Delegate Mission Request Summary:
Research the impact of adding commitment games to the Optimism Sequencer to assess outcomes such as better composability, defragmented liquidity, and faster transaction confirmation to end users in the Superchain network.
S6 Intent: Intent 3 Grow application devs on the Superchain
Proposing Delegate/Citizen: Gonna
Total grant amount:
10K OP
Should this Mission be fulfilled by one or multiple applicants: One
How will this Mission Request help accomplish the above Intent?
Commitment games, such as synchronous commitments, allow dapps to create seamless experiences— including instant bridges and cross-chain swaps— across the chains on which they are deployed. This promises to increase the design space for existing dapps and allow dapp developers to create experiences mimicking web2.0. Additionally, these capabilities, liquidity, and other features available across the Superchain may attract developers from other ecosystems.
The Optimism sequencer could provide and issue these commitments against transaction execution bids for its ecosystem for use cases such as:
- Synchronous commitments with L1 block builders to reduce friction between Optimism and the L1.
- Synchronous commitments with other sequencers on The Superchain, enabling instant bridging and swap use cases.
- Transactions with execution guarantees for specific blocks.
Facilitating a credible commitment network for the Optimism ecosystem could help with rollup composability, defragmenting liquidity, even posing revenue opportunities for the Sequencer, as well as:
- Coordination efficiency
- Real-time interactions for efficient transaction processing
- Improved block space utilization
Commitment games, by nature, improve cross-chain liquidity and trading efficiency. They also introduce new revenue opportunities to the Superchain. Additionally, per the goals of Intent 2, attracting new chains to the Superchain will require appealing capabilities such as those facilitated by the addition of commitment games. If this can be done at the Sequencer-level, Optimism may have an advantage in efficiently extending these capabilities to all Chains in the network.
Dedicated research into the impact of commitment games in the Optimism ecosystem and Superchain will help determine 1) whether to pursue deployment of such features and 2) the best method of deployment.
What is required to execute this Mission Request?
Executing this Mission Request would culminate in the output of a detailed research paper demonstrating the impact of commitment games, modelling economic impact, and recommendations for the best methods of deployment.
The researcher should demonstrate the ability to effectively and thoroughly assess the role of commitment games to the Optimism Superchain and model such features as:
- An out-of-protocol layer to facilitate the exchange of execution bids and commitments between transactors and execution service providers
- Chain abstraction
- Network for exchanging execution bids and cryptographic commitments in real-time
- End to end privacy of bids and commitments to not leak block and transaction value that can lead to mev-related negative externalities
- Sending credible commitments for execution and bits of information from providers back to bidders
- Support for the various mev-actors across the Ethereum network including validators, relays, block builders, and other L2s
- Easy adoption at the Sequencer
- Enabling the Sequencer to determine its own rules to accept bids.
The researcher should also have the ability to model impact of commitment games to the Optimism superchain including:
- ETH and USD volume of commitments transacted on The Superchain
- Number of TVL originating transactions linked to commitment games
- Amount of ETH settled in commitment game bids
- Time it takes to complete liquidity and bridging related actions between L1 and Optimism and Optimism and The Superchain reduced in %
How should governance participants measure impact upon completion of this Mission?
- Milestones: Completion of a research paper.
- Metrics: Projections on:
- TVL & Volume impact of commitment games
- Number of bids & commitments that can flow for the Superchain
- Bid value Superchain sequencers can generate in ETH & USD
- Number of dapps that can be powered by commitment games
- Impact: Compelling report to suggest to Superchain sequencers to adopt commitment games in order to increase dapp devs in the Superchain ecosystem.
Has anyone other than the proposer contributed to this Mission Request?
Portia Roberts, Murat Akdeniz, and Drew Harding contributed to this Mission Request.
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 TVL, because the initiatives outlined above aim to attract an influx of additional assets. This metric was suggested by the foundation and approved by the Grants Council.