A description of how the project has supported development and usage of the OP Stack:
Defi Llama, as the name suggests, is an information platform for Defi data. We can get a lot of updated and rich Defi data on Defi Llama, including the most commonly discussed TVL, various decentralized (Protocol), current Airdrop scenarios, and changes in different chains of currencies. The Defi is also categorized by function, allowing users to quickly find the current changes in the target asset.
Users can view the data of each Dapp under OP through DefiLIama and make their judgment based on these data. By comparing, users can better discover the potential projects under OP and give strong support, instead of unconsciously coming for airdrops led by KOL.
About: Nested is a social trading platform that intends to revolutionize DeFi for good by making it social – hence rendering it accessible to CeFi users. In that sense, Nested is trailblazing SocialFi to open up crypto investment to the world.
Nested allows DeFi newbies to copy strategies that correspond to what they are looking for while giving the opportunity to more experienced DeFi traders, such as community leaders, to earn royalties every time one of their portfolios is copied — and enjoy a seamless asset management experience.
The company’s solution makes crypto investment easier, more social, versatile, and affordable thanks to its use of NFT technology that reduces transaction fees and facilitates management – with only one transaction needed for up to twelve assets.
Otterscan is a fast, local, free & open source Ethereum block explorer. Otterscan is designed to run on consumer hardware so that it can be utilized locally. Otterscan therefore reduces the trust assumption that many of us implicitly place on third-party block explorers, a critical point of failure in the current Ethereum ecosystem. Furthermore, existing block explorers understand their dominant position within the space and are able to charge large fees to run hosted explorers for chains. Ethereum wins when good infrastructure is cheap and open source, and Otterscan has embodied this concept for years.
Otterscan currently relies on a connection to an Erigon node. With the Bedrock upgrade, Optimism will be one of the only chains other than Ethereum that can support an Erigon node (development on op-erigon is already under way). This means Optimism will be uniquely positioned to benefit from Otterscan’s work in the short term. As a result, supporting Otterscan for its past impact on Ethereum will also directly help create future impact on Optimism.
Otterscan’s design philosophy also helps other teams outside of Otterscan to create impact. For example, Otterscan’s UI is cleanly decoupled from its API so that anyone can easily fork Otterscan’s interface and add new features or fix bugs. Otterscan also actively pushes for decentralization by integrating tools like Sourcify, a decentralized alternative to Etherscan contract verification.
Otterscan is currently being developed by a single developer, Willian Mitsuda, with a small amount of financial support from the Erigon team. Rewarding Otterscan through RetroPGF would allow the Otterscan team to grow and create even more impact for both Optimism and Ethereum. In my opinion, open source infrastructure like Otterscan is the perfect candidate for RetroPGF.
I work for OP Labs. I am making this nomination in my capacity as an individual and not on behalf of OP Labs. I have been in contact with Willian Mitsuda for a few months to talk about potential sources of funding (including RetroPGF) for Otterscan. I had no relationship with Otterscan prior to those discussions other than being a fan of the project from afar. Willian was given the opportunity to review this nomination and provide additional data that would help inform its content, but I retained final say over all content in the post.
A description
ethers-js is a Typescript library that makes Ethereum development really easy. It has all of the pieces required to interact with the blockchain. It is heavily used by Optimism, in particular for contract deployments and some offchain services.
It is one of the easiest libraries to get up and going with for new developers to the Ethereum ecosystem.
v6 was just released as beta, the project has been getting continuous development.
A link to the project’s GitHub or Twitter:
(optional) contact info for the project or project lead:
twitter com/ricmoo
Gnosis Safe is a multisignature smart contract that I am sure every voter knows about and uses. I cannot believe it hasn’t been nominated yet, it is one of the most true public goods made in a way perfect for Retroactive Public Goods funding. For context, Gnosis Safe is a non-custodial wallet solution built on the Ethereum blockchain that allows users to securely store, manage, and interact with their cryptocurrency and digital assets. It is considered a public good on the Ethereum blockchain as it provides a secure and user-friendly interface for users to interact with their digital assets, which helps to promote greater adoption and usage of the Ethereum ecosystem. Additionally, the Gnosis Safe is built on the Optimism layer 2 scaling solution, which allows for faster and cheaper transactions on the Ethereum network, further promoting the use of the blockchain for everyday transactions.
I would like to nominate the Hop bridge as critical infrustructure. Here is a description of hop:
Hop Exchange Bridge is a protocol that allows users to move digital assets between different blockchain networks, such as Ethereum and Optimism, with minimal fees and high security. It enables cross-chain interoperability, enabling assets to be moved across different networks in a decentralized manner.
The Hop Exchange Bridge protocol is based on a system of “bridges” that connect different blockchain networks. Each bridge is a smart contract on one blockchain that is connected to a smart contract on another blockchain. When a user wants to move an asset from one blockchain to another, they send the asset to the bridge smart contract on the originating blockchain. The bridge smart contract then locks the asset and sends a message to the bridge smart contract on the destination blockchain, which releases the corresponding asset on the destination blockchain.
The protocol uses a mechanism called “proof of custody” to ensure that the assets are securely transferred from one network to another. This mechanism uses a combination of smart contracts and cryptographic techniques to ensure that the assets are transferred in a secure and decentralized manner.
The Hop Exchange Bridge enables users to move assets across different blockchain networks with minimal fees and high security, making it a valuable tool for trading, liquidity provision, and cross-chain DeFi.
As a result, Hop Exchange is considered a public good for Optimism because it increases the interoperability of layer 2 solutions, enabling them to communicate and exchange assets with each other. This allows more people to use the Ethereum network and enables a wider range of decentralized applications to be built. It also allows for more efficient use of resources, as it allows different layer 2 solutions to specialize in different types of transactions, rather than each one trying to do everything.
A description of how the project has supported development and usage of the OP Stack: blst is a cryptography library used for PoS consensus on Ethereum. It is also the cryptography library that supports EIP-4844. blst is a core part of the Ethereum stack used by Optimism, and EIP-4844 will help to lower transaction costs for Optimism (and other rollup) users.
I would like to recommend Clipper Exchange (https://clipper.exchange/), which offers more than just a basic decentralized exchange.
The user experience is well-designed, starting with the loading screen and continuing through deposits and withdrawals.
Additionally, the project encourages users to educate themselves before using the platform’s features, such as a pop-up quiz that must be completed before locking funds.
Overall, Clipper elevates the user’s experience on the web3 stack.
I am nominating Trueblocks and the unchained index. One of the most underfunded, overlooked, yet most important projects out there.
The projects name: Trueblocks.
A description of how the project has supported development and usage of the OP Stack: Trueblocks and the unchained index, have not yet started working on optimism but I know they have experimented with multi-evm and polygon so optimism is definitely a possible and much needed extension.
Trueblocks answers a simple question. For a given address, give me all possible transactions that “touch” it. From/to, token transfers, address just randomly appearing somewhere in the input data. All of those will be returned.
It achieves that by creating an extra index over either a full or an archive node. This is a major missing piece from all evm chains. This allows you to simply get “all your transactions” without relying on 3rd party APIs or having to install and index one subgraph per protocol you used and miss transactions you may have done and forgot.
In my honest opinion we need to support their work and expansion to all evm chains so that it becomes easy as pie to use them and finally have a decentralized way of querying for our transactions.
Safe is cool and all, but they raised $100M just last year. RetroPGF is for projects that have either very little or no other funding.
I see quite many questionable nominations in here. Anyone can nominate anyone ofc, but guys if projects are already funded in the tens or hundreds of millions for god’s sake they don’t belong here.
Hello all - excited to make some nominations. Disclaimer: I’m doing this in my personal capacity, not as a representative of Coinbase. I’m going to make a number of nominations.
NOTE: I am restricted from adding too many links, so managing around that.
go-ethereum
I’d like to +1 the go-ethereum nomination. Given the critical role this plays in Optimism, this feels very well deserved. The nomination above has other information.
Blobscan
A description of how the project has supported development and usage of the OP Stack: Blobscan is an explorer built for EIP4844 blob data. It was built during a hackathon and has been used by teams as we’ve built out the EIP4844 specification. EIP4844 will enable cheaper, more scalable L2s, which will benefit the Optimism ecosystem, and Blobscan was contribution to that effort. A link to the project’s GitHub or Twitter: github.com/Blobscan/blobscan
Now, for a few ones that may be more controversial, but which I believe deserve discussion and consideration. I understand that there may be disagreement, and some of these may not qualify, but I would rather we over-nominate and then decide from there.
Arbitrum
A description of how the project has supported development and usage of the OP Stack: Arbitrum is another optimistic rollup implementation. They have made significant progress, including having working fault proofs in production. They’ve done this work fully open source and documented their thinking in a way that the community can learn from. I believe that these contributions have been invaluable for pushing forward the broader L2 ecosystem forward, which has significant benefit to Optimism.
A link to the project’s GitHub or Twitter: twitter.com/arbitrumdevs
Polygon
A description of how the project has supported development and usage of the OP Stack: Polygon as made a number of significant open source contributions to the overall Ethereum scaling space. In particular, their work on the Polygon zkEVM has been invaluable in pushing forward the possibility of rollups with ZK validity provers. I believe that these contributions have been invaluable for pushing forward the broader L2 ecosystem forward, which has significant benefit to Optimism.
A link to the project’s GitHub or Twitter: twitter.com/0xPolygonHermez
Scroll
A description of how the project has supported development and usage of the OP Stack: Scroll is building an open source, Apache / MIT zkEVM, in close collaboration with the Ethereum Foundation Privacy & Scaling Experiments group. They are optimizing for full EVM compatibility and pushing the limits of what we’ve historically thought was possible. I believe that these contributions have been invaluable for pushing forward the broader L2 ecosystem forward, which has significant benefit to Optimism.
A link to the project’s GitHub or Twitter: twitter.com/Scroll_ZKP
I look forward to seeing the discussion about and results of this RetroPGF round. Thanks for making this happen!
A description of how the project has supported development and usage of the OP Stack: Velodrome is AMM fork of Solidly, that designed to provide liquidity and minimal slippages on platform. Velodrome is helping to expand Optimism ecosystem by providing liquidity and gives user able to vote which pair should get that liquidity.
the Project name : LAYER3 description of how the project has supported development and usage of the OP Stack : Layer3, a unique quest-based platform that focuses on on-chain activities, will be able to bring more users into the optism ecosystem in the future.
layer3 platform which is very useful for web3 users by carrying out user quest activities also gets awards starting from NFT, token airdrop and of course this is good for the future development of the optism ecosystem
Quix is the largest NFT marketplace on Optimism so far. Their website performance is so smooth. Launchpad worked perfectly. In my opinion, NFT is the best option to grow up community and Quix provide the best and largest NFT marketplace on Optimism.
Description of how the project has supported development and usage of the OP Stack:
I would like to nominate Across for the Infrastructure and dependencies category of RetroPGF round 2 as Across is a cross-chain bridge for L2s such as Optimism and rollups secured by UMA’s optimistic oracle. It is optimized for capital efficiency with a single liquidity pool, a competitive relayer landscape, and a no-slippage fee model. Across is one of the the fastest, cheapest and most secure bridge. In short, Across is building the bridge Ethereum deserves.
Across is a public good for Optimism as it has hepled users bridge a total of $138M to Optimism with low fees, fast bridging and highly secure transactions.
A description of how the project has supported development and usage of the OP Stack:
API3 DAO delivers transparent and secure first-party oracles that are operated by API Providers. Through the first-party architecture, API3 is developing infrastructure that enables real-world data to be accessed at scale by smart contracts in a decentralized fashion. API3’s current support for the Optimism ecosystem includes the launch of the oracle integration tooling ChainAPI and public good Quantum RNG.
ChainAPI Airnode integration tool: Through ChainAPI an API endpoint can be made requestable in under 30 minutes, with little technical lifting. As such Optimism builders can access any REST API endpoint off-chain data through a REST API.
API3 launched the public good Quantum Random Number Generator oracle service, API3 QRNG. This service provides builders permissionless access to quantum RNG, where users just need to fund a sponsor wallet to cover gas fees.
API3 will launch our decentralized API (dAPI) oracle service for Optimism’s DeFi ecosystem across 2023.
dAPIs will provide access to a range of DeFi data feeds powered by reputable data providers. The flexibility of first-party means data availability can scale quickly whilst enabling builders to choose the number of sources (decentralisation) for their DeFi application.
dAPIs will initially serve self-funded & managed service data feeds.
Alongside dAPIs, Optimism builders will be able to realize access Oracle Extractable Value. OEV enables DeFi protocols to capture and channel proceeds in using similar tooling & processes to that of Maximum Extractable Value.