I am creating this thread as a central location to contain all of our community call recordings and recaps. The goal is for people to be able to review past community calls more easily. And see the things we’ve discussed over time.
From this point on, check here to find all recap/recordings!
We had an amazing community call today with A LOT of points discussed. I’ve broken down those points into a recap below. A recording of the meeting can be found [here ](https://drive.google.com/file/d/198n9c1m6uEemAuH9vp-hE2gQu-CBVOND/view?usp=sharing).
On the Gnosis Safe bug of the last voting cycle, moving forward:
OP Foundation is setting the precedent to remedy voting issues moving forward IF there is a bug that is objective and verifiable. [Ben]
E.g: an an on-chain recorded vote that doesn’t propagate to snapshot
Would not include a discord message saying “I can’t vote”
On the topic of heated/contentious debate:
We ALL want OP Governance to be a place with the best vibes/culture
Todo: Can we think of a short pithy motto to guide the culture within governance?
Link to forum post for this here:
On the split in proposals between DeFi committees A and C:
DeFi committees will first split all proposals in half alphabetically, then “flip a coin” (future block hash?) to decide which proposals go to which committee.
Committee Recomendations are due at the latest 3 days after voting period starts, September 24th for this cycle
On structure of voting cycles:
Delegates should feel free to give feedback on committees in the “community feedback” first week. This was split this way to give delegates a break.
There is no hard cutoff for submitting proposals for feedback, but ideal is submissions before the full week of delegate feedback.
On finding the community call meeting:
Call was hard to find, some people ended up in the wrong zoom link
Call can be added to a discord event & google calendar
On direction of future grants:
Shoutout to @jackanorak on the Season 1 retrospective/stats breakdown (here )
We’d like to see the “dev costs” bar go up [Ben]
Some confusion on whether or not developer grants should be included
Yes, developer grants should be acceptable for token house funding
Goals were outlined in committee next steps post (here ):
Target L1 applications with product market fit
Grow population of value aligned builders
There is a difference between operating costs (not good for grants) and funding new infrastructure (good for grants) [Jing]
We want to see more building and experimentation taking place on Optimism!
Question for delegates: Are you happy with current grants and funding direction, or are there areas for innovation that we could be doing more with?
AMAZING closing remarks from Jing:
“Why did you get into crypto? We are all building together this new ecosystem that we ourselves should enjoy being a part of. What kind of application? What kind of builders? What is the culture of that ecosystem? Whatever that is, that’s what we should be putting incentives towards creating.”
@Gonna.eth suggested flipping the delegate approval and feedback phases so that delegate approval would be the last step
Proposers should know which committee will be reviewing their proposal at the feedback phase to prevent them from implementing unrelated feedback and then still getting rejected
Committee proposal assignments happen only a few days before the proposals goes to snapshot which made it difficult to run a feedback process. It would be useful to have more clarity earlier on assignments. - @linda
This should happen on this first Thursday of delegate review week, 10 days before assignments are due and 7 days before snapshot. It may not have happened this round but should for the next one. -@lavande
Proposals submitters should have a clear understanding that this is a rolling process, and all is not lost if they don’t get their proposal through in a specific voting round.
The stakes are actually quite high and it takes a lot for a vote to go against a committees recommendation. - @jackanorak
Important for committees to raise concerns in the feedback stage of the process. - @alexcutlerdoteth
While we may not need hard guidelines to start, committees should be generally encouraged to actively participate in the feedback phase of proposals they will eventually review
Should committee recommendations be due at the start of snapshot, or three days after like it is now?
On the topic of guidance on funding development through a proposal:
Stay tuned, this is being worked on by the foundation! - @ben-chain
Still looking for a host for next community call! Feel free to put your name on the sheet here .
We will be distributing committee funds using a hybrid approach, 1/2 distributed equally and 1/2 in proportion to the # of proposals reviewed.
In response to Messari asking about the appropriate place for the proposal, look at the new posts & we may have some kind of “service provider” proposal type in the future.
Lots of discussion happening already in this thread but we discussed improvements on committees, participation, and effectiveness of grants
Idea: have a delegate sponsor a proposal
Proposers getting feedback from multiple committees was confusing
Idea: Maybe have a single bigger committee
Idea: Don’t limit the # of committees, accept all who pass.
Committees did seem help out delegates as far as effort to vote goes.
Idea: send survey to proposers to see how the process was for them.
Idea: have scaling vote threshold for amount of OP requested. For example, 4mil OP grants should have more buyin than 100k grants
General consensus that we would love having the committee recommendations directly in the snapshot description for voting.
The slides for the call can be found here .
The recording can be found here .
Summary of discussion:
More information coming on Grants Council Lead application and on Grants Council Membership Nomination soon.
This information will be available before the end of voting cycle #9a so that people will be able to work on them before the voting ends for the grants council proposal.
RE: Code of Conduct. Offboarding will start out as a one-season suspension.
It might be time to make a post on our current point on the path towards decentralization (@bobby).
The proposed grants committee will technically not be distributing funds themselves, but instead make recommendations to the foundation who will distribute the funds.
Suggestion that one of the Optimism “nerds” should be on the grants council. Response that we’d love to see them nominated.
Idea floated to distributed some voting power to top NFT projects in addition to protocols.
RE: Role of delegates if grants council is passed. Non-council delegates will provide oversite and accountability to council and grant recipients. In future seasons, there will be important non-council related roles as well. More info coming soon. As far as this season goes, there will be other proposal types to be voted on such as protocol upgrades.
No requirements to be nominated to the grants council, other than one spot reserved on each sub-committee for a previous committee member.
Details coming on elected committee member roles. Grants committee lead is through an application process with the foundation (not an elected role).
If grants council proposal is rejected, voting cycle 9b will likely be for alternative proposals.
Protocol Delegation program would last for 2 seasons total.
Discussion on accountability of foundation given that votes are non-binding. What happens if a vote to remove a director goes through? Foundation will honor votes to remove a director. In cases of a governance attack, this should be obvious and the foundation has the authority to protect against this. In general, we’d like to see more documentation around the decision making process of the Optimism Foundation Board.
Thank you everyone for coming to the call! We had a good turnout this week and some new participants as well as some good discussion. The good news is that it was a great call, the bad news is that I forgot to hit the record button. Sorry about that . Lesson learned and will be more careful in the future.
Here is the recap but if I missed anything be sure to comment below and I will add it!
On to the recap:
People are excited about the Season 4 structure!
Intent 3 discussion
Some talk about making the intent so it can encompass OP tokenomics
Discussion on making it broad enough to include the possibility of some kind of legal defense fund (i.e. sushiswap)
Make sure to submit suggestions by Wednesday, April 26th! The intent will created by the OP Foundation as a synthesis of suggestions from the community.
Missions & Alliances
OP Foundation team will be putting out 5-8 Foundation Proposed Missions (RFPs ) but are in the process of getting these ready internally.
Feedback on missions by delegates should include whether the intent is the correct one, and social verification that the leader of the alliance meets the trust tier required.
Be sure to vote in the upcoming proposal cycle
There was general Q&A about trust tiers, alliances, etc. Most of the things discussed can probably be learned by reading through this document:
There was a suggestion for a central place to hold community + foundation call recording
Also a suggestion to have a glossary of OP governance terms.
The two above things could potentially be part of a mission for intent 4!
Thanks for coming everyone! We had a really really good call. Thanks again to @zcf from Agora for coming to gather community feedback through the workshops.
Recap of the call is coming soon, but here are the recordings:
The majority of the call was taken up by an awesome workshop session brainstorming ideas to improve delegate discovery, especially for smaller delegates
Charlie from Agora (@zcf) was there to gather the community feedback. Over the next few weeks they may try and mock up some of the suggestions made, so if you want to give feedback once that is done, be sure to add your name to the list (will post here soon)
Season 4 will be from June 8th to September 20th. June 8th is the date for submitting proposals for feedback, June 21st is the hard deadline, then by the 28th those missions will need four delegates’ approvals in order to be eligible for voting. So get going people!
Check the slides for the Alliance forming workshop, great explanation of what it is, intents, missions, etc.
RFPs: Requests for Proposals:
One important thing for the missions and the season is the request for proposals, here’s the link: RFPs . They go through different categories, check the dates for the projects on the site.
Optimism Co-Granting:
Created to provide some up-front funding to recipients.
Anybody can contribute to these funds in USDC and get a Co-Granter attestation + Optimism NFT.
Curve wasn’t able to complete the KYC process, resulting in the grant still not being distributed. Is still in process to figure out the issue.
Data-driven Content Performance:
Is an open discussion for RetroPGF round 3 on how we can measure impact. Specifically to quality content, mentioning objective metrics to quantify impact and make it easier for badgeholders to vote. To take a deeper look here’s the link to the post Data-driven content performance
Missions discussions:
Great conversation over some interesting points on the voting process and details on how grants and funding is distributed.
Creating a Discord session for pitching mission proposals is in discussion for next week before the voting starts, the dates are not decided yet but they’ll be announced soon!
@kaereste, we should pick a time/date to host this!
Also went over a couple of proposals for feedback and more understanding over the missions proposals submission, in addition to more clarification over topics like the difference between critical milestones and progress towards completion. For more accurate information check this post Collective Grant Policies
During this call we actually had a really great discussion on feedback for Season 4 from a variety of perspectives (voter, delegate, mission proposer).
Being a well deserved vacation week, we had the opportunity to have lively involvement from participants in this call, which led into deep discussion over a variety of topics. This might (i know it is) seem longer than the usual recaps done before, but i assure it’s worth giving it look (and faster than hearing 50 minutes of talking).
Updates:
RetroPGF3 was announced, 30M OP will be distributed, one of the differences is that there are now four different categories. Project registration will take place in the following months and the voting will take place in Fall 2023. For more details check: RetroPGF Round 3
Voting is live for missions: there’s active voting for Intents #1, #3, #4, and remember intent #2 is Grants Council, the rest is voted by Token House. To see more in detail: Optimism Agora
Grants Council: we are currently in cycle 13, remember this is for Intent #2 and it’ll have three different cycles. Cycle 13 will end on the 12th, over 106 proposals and 49 are in final review. If you have submitted a proposal don’t forget to look out for feedback! Cycle 14 will start on July 14th and the submission deadline will be on July 27th. For more information: Cycle 13 Preliminary Review
Season 4 feedback, discussions and concerns:
Lack of feedback and guidance during proposals submissions: newer community members found confusing and difficult getting feedback from delegates for their proposals, resulting in many projects being looked over. There were a few solutions mentioned for this issue, such as having a “guide delegate” that’ll help with the process. There were also Pitching sessions made on discord before the hard deadline for proposals ( Optimism Mission Proposal Pitches - Season 4) which had a good impact and was a simpler way for the collective to see and show the proposals, thanks to these sessions another solution for this issue was including pitching sessions or video presentation as a regular for proposals. In addition to the idea of including “mentors proposals” for a more easier process for both delegates and community members.
Voting apathy: due to the numbers of delegates vs the amount project proposals and a poor structure for reviewing all the projects, there has been a “voting apathy” which we can see due to the projects that are going through the voting process being significantly under the approval threshold, concerning, considering we are already into a week of voting and there’s just another week left. Some of comments over this issue were ideas to improve the general structure and a public and simplified UX for delegates, some mentioned hiring more delegates and including a “Delegate manager” for the division of the reviewing, mostly between volunteers delegates. Another great idea was to give more incentives to delegates by boosting their reputation, also making the process more simple as mentioned before with pitching sessions, making the workload less heavy on them.
Another concern was the duplication of alliances, proposals and organizations, having the same group of people doing missions and applying for grants at the same time but we are not aware of any rule that forbids Missions and Grants overlaps, one of comments was that “many people don’t know proposals can be on both sides”. Another possible reason for the duplication of proposals was the lack of guidance for newer members that found the process quite confusing, bringing back the idea of a “mentor” for members and alliances to go to and clear those doubts and avoid any kind of issues during the proposal process.
There were many interesting comments during this call, having fewer members led to a deeper discussion with more understanding, new interesting ideas and refreshing feedback about Season 4.
I hope everyone that was on holiday had a great time!
The most recent mission building cycle is finished and Grants Council cycle 13 has concluded (more information here: Cycle 13: Final Grants Roundup) and Grants Council cycle 14 has started.
Mission voting cycle is finished.
EthCC is happening now, so if you are in Paris definitely check the forums to see if there’s any events for a real-life meetup and go meet some optimism folks!
New information about Season 5, about what they are working on and envisioning, during a talk that will take place in EthCC and will be recorded.
Season 4 Feedback Thread:
There was a lot of reflection on the mission process that just happened. Things went as expected and according to plan but there is definitely room for improvement and optimization. Check Governance Update #7 for clarifications about issues that surfaced during the last cycle around grant policies, disclosures and multiple submissions, all in one place, and please, leave suggestions.
Financial Disclosure Discussion:
There was a summary of a quite lengthy discussion around this thread “We need to talk about undisclosed financial interests ”. Worth discussing, especially in terms of code of conduct and whether there was a violation or not, what needs to be clarified, because the lines can be a bit blurry, especially if you follow the discussion in the post. We’d like not to focus too much on the specific parties in this situation, because we’re all learning together and anything that comes up, we just want to fix, improve and go forward.
Grants Council Updates:
The head of Grants Council shared information and comparisons between cycle 13 and cycle 11 (Cycle 11 was the last Grants cycle and there was special voting on cycle 12).
There were 26 finalists, 10 on the experiment side and 16 on builders. So that the punchline is that there was an overwhelming amount of quality in this cycle, which was great. A lot of encouragement to take a look over novelty projects and people trying to build things in diverse areas of the ecosystem.
Conversation over more budget-optimized decisions and allocation in order to support more grants worthy projects.
Detailed clarification on what RPG is, how it works, the process, who to get in contact with and many other things.
Indication about Charmverse being the best resource for the proposers to see the specific deadlines, the opening and close of the season or cycles on the calendar. The submissions period is open until next Thursday at 19:00 GMT. If you know great builders, people or projects that are putting together great experiments, specifically novel use cases and tangible use cases, we’d love to see them.
Also if anyone has any questions we’re all completely available so just drop your question in the grants channel.
The VAST MAJORITY of the call was spent discussing the newly published Law of Chains .
@ben-chain was with us to discuss and to answer questions
Law of Chains doesn’t include operationalization, but instead outlines the stakeholders of the superchain and enumerates their rights
For example, covers preventing censorship of users
If ratified, it’s an addition to the working constitution of the collective
We are moving from governing a single chain (OP mainnet) to governing a standard (the OP stack) on which all of these chains in the “Superchain” will follow
This is a long term document meant to survive for many years
The document defines the relationship between governance as a whole and stakeholders
Are existing partners (Base/Zora) bought in?
yes and they are excited about it!
Does this include chains that are forking current OP stack codebase?
OP stack will still be open source and available to fork but this is specifically a higher open standard for chains to be a part of the Superchain
This includes upgrades voted on by the OP Collective
What upgrades/params will be chosen by governance vs by the chains themselves?
Specifics will continue to be fleshed out, but some settings (chain profit margin, the specific sequencing seem) will be available to be parameterized by chain governance.
How will new chains be represented in governance?
This is an ongoing discussion, however this happens will be transparent and approved by governance
The security model should be homogenous across all chains in the Superchain. Users should be able to move from chain to chain without worrying about changing security surfaces.
Will we have a chain house?
For now, probably not, it adds much more complexity. However token house (economic) is a probably a good fit.
Native bridges will be the same for all the chains
What are the social contracts for delegates that need to be updated in order to manage new chains?
Very important that governance has the least complexity possible, and we should do everything we can to shift governance into programatic/algorithmic protections.
Community Call #26 [Future of Governance]: August 15, 2023
While the last two weeks were a bit quiet, we had a brief, but interesting as always, community call with the chance to dig into some topics left out during the previous call.
On Thursday August 17th: there will be an open conversation around the planning, implementation, and follow-up of a series of live education with GravityDAO, you can join the event on Discord and see more in detail what it is about in this post: Education and Training on Conflict Management, with Gravity DAO. There are going to be multiple live sessions, so if you are interested, keep an eye on the Discord server.
For those interested in becoming a badgeholder for the next round of RetroPGF, check this thread just to signal your interest: Signaling intention to become a Badgeholder . So if you fall into that category, definitely go and put your name down there.
Voting Cycle 14: The Grants Council proposes repurposing the 2.5M OP that was already approved but not used. Should this proposal pass, Token House would re-allocate 2.5M OP towards Intent 2 as follows:
1M OP increase in budget for Experiments.
1M OP increase in budget for Builders.
Remaining available for both Sub-Committees as buffer (500k OP)
The Future of Optimism Governance: we had a brief summary over our current governance system and how it might evolve, provide more visibility for one or two seasons so we can all be aligned on where we’re going and what the priorities are. To read more in detail and give feedback check: The Future of Optimism Governance , which is a mirror post of the original blog entry in the Optimism Collective blog.
Finalizing the call with an open discussion over a variety of topics such as the opening for proposals for Cycle 15, events that will be available on discord (keep an eye on those!) and as always, clarification for different questions.
. Lesson learned and will be more careful in the future.