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.
We started this call with a “Praise session”, an idea brought by Bricia, since everyone is working hard and doing such a great job, is a gratifying thing to recognize and appreciate, including ourselves, the people we work with sometimes! So go ahead and check “Feel the love” channel on Discord.
Voting cycle 14 ended and the proposal for repurposing the remaining budget passed.
Badgeholder distribution due to September 15th, so if you are a badgeholder keep that in mind.
We had two mission proposals milestones updates from:
All feedback and comments are welcomed and appreciated!
Grants cycle 14 updates from Dane: Check Cycle 14 Round up on the forum to get more details.
To see more information about the Roundups, how people scored, what feedback was given, etc, take a look to CharmVerse (Linked downbelow)
For those interested in making a proposal for Cycle 15, apply on CharmVerse before August 24 (19:00 GMT) to receive an additional credit for their proposal. Proposals are due by August 31 (19:00 GMT)
Also feel free to check the OP Governance Calendar to keep track of any information about dates of your interest.
One big announcement last week was Base’s introduction in Optimism Governance, in order to collect feedback from the community Base and the Optimism team made a post on the forums on How Base will participate in Optimism Governance, raising some main point such as transparency, participation, etc, as always any feedback is more than welcomed. We recommend this article from Base about their involvement in Superchain Base’s Commitment to Decentralization with the Superchain.
We finished the call with an open discussion, not only mentioning the topics above but also a great insight over The Superchain and Law of chains (Read the post for more information, comment and leave feedback). Also a shout-out to Bankless and their video over the Superchain: Crypto’s Endgame: The Superchain Explained with Jesse Pollock & Ben Jones, always great to see such active participation in the community!
Member list is still in process, long process for verifying them
This vote is a vote to approve the idea of a security council and create a 2/2 multisig with the foundation and the council to sign off on future upgrades
In charge of assessing historical grant finalist progress on milestones, confirming final milestones for Season 5 grants, and maintaining relevant council and reviewer metrics
More Builders Positions
Feel free to reach out to Dane, Kryzstof, myself, or any previous council members if you have questions!
RetroPGF Questions
How does KYC work for group participants? Is there a way to avoid everyone on the multisig completing KYC?
Can individuals apply?
Yes! Just make sure to follow rules for applying
What if it is indirectly related?
If it impacts the Optimism Collective, its eligible!
Zora, Base, etc. are also included in the Optimism Collective
The Nomination period for Code of Conduct & Grants Councils ends November 1st at 19:00 GMT: if you’re interested in either the Grants Council or the Code of Conduct Council, make sure to put in your application.
For the Grants Council, there are three different categories that you can be nominated in:
Security Council: Vote #1 - Change to Security Model
Developer Advisory Board Budget
Developer Advisory Board Ratification of Members
Grants Council Operating Budget Proposal
Code of Conduct Council Budget
Anticapture Commission: a group of independent delegates that receive voting power, This won’t be up and running until January, till season five. For more info and feedback: Anticapture Commision
The Chain Delegation Program passed. As said before this program would allow OP Chains to actively participate in Optimism’s governance in Seasons 5 and 6. It will be added to the Superchain through a governance process. Season five will start with no delegation from this program, then over the course of the next year chains can qualify and then participate in this program. Check the link to the forum for more information.
There are two cohorts of members. Cohort A will serve for 12 months and cohort B will serve for 18 months. All of these members were nominated by the foundation and they will have to go through rehearsals and approval process in order to actually become a part of the multi-sig. Here is the list of members: Security Council Vote #2 – Initial Member Ratification. For more details see the Security Council Charter.
Canyon Upgrade: this is a network update for OP Mainnet, a minor upgrade compared to bedrock. If the vote passes, it will be upgraded five weeks later, on January 11th, 2024. This upgrade has already been activated on internal devnets in coordination with Base & Conduit. Successfully activated on op-goerli, op-sepolia, base-goerli, base-sepolia, pgn-sepolia, & zora-sepolia. For more details and information: Upgrade Proposal #2: Canyon Network Upgrade
Mission Request:
Mission Requests drafts must be posted to the forum by January 17th, then they’ll need 4 delegates approvals by February 7th.
All top 100 delegates can create these mission requests. If you are not a top 100 delegate, post your idea for a Mission Request here: Seeking Mission Request Sponsorship.
The Foundation will also host a Mission Request Workshop in early December.
There will be a mission request discord channel for any questions and also for collaboration.
The We Love the Art campaign is happening! All art is welcomed, not necessarily related to Optimism.
The foundation is looking for feedback on the govNERDs program. So definitely go in and try and help improve the program. Here is the form: govNERDs Experiment Feedback
RetroPGF It’s in full swing right now. The badgeholders are in the process of making lists and creating their applications, which you can check out through Agora RetroPGF 3
Check the thread Badgeholder Conflict of Interest Disclosures, this thread is self-reported by the badgeholders where everyone is listing out some of the projects that they have a conflict of interest on this cycle.
We love to see all of the amazing developments with the we love the art contest on Optimism. This is definitely a conversation starter for many community projects in the space and we have been discussing this topic multiple times over the past few weeks with creators who are interested in the ecosystem.
. Lesson learned and will be more careful in the future.
to see all of the amazing developments with the we love the art 
contest on Optimism. This is definitely a conversation starter for many community projects in the space and we have been discussing this topic multiple times over the past few weeks with creators who are interested in the ecosystem.