When I started writing this, I’d had a plan to categorize everything by topic to demonstrate what was considerable overlap in missions. The delegate filtering seems to have worked, so it’s not as pronounced now, which is great!
However, there are some remaining missions here that appear as outright giveaways relative to the value they are going to create. Just because we have budget doesn’t mean we have to spend it.
I’d like to remind people: to realize Optimism’s broader vision of whole-world impact, we first have to win. ZKSync hasn’t had its airdrop, and they’re hiring. Arbitrum still has more devs, TVL, and mindshare. Other L2s with pending airdrops are going to be coming in as well, each learning from the last. Everything we do here has to be done with competition in mind, and that means running a governance process that can compete with centralized entities. I think we’re close, but the first-mover advantage that we’ve had is shrinking.
I’m not going to vote on these until the end, because I’m on a limb with some of these proposals. I’m open to being wrong on some stuff.
I’m trying to call this as I see it; I don’t want to discourage people from applying for more of these missions. We can just do a lot more to bring these into spec.
The reality is that there really hasn’t been a whole lot of thoughtful feedback on these – maybe because pushing back on stuff is unpopular? I don’t know. I can’t be one of a handful of people trying to do this stuff!
In no particular order:
Intent 3
Content creation
Fueling RetroPGF Growth through Education, Collaboration, and Active Marketing Bankless, Giveth - 130k OP AGAINST
Look at each part of this and ask yourself whether anything here is competitive.
Let’s do this by milestone.
50k OP for
- 500 twitter followers (gameable, low impact)
- 30 meaningful conversations (doable for much much less resource)
34k OP for
- 5 case studies (this is good RPGF work imo)
- 3 blog posts, 3 videos, and 3 infographics (not competitive rate)
- 10k page views on website (gameable)
- 500 more twitter followers (though unclear if they mean 500 more or 500 total)
27k OP for
- a lesson (need to see what’s representative — if it’s anything like Decentralized Exchanges | Bankless Academy, the research and copy are trivial to do and could be chatGPT’d and finished in a weekend
- a twitter space, a newletter article, and three tweets
- no KPI! they’re just tracking badges. no expectations set
- integration with thank optimism, which is asking for another large sum (note: these may be related parties)
19k OP for
- merch (note, they already have some from the current stuff so is this new design? unsure)
- integration with pairwise (yet another related party)
- 100k impressions of content, but this is basically a given considering the unreliability of website views. I think i might actually be with lee in trying to standardize KPIs in some minimal way
Two gitcoin passport stamps is trivially sibylable imo — it’s just an ens and a google account you need. They’d have to have stronger requirements throughout for this to be meaningful.
- BanklessDAO’s Global Campaign to spread the Optimistic vision 70,395 OP (Alliance: BanklessDAO Media) AGAINST - frankly, I think Bankless DAO should do RPGF here.
- Develop the most relevant and aligned audiovisual content for the Optimism Collective 55k OP (Alliance: Cryptoversidad Team) — AGAINST I like the vibe of these videos but this is way too much of an ask on spec given the reach, and there are two of these that more or less promise the same thing. I think it’s another one for RPGF.
- ‘Thank Optimism - powered by ThriveCoin’ 150k OP FOR (Alliance: Thank Optimism, which includes members from the Optimism Foundation) (Bankless affiliates) - I have strong skepticism over the structure of this, but I’m counting on vee and jrocki to steward this effectively.
- Create and Maintain the ‘Optimism Vision Reservoir (4k OPAlliance: Optimism Vision Reservoir) FOR - I think this might be the only marketing initiative here that is asking an amount commensurate with the value offered. Worth a punt.
Bizdev
- Velodrome: Spread Awareness Through Direct Outreach and Onboarding (Alliances: Velodrome) 100k OP. ABSTAIN I love our team.
Travel
I’m just going to vote against these until i see some sort of coherent framework across all these different groups.
- Optimistic Womxn Shinning in Blockchain (Alliance: H.E.R. LATAM) 15.8k OP (also bankless peopl) AGAINST - As much as I am supportive of this endeavor, the KPIs suggest this grant should be a fraction of the ask.
- Let’s take the Optimistic Vision to LATAM with Espacio Cripto (45.6k OP) (Alliance: Espacio Cripto) (Bankless affiliates) AGAINST
- Spread Optimistic values accross Latam with Solow (15,720 OP) (Alliance: Solow) AGAINST
Front Page
- Web3xplorer - A curated web platform to discover useful web3 apps, resources and tools (18k OP) Alliance: Web3xplorer) AGAINST - think this is a clear one for RPGF, have seen a few examples of attempts coming down the line
Intent 1
Overall, nice variance in missions. No real grouping.
Superchain Governance Deepdive 20k (Alliance: Tally) - FOR. technical appraisals of governance on superchain, which technically doesn’t exist yet. as a general matter we should discuss this among ourselves, for free. seems slightly ahead of where we’re at. but the milestones suggest that they do intend to have a seat at the table and focus on this one particular issue, which seems worthwhile for a fundamental question
Fully Decentralized and Independent Oracle and Data FOR 150k i think this is a great initiative done by a single dev - would be really nice to see them get funding to draw some more people in.
TechNERD Program (Alliance: OP Labs) 21k FOR - yeah, this one is straightforward. some have griped that it’s weird that they’re coming to Governance for funding on this kind of thing, but I think that’s really the point of all this!
Extend the L1Block contract to store historical blockhash data (Alliance: LimeChain) 10k FOR - i’m starting to see some evidence that much of the superchain is going to be built out in a decentralized way, asnd we should offer OP Labs as much help as they can get in this direction. full support.
Future-proofing UI/UX of OP nodes (Alliance: Dappnode) FOR 50k General Magic affiliate - seems good, my fear is that this would be overspending on a simple port from other contexts, in which case we’re simply paying for distribution, which isn’t the worst thing considering their name. This is probably 2x of what we need to spend but I don’t know how to price this work. So I’ll punt to others i trust who’ve supported this.
Spearbit + Immunefi Bug Bounty Program for Large Protocols on Optimism 100k (Alliance: Spearbit + Immunefi) - ABSTAIN Being Velodrome team, I’m not directly on this but benefit from it. However, I should vote for it because I see this as a necessary step toward broad coverage on the app level. I’d really like to see upfront commitments to cover other protocols/programs. They should get more and cover other programs fully based on systemic risk.
I don’t know how to treat this in miltiple choice so idk i’m just voting everything for which i suppose just moves everything close to quorum?
Intent #4
Podcasts:
The RetroPGF Podcast (Alliance: The RetroPGF Podcast) 8k FOR
Delegate Corner Podcast (Alliance: Sinkas) 10k FOR
these are pretty clear RPGF candidates but the outlays are low enough that idk maybe some pump priming is fine, plus wouldn’t mind more ppl coming for experiments of this type
Educational courses:
- Facilitate and empower community members to actively engage in governance through an educational course 3 30k (Cryptoversidad) AGAINST See above.
- Multi-lingual Lesson on Optimism Governance, by Bankless Academy (Alliance: Bankless Academy (BA) and International Media Nodes (IMN)) 34k AGAINST
- If we’re going to have to give Bankless Academy something out of the many proposals it’s pitched, we might as start with a minimal one to see whether it works. The tokens are locked; if they’re going to deliver on all proposals, they should really swing for the fences and shoot for RPGF. But then when I see below, I think I just need to look at sample products to get an undersatnding of what exactly is being purchased here.
Bankless Academy
English lesson: 12,000 OP
Quest development: 3,000 OP
Marketing (through BanklessDAO + Bankless Academy): 4,500 OP
Lesson upkeep: 3,000 OP
Multi-lingual tech development: 2,500 OP
IMN
IMN Coordination: 1,500 OP
Translations and Review: 3,500 OP
Multilingual content marketing: 3920 OP
I mean, think about what’s actually being done for these. 3,500 OP for a translation seems like a lot.
EDIT: After seeing the proposal’s explanation and revisiting sample outputs, I don’t think the level of quality is commensurate with the ask.
Dashboards:
-
OPdelegate.com (Alliance: OPdelegate.com 1) 85k OP FOR
This is where I lean on my personal understanding of the people involved. I’m expecting Michael to deliver much more than this spec for the website. He has as much context as about anybody in governance, and I trust that he has the knowhow and sensibility to deliver something genuinely interesting well beyond what’s described. -
OP Governance Analytics Dashboard (Alliance: Governance Analytics Dashboard) 24.5k AGAINST
On the other hand, this is a proposed build by a group of people with relatively little context. If there’s going to be one of these, I’m going with what Michael has, even with the higher price tag — because he’s now accountable as a delegate.
I
Tooling:
- Velodrome: Fostering Inclusive Governance through Leading Optimism Builders and Long-term Users - ABSTAIN I love our team.
- REGEN Score - Attestations for the Citizen’s House (Alliance: Trusted Seed) 95k AGAINST
why on earth do we want to be rewarding interaction with certain tokens as part of entry into citizens house
many of which are affiliated with the team proposing this
i think if you cut like half of these requirements this could approach being a useful thing but as it stands, is this at risk of being a means of pumping affiliated projects of the team here and capturing
the citizens house?
looked at a certain way, this could be a governance attack, and delegates voting for this should take a hard look at what they’re doing - Improving Governance Accessibility through Praise and Contribution Based Attestations (Alliance: Praise) 112k AGAINST - this is one that iirc failed on a council grant. kudos on the team for their tenacity but I don’t think this is worth the ask. (Giveth)
- Pairwise: Tinder UX For Web3 Community Signaling (Alliance: Pairwise) AGAINST 65k - They’ve tried before to get a grant for this. Some citizens house members may disagree, but I just don’t see how this improves on the current state of things. To me the rate limiting step to improving RPGF isn’t the UI or the manner of presenting individual proposals, nor does an up-or-down vote do much other than some light filtering.
- Economic Co-design of Gas Fees for the OP Stack (Alliance: Common Stack) 125k AGAINST -If I understand this correctly, this deserves an entire rant on why this doesn’t make any sense to fund. In short, current OP spec doesn’t have anything related to gas, this is enormous spend for what amounts to a spreadsheet product geared for a handful of users looking to speculate.
- DAOStar: Governance standards for the Optimism ecosystem (Alliance: DAOStar Strike Team) 78k FOR color me swayed by people who I think know better than I do on this.
- Enable aOP as A Votable Token in Optimism’s Governance 0 (Alliance: Flipside Crypto) AGAINST Comments by nickbtts and zoomer sum up where I stand on this. You don’t shoot from the hip when dealing with core governance, and you don’t do so with arbitrary partners.
Bounty Board
NumberNERD Program (Alliance:OP Labs) 75k OP FOR
- I think everything that is done analysis-wise should go under this set of bounties. Nice plan. Will help to get a fact base for the Collective.