Hey everyone! On behalf of Golem Foundation, we’d love to introduce Octant and explore positive-sum synergies with the Optimism Collective.
Introducing Octant
Octant, part of Golem Foundation, is a project that facilitates sustainable, community-coordinated impact funding at scale. We’ve demonstrated the power of sustainable funding of impactful projects by staking 100,000 ETH (~$390M as of today) and using much of the yield to fund broad based public goods in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Over the past year, we’ve distributed millions of dollars to hundreds of open-source and impactful projects builders, supporting important projects such as Protocol Guild, Tor Browser, Funding the Commons, L2BEAT, BuidlGuidl, and many others.
Need for Sustainability
Our experience has shown that most impactful, open-source projects / initiatives lack sustainability, often relying on one-time (grant) allocations without a sustainable flywheel.
We aim on solving this by:
- Creating a provably fair, open, and minimally biased funding mechanism
- Leveraging substantial treasury resources and funding streams for maximum impact, powered by the Web3 ecosystems native value generating streams
- Fostering a sustainable ecosystem for open-source, real-world impactful projects development
- Rewarding users for participation in the sustainable impact funding ecosystem
- Coordinating with other web3 ecosystem on funding specific deliverables/initiatives
By staking 100,000 ETH and donating the yield, we’re not just talking about change — we’ve actively started driving it. Our goal is to contribute to a better, more accessible, fair, and open world by making funding impactful projects truly sustainable.
Alignment with Optimism Collective
We deeply resonate with Optimism’s vision of secure, equitable, and fair internet built on the Superchain — with sustainable impact funding at its core (impact = profit).
The Optimism Collective has pioneered Retro Funding and shown incredible work with Superchain adoption, with each chain pledging % of their revenue to contribute to an even more sustainable Retroactive Funding flywheel. This is a perfect alignment with Octant’s vision of creating a sustainable funding model that actively supports public goods and the long-term health of impactful ecosystems at scale.
Superchain directly aligns with Octant’s goal of building a cohesive, sustainable ecosystem for public goods funding that spans across multiple projects and networks — and we believe that through collaboration with the Optimism Collective, we could co-facilitate more cross-chain coordination and cooperation to fund critical initiatives across the broader Ethereum ecosystem and beyond.
We see Optimism as a key partner in advancing this mission, bringing together both technical infrastructure and community governance to create a positive-sum ecosystem that benefits Superchain and extends its impact. We’re excited to explore how our combined efforts can accelerate the shift toward a truly sustainable onchain future.
Octant V2 Vision
The DeFi space has largely been disconnected from regenerative models (ReFi) and use cases such as impact investing and public goods funding. We need to bridge this gap and align incentives in a way that benefits both individual users and impactful projects.
The image above illustrates Octant V2 flywheel, which brings together diverse ecosystem participants and creates incentives for collaboration. Our goal is to align ecosystem players with varying motivations, fostering cooperation to achieve a balance between individual rewards and funding for impactful projects.
The diagram above illustrates the workflow of a Dragon (project with substantial principal capital) engaging with the system. The protocol allows individual Dragons to join and deposit capital into their own Dragon Vaults, while all Dragons contribute a percentage of their yield to the Sustainability Pool.
You can think about the Sustainability Pool as a Sovereign Wealth Fund that is used to fund public goods and impactful projects across the broader Ethereum ecosystem.
The Dragon Vault deploys that capital into yield-generating strategies. These strategies may include ETH staking protocols, DeFi protocols, etc. The Vault distribution is decided by the Dragon and can be divided between the Dragon Pool, Sustainability Pool, Regen Vault, and other pools/vaults the Dragon wants to utilize.
The community creates funding rounds from the continuously flowing funds into the Dragon Pool. Regens (community members) then vote with the accumulated tokens using an allocation method, and these votes determine how the funds are distributed.
Opportunities and Collaboration
We’re openly inviting the Optimism Collective to share your feedback and suggestions on this intro forum post. We see this as the beginning of our long-term, positive-sum collaboration that will directly benefit both Optimism Superchain ecosystem and the larger open internet.
With that said, here’re some collaboration opportunities:
- Community Activations
Ecosystem initiatives across the Superchain - Sustainable Impact Funding
Allocating a % of the Optimism treasury to generate yield in the Protocol, and streaming a portion of those rewards to the Sustainability Pool - Integrations with the Optimism Collective
Meaningful integrations possibilities with Superchain builders - Governance Contribution
Engage in shaping the future of Impact Funding via collaborative governance.
It’s time for sustainable evolution
Our industry desperately needs bold experiments in sustainable funding for what truly matters. While experimental approaches may not always succeed, our efforts since Octant launched in summer ‘23 have already shown tangible results and meaningful impact.
We believe that co-creating and nurturing impact funding flywheel will lead to the evolution of how impactful projects and initiatives are funded, laying the groundwork for a sustainable future across the entire ecosystem.
We look forward to hearing your feedback. Thank you!