Collective Intents
Season 4 lays the groundwork to align the entire community around Collective Intents. Intents are directional goals that allow the Collective to align and focus. You can think of an Intent as a near term target. There may be multiple paths towards that target; it is up to the Collective to determine which paths to pursue by proposing Missions.
Most Season 4 Intents will be set by the Foundation. Future Intents will incorporate more and more input from the community, until these Intents are set collectively. On a longer time scale, Intents and RetroPGF Scope will increasingly overlap until they are one and the same.
Each Intent will be equipped with an Intent Budget from the Governance Fund. In Season 4, the Foundation has suggested Intent Budgets, as outlined below. The Token House will vote to approve each Intent Budget. Prospective Council Leads will put forward an Intent Budget Proposal for the Intent overseen by the Grants Council (Intent 2). Over time, budgeting will become increasingly community-led.
Intent 1: Progress Towards Technical Decentralization
The Optimism Collective must continue to make progress on its core value proposition to provide decentralized, scalable compute.
The Bedrock release will enable the use of multiple proof schemes and multiple clients. Multi-client fault proofs are a fundamental component for technical decentralization, and Bedrock’s modular framework will have a big impact on the community’s ability to further decentralize the development of the OP Stack.
Over the next several months, OP Labs will be focused on Permissionless Output Proposals, Bridge Decentralization, and the Cannon Fault Proof Program. You can read more about these efforts in this blog post on technical decentralization.
Full technical decentralization requires a rich ecosystem of clients, provers, and beyond. The Collective welcomes contributions in pursuit of this Intent.
This Intent is the Collective’s highest priority. Why, then, is the Mission budget smaller than other Intents? Many of the projects that support our progress towards technical decentralization require high context and specific expertise. This work will be reflected in Foundation Missions (which follow a separate RFP funding process) and ongoing core development work by community teams like OP Labs.
Proposed Budget: 1M OP (for Proposed Missions supported by the Governance Fund)
Foundation Missions (RFPs): More coming soon
Intent 2: Innovate on Novel Applications
Optimism believes that crypto has not reached its fullest potential. Low-cost blockchains can change the way humans everywhere interact with the internet, enabling novel coordination games, consumer applications, business models, community structures, and more.
Optimism is already pushing forward the cutting edge of crypto scalability. The Collective must also push forward the frontier of crypto utility to help realize the vision and promise of Ethereum. If you are building something crypto has never seen, something to bring a step-function increase to the status quo, something that takes advantage of the new dynamics afforded by trustless blockchains — this Intent is for you.
Missions are not proposed under Intent #2. Instead, all proposals working towards this Intent will be processed by the Grants Council as grant applications. Grant applications for novel applications of identity, game theory, social, community, gaming, and bridge dynamics are well-aligned with this intent.
The Grants Council will manage this Intent. Grant applications aligned with this Intent will be evaluated by the Grants Council on 5-week cycles.
Proposed Budget: 6M, as proposed here: [FINAL] Season 4: Council Intent Budget Proposal.
Foundation Missions (RFPs): More coming soon
Intent 3: Spread Awareness of the Optimistic Vision
Optimism is not a blockchain. Optimism is a Collective of builders, companies, chains, and community members working towards the Optimistic Vision.
Users and builders who believe in the Optimistic Vision should be more likely to contribute meaningfully to the ecosystem and remain engaged for the long term, as opposed to solely seeking the highest yield or access to grant funding. However, many value aligned potential Optimists are unaware of the the Optimistic Vision and the important role that public goods and RetroPGF play in our ecosystem.
In order to attract more value aligned users and builders to the ecosystem, we must spread awareness of our Vision. Missions under this intent should work to make the Optimism Collective widely known as an ecosystem that fosters public goods and regenerative finance – an ecosystem ultimately working towards the creation of a new economic model.
Increased awareness should onboard new people, DAOs, builders, and partners who are passionate about our vision and values to the ecosystem, some of which may be outside Web3.
Missions could include targeted educational resources, focused hackathons or conferences, and/or specific marketing efforts aimed at growing a community of value aligned Optimists.
Proposed Budget: 1M OP (for Proposed Missions supported by the Governance Fund)
Note about Intent #3: The Foundation intentionally left this Intent unspecified to give delegates the opportunity to suggest an economically driven Intent. The Foundation has taken suggestions from the community and finalized the above Intent 3 after receiving feedback. Thank you to all delegates for providing extremely high quality suggestions.
Intent 4: Governance Accessibility
Optimism Governance is the ultimate steward of protocol upgrades, the token treasury, and Collective revenue. Optimism’s two-house system is designed to create healthy checks and balances and expand ownership to a diverse set of governance participants.
The Collective must prioritize accessibility in order to create governance structures that welcome a broad range of Optimists to participate. “Accessibility” refers to any work that helps make Optimism governance understandable, open, usable, flexible, and legible to all.
Governance accessibility includes enbaling a diversity of perspectives to participate in governance, facilitating better knowledge sharing to develop more informed voters, and lowering barriers to participation for more culturally diverse involvement in the governance process. Increasing the votable supply and reducing the concentration of voting power should be important bi-products of improved accessibility.
Missions to educate the broader community about Optimism governance and RetroPGF, increase the resiliency of core governance infrastructure, create user friendly interfaces to interact with governance programs, or promote a welcoming governance community are all well-aligned with this Intent.
Proposed Budget: 3M OP (for Proposed Missions supported by the Governance Fund)
Foundation Missions (RFPs): More coming soon
What Does This Mean for Delegates?
The Token House will vote to approve Intent Budget Proposals in Special Voting Cycle #12a. Each Intent Budget Proposal will be voted individually via a simple approve/reject vote. As always, we look forward to your feedback on this initial proposal draft and welcome active discussion about the appropriate budgets for each Intent. All Intent Budget Proposals will require 30% quorum and a 51% approval threshold.