Introducing the Optimism Guide

[danftz]

I’m happy to share that the initial version of optimism.guide is now live! As of right now, it includes an Optimism-specific glossary, a RetroPGF micro lesson as well as a curated collection of external and official resources.

The site was created with the goal of addressing three key challenges that I identified as critical to improving the accessibility of the Optimism Collective:

1. How can we help people quickly find an explanation for specific terms? What is a Special Voting Cycle? What is an Alliance? What is a Reflection Period? …
2. How can we improve the visibility of many great tools and resources that could be of great value to many if they only knew about them?
3. How can we radically reduce the time required to get an in-depth understanding of core concepts like RetroPGF?

Over the past month, I’ve tackled each of these challenges, and even though many parts are still far from perfect, I’d like to introduce everything I’ve built in detail below.

Optimism Glossary

How can we help people quickly find an explanation for specific terms? What is a Special Voting Cycle? What is an Alliance? What is a Reflection Period? …

Optimism is constantly changing, and as a result many new terms and concepts are regularly being introduced. However, with the exception of a few high context (governance) participants, most users and builders don’t have a complete understanding of all terms and concepts at all times.

By creating a comprehensive and user-friendly glossary, I hope to play a small part in changing this, and in doing so, make it easier for people to navigate seamlessly across the Optimism Collective.

Over time, the glossary, which is viewable at optimism.guide/glossary, will hopefully become the go-to resource for quickly looking up a term someone is unfamiliar with.

If you want to add a glossary term, or propose a change to the definition of an existing term, you may use the form provided here.

Curated collection of external and official resources

How can we improve the visibility of many great tools and resources that could be of great value to many if they only knew about them?

The Optimism Governance Dashboard by @v3naru_Curia, the Vision Reservoir by @latruite.eth, the RetroPGF Podcast by @Michael, and the Delegate Corner Podcast by @Sinkas: What all those resources have in common is that they are well-crafted and deserve more visibility and recognition.

To help with exactly that, I’ve started building a curated collection of external and official resources. Similar to how optimism.io/apps/all shows an overview of dApps and integrations in the Optimism ecosystem, optimism.guide showcases (educational) resources and tools relevant to Optimism, ranging from tutorials, conference talks, podcasts, blog posts to analytics dashboards.

If you think a tool or resource is missing, please use this form here to suggest an addition.

Micro lessons

How can we radically reduce the time required to get an in-depth understanding of core concepts like RetroPGF?

Getting a good understanding of core concepts like RetroPGF is not particularly easy. In the case of RetroPGF, it requires spending considerable time reading through the articles on Mirror, Vitalik’s guest post on the old Medium blog, the Citizens’ House section in the Community Hub, and the OP Economics page.

The idea behind the micro lessons is to radically simplify this process by taking the most important information found in resources like those just mentioned and combining it into a condensed, interactive format.

The first experimental micro lesson available is the RetroPGF (Micro Lesson), which shouldn’t take much longer than 7 minutes to complete. Depending on the feedback I’ll do more lessons in the same format, or scrap the whole thing and re-think the approach.

[dmars300]

Hey @danftz

Incredible work on Optimism.Guide! The website categories are well-organized, making it easy to find relevant information. Your glossary is particularly helpful (even better than the one in the official docs); it’s a resource I can see becoming the go-to guide for anyone in the Optimism Collective looking to quickly understand specific terms

The branding is excellent. The site not only looks professional but also feels smooth to navigate.

Suggestions for Improvement

1. Rotating Featured Resources: It would be beneficial to rotate the featured articles and resources periodically. This can provide visibility to a wider array of valuable content.
2. Micro Lessons: The concept of micro lessons is brilliant. We at Cryptoversidad have also been focusing on quick, digestible educational content. We’ve created explainer videos and quizzes on key topics in Optimism. Merging this with your micro lessons could provide a more in-depth understanding for users. Let’s discuss the integration; you can check out our content here. Let’s talk!
3. Collaboration: I’d recommend teaming up with other educational initiatives like the Reservoir, Optimistic Academy and Cryptoversidad (us). Centralizing these resources would make it easier for the community to find all the information they need in one place.
4. Open Source & PR Contributions: Opening the platform for public contributions can help in keeping the content up-to-date and inclusive.

Last question: Is this work being developed as a part of a grant or a Mission?
Also, remember RPGF round 3 applications are open!

Looking forward to contribute to this to make it the best!

Diego,

[danftz]

@dmars300

Rotating Featured Resources: It would be beneficial to rotate the featured articles and resources periodically. This can provide visibility to a wider array of valuable content.

I appreciate the suggestion, and I’ll start this week with re-ordering resources based on whether they have been clicked particularly often relative to their position.

@dmars300

• Micro Lessons: The concept of micro lessons is brilliant. We at Cryptoversidad have also been focusing on quick, digestible educational content. We’ve created explainer videos and quizzes on key topics in Optimism. Merging this with your micro lessons could provide a more in-depth understanding for users. Let’s discuss the integration; you can check out our content here. Let’s talk!
• Collaboration: I’d recommend teaming up with other educational initiatives like the Reservoir, Optimistic Academy and Cryptoversidad (us). Centralizing these resources would make it easier for the community to find all the information they need in one place.

That sounds good! Looking forward to featuring the videos of Cryptoversidad on optimism.guide once you’ve published them. I’m also open for a conversation to discuss what makes sense beyond that!

@dmars300

Open Source & PR Contributions: Opening the platform for public contributions can help in keeping the content up-to-date and inclusive.

There is a dedicated “Contribute” page with a submission form, but not much has been submitted yet. Open to suggestions on how to expand that.

@dmars300

Last question: Is this work being developed as a part of a grant or a Mission?

No, it isn’t developed as part of a grant or Mission.

[Gonna.eth]

Are you listed in RetroPGF? do you plan to? I’m keeping a favorites list.

[dmars300]

hey @danftz, great!
Regarding the videos: Yes, we’ll finish the videos this week, what’s the best contact method so we can coordinate the details?
I suggest you take a look into RPGF 3, sounds like this is a good fit for it
Btw, I want to offer my help/contribution to you: What do you need, or where can you use some help on optimism guide?
Lmk, great work
Diego,

[santicristobal]

Hey @danftz! This is great! Congrats.

The site looks amazing. I particularly like the glossary and the micro lessons, it’s a very powerful concept. ETH Global has very good guides that quite resemble the RetroPGF micro lesson and might serve as inspiration.

We are currently working on the Optimism Academy and this could be super super helpful. Would love to discuss integration options. To start with we will include the link to the Optimism.guide as a mandatory resource of our courses.

Also, following @dmars300’s lead, I would also like to offer myself to help. I’ve worked in crypto education through Solow for the last 2 years and consider myself a micro lessons super fan

It’s really exciting to see so much people committed to education within the Collective, it fills me with hope for what’s coming for both Optimism and crypto as a whole.

Also, I would like to share some ideas I stumbled upon why navigating your site:

• adding a ‘video’ tag.
• adding a ‘podcast’ tag.
• allowing users to save and share content they like

Keep it up!
Best,
Santi

[danftz]

@Gonna.eth

Are you listed in RetroPGF? do you plan to? I’m keeping a favorites list.

@dmars300

I suggest you take a look into RPGF 3, sounds like this is a good fit for it

I haven’t applied for RetroPGF 3 yet, but I plan to do that in the coming weeks. Thanks for the encouragement!

@dmars300

Regarding the videos: Yes, we’ll finish the videos this week, what’s the best contact method so we can coordinate the details?
Btw, I want to offer my help/contribution to you: What do you need, or where can you use some help on optimism guide?

Sure, you can contact me either via Twitter DMs (danftz) or Telegram (@ danftz). Besides that, I’ve also set up an email (daniel@optimism.guide) for feedback and suggestions.

When it comes to help, I always welcome feedback (as you have already given!) and suggestions for glossary terms and/or resources that could be valuable to visitors but that I simply forgot to include.

@santicristobal

Also, I would like to share some ideas I stumbled upon why navigating your site:

• adding a ‘video’ tag.
• adding a ‘podcast’ tag.
• allowing users to save and share content they like

Thanks Santi for the suggestions! I’ve added a “video” tag and will think about the other points you’ve mentioned.

Also thanks for your work with the Optimistic Academy. I’ve took a look at what has been created so far and it is a great start! Looking forward to the next chapters you will add!

I’ve also included a link to the Optimistic Academy on optimism.guide earlier today.

[danftz]

Hey everyone, I wanted to give an update on what has been going on at optimism.guide since September:

• Added new resources regularly, and here I’m particularly happy about some great submissions from community members through the contribution form. As an example, @Sator from Blockchain@USC submitted a Dune Analytics Dashboard they built, which is now one of the most clicked resources on the site.

• Built a dedicated page featuring the videos of Cryptoversidad/@dmars300 which were created by them as part of their Mission proposal to develop the most relevant and aligned audiovisual content for the Optimism Collective.

• Experimented with some targeted paid marketing through Google Ads to reach users that are interested in blockchains and public goods, but might not have heard of Optimism before. This is something I would not have done without the expectation of getting some retroactive funding which covers those expenses. In my opinion, this is a really good example of how the promise of RetroPGF creates incentives to do potentially impactful things that otherwise wouldn’t make any sense financially.

• Speaking of RetroPGF, I’ve applied this round with Optimism Guide (see the application here). Thanks again to @Gonna.eth for encouraging me. I don’t expect much, and honestly also don’t deserve a lot, but excited for the results.

[santicristobal]

@danftz

• Built a dedicated page featuring the videos of Cryptoversidad/@dmars300 which were created by them as part of their Mission proposal to develop the most relevant and aligned audiovisual content for the Optimism Collective.

Hi ser, congrats on the progress. What’s your analysis on the results of using paid ads? Do you think it worked / was worth the investment?

[Sator]

Appreciate ser for the listing and s/o!

[danftz]

@santicristobal

Hi ser, congrats on the progress. What’s your analysis on the results of using paid ads? Do you think it worked / was worth the investment?

Hey @santicristobal, great question! Since the focus of the ads was on raising awareness and getting web traffic from potentially interested individuals, it’s somewhat challenging to measure how effective it was beyond basic metrics like time spent on site, # of views, outbound clicks to resources, …

I wish I knew if some of those website visitors started building on Optimism or decided to become active in governance, but unfortunately I have not much insights into that.

What I can say is that a pretty sizeable number of website visitors coming from ads interacted with the site, clicked on resources, completed the RetroPGF lesson, and browsed the glossary. I’ve also received a few emails from people inquiring about ways they can contribute.

So yes, I guess it worked. That being said, I think if I wanted to scale this beyond some small experimentation, a clear funnel and call to action would be necessary to make it more effective in reaching those without a prior knowledge of Optimism, as the site is not currently optimised for onboarding entirely new users.

[brichis]

GM @danftz! I think you could generate an invitation link to the forum and thus track the number of redeemers (people who created a profile on the forum) or mint an NFT when the people finished a test about the RetroPGF lesson or maybe an attestation, Idk hehe it’s the perfect time to innovate