outcomes will offer more clarity.
First, I’m curious about the methodology used to arrive at the $480M figure in net TVL inflows. Specifically, was the calculation adjusted to match the scope of each respective grant?
For example, if a grant of 1M OP was made to Spark to grow sUSDC on Base, it might be more accurate to isolate the net TVL inflows for sUSDC on Base — rather than all assets across the Superchain.
Furthermore, it would also be helpful if the calculation could control for general market fluctuations. To this end, the recommended approach would be to track the net change in token balances, valued at current prices:
Suggested formula: ( # of Tokens on Day N - # of Tokens on Day 0 ) * Price of Tokens on Day N (see data glossary).
Secondly, another important factor to consider when measuring the impact of any OP program is attribution. When multiple incentives are layered to support the same outcome (e.g. if a grant targets the same sUSDC/USDT0 pool that’s also incentivized through SuperStacks), it could be misleading to attribute 100% of the impact to a single program.
Lastly, OpenSource Observer is in the final stages of conducting an in-depth impact analysis of S7 grants, which builds on the insightful deep dive they published for S6 growth grants. Once that’s complete, it would be great to cross-reference results to ensure transparency and reproducibility of the impact analysis.
Disclaimer: I work for the Optimism Foundation, but views are my own.