[Mission Request] Marquee governance hackathon

Mission Grants 🏹
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Delegate Mission Request Summary

This mission is designed to attract developers at a key juncture in their path as builders—the idea stage—by bringing on a trusted partner to host a hackathon. This event would be a marquee recruitment event for new projects and emerging developers, acting as a major marketplace for ideas and talent across the Superchain.

S6 Intent

Intent 3: Grow application devs on the Superchain

Proposing Delegate

jackanorak

Grant Amount

50k OP total is requested for this program, which will be filled by one applicant

Should this Mission be fulfilled by one or multiple applicants: Select from: “One,” “Up to X” or “Multiple”

One

How will this Mission Request help accomplish the above Intent?

The thesis here is that hackathons provide a crucial, fun marketplace to showcase Optimism’s strengths as a network and to attract developers looking for ideas, teams, or funding. An enduring focal point for developers, projects seeking products or talent, and funders could easily provide a currently lacking funnel for grassroots developer interest.

Although there have been several hackathons related to Optimism—both sponsored and not sponsored—there has as yet not been a major, central hackathon explicitly geared toward the Superchain. There is a forthcoming one in August, co-led by EthGlobal, but there are opportunities to have more, co-led by other players in the space.

Base recently announced a high-profile hackathon spotlighting some impressive sponsors, such as Stripe and Shopify, which has attracted considerable support from builders. We can do the same.

What is required to execute this Mission Request?

All of the following:

  • An applicant that is highly reputable and that has prior experience with hackathons
  • This hackathon may be in-person or virtual; however, priority is given to in-person programs, especially those that offer some means of administering in-person or travel arrangements.
  • A credible commitment to growing maximum awareness of the hackathon
  • Openness to all participating superchains

Proposals should outline the basic logistics of this hackathon: how developers are selected, roughly how long the hackathon will take, judging structure, how sponsorships are handled, etc. Proposers with previous experience with hackathons should share details on their experience and results.

How should governance participants measure impact upon completion of this Mission?

Milestones

  • Development of more detailed logistics plan
  • Communication of announcement and updates on pending hackathon
  • Signed up applicants
  • Signed up sponsors

Metrics:

  • Number of applicants

  • Number of participating projects

  • Amount of prize funds raised

  • Number of sponsors

  • Committed funding and funders

Impact

  • Number of projects live six months from hackathon
  • Number of active developers new to Superchain
  • Open-source tooling resulting from hackathon

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Has anyone other than the proposer contributed to this Mission Request?

No

Which metric will the success of this Mission Request be evaluated against?

The North star metric against which this Mission Request should be evaluated is the total amount of gas fees generated from the grantee’s contracts, because this Mission Request sets out to increase the aggregate demand for blockspace on the Superchain through a larger program. The total gas fees generated from this program act as a healthy indicator of its combined downstream performance. This metric was suggested by the Foundation and approved by the Grants Council.

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Hi @jackanorak ! I love this proposal; however, I think you’re using the template from last season. You can find the new template for Season 6 here: Season 6: Mission Request Creation Guide

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Thanks for this - changed

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Hey @jackanorak
I think this is a great proposal and I would love to see the Superchain gain more mindshare among early-stage builders :clap:

I would recommend that we make it a requirement that the hackathon asks participants to create a project at retrofunding.optimism.io as part of their participation - this will enable us to track the success of the projects that participated after the end of the hackathon, and will allow them to later apply for Retro Funding rewards.

Creating a project at retrofunding.optimism.io allows teams to link verified contract addresses, GitHub repos and other contributors. This can be used both to reward their impact in Retro Funding rounds with very little additional work from their side, but it can also enable us to measure the success/impact of this Mission Request. If the hackathon leads to the creation of many impactful projects, the Collective may choose to create similar Mission Requests in later seasons.

You can read more about the design of the project entity in the gov docs.

Disclaimer: I work for the Optimism Foundation but comments and views are my own.

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Big fan of this mission request! We’ve studied how Arbitrum has hosted their GovHacks and see a lot of value in such Hackathons to attract talent, improve governance, and create a shared culture.

After a successful Superchain Space - we’re eager to host more conference and hackathons for the Superchain. We’re already cooking something up for Bangkok and could imagine adding a Governance Hackathon into the program!

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A North Star Metric has been added at the bottom of this Mission Request in an effort to enable the Collective to make data-driven decisions. By using a single metric for each Mission Request, the Collective is better able to evaluate the performance of all the Season 6 missions in a standardized manner, which will be critical when the Collective makes decisions about Intents, budgets, or other critical components of governance.

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