Hi all!
First, I am an early user of optimism and a receiver of the airdrop.
Talking about token price is discouraged on the discord. Why? Who knows (regulatory reasons?). Anyhow, the price is quite important isn’t it?
The token price directs the impact of the retroactive public goods funding (RPGF).
Currently, the token is used as incentives for projects to launch on Optimism.
This attracts projects as it comes out as a cheap way for them to incentivise users and growing their products.
Now, a higher token price leads to greater margins and more growth, more projects will want to launch on Optimism and more users will be attracted.
For Optimism, this means more sequencer revenue, more devs and more everything. Which with time will lead to more RPGF, leading to the “flywheel” we all know and love and wish for. Higher price = more impact = more profit.
A falling token price means less efficient incentives, easier to attack governance, disincentivizes holding the token. This leads to a flywheel in the opposite direction. As commonly seen with other governance tokens. Endless cycles of dumping and low participation in governance and so on.
For the vision of the token to make sense, I see two things that can complete the positive flywheel and make RPGF receivers to want themselves to be $OP holders:
Distribute sequencer revenue to $OP holders/stakers
This is obvious, and one can speculate why this is not concretely stated in any roadmap. I guess there are some plans of “incentivising verification” and “decentralise sequencer”, maybe this includes the value accrual of the token. Would love to read more about the plans of these incentives and decentralisation.
Bribe $OP holders to vote on projects for RPGF
In the form of retroactive airdrops/incentives to $OP holders who helped projects get RPGF (by voting, either be delegates or themselves). This would need to come from the projects themselves. In effect, some promise of future rewards. Holding $OP = bountiful airdrops from retroactively happy projects.
Or am I thinking about this the wrong way somehow? I can see that PGF benefits the ecosystem and everyone in it. But how does it accrue to token holders as stated in the vision? Or does this value not come in the form of an increased token price? Does the token price not matter?