1. Presentation
We are an officially recognized Tooling Governance Committee, responsible for assessing proposals related to tooling and infrastructure (wallets, bridges etc.).
2. About the project
Messari is a research and data analysis company with a mission to organize and contextualize information in the crypto space.
Messari has become a reputable name in the ecosystem as an aggregator of information, data and research. With a high volume of daily visits, their website offers a data platform for graphs and advanced metrics for cryptoassets, offering a free tier and paid subscriptions.
Similar OP Governance proposals:
- DeFillama reports - 182.5K OP tokens (as a counter-offer to Messari’s proposal, see original post here).
3. About the following
The proposal was published on October 20, with a good level of interaction and questions from some committee members.
4. About the proposal valuation
- Added value (good to bad): seems to be good. A pending issue for the ecosystem is governance and ecosystem reports. These data help the members of the governance to be updated.
- Impact or expected usage (high to low): medium. These reports would have a positive impact on the Optimism ecosystem, not only because they keep governance members up to date, but also because they can attract new players to the governance. The Optimism Collective would have a wider reach.
- Current Status [Development stage/Open Source?] (early to ready): ready. Messari has already produced 2 reports for Optimism governance: State of Optimism Governance and **Governance Fund Observations. also developed 4 subgraphs of the important Optimism protocols Aave v3 , Curve , Uniswap v3 2, QiDAO.
- Expenditure plan and distribution (appropriate to inappropriate): standard. The OP tokens will be used to fund internal resources. Which include: Research, data science and marketing. The proposal has a brief description of how the funds will be used.
- Amount requested (high to low): high. the amount requested is 365k token OP considering other similar proposals made by reputable DeFi analysts at the moment.
5. FINAL RECOMMENDATION: Abstain
We believe Messari is a great product and has a great reputation in the ecosystem. There is no doubt that their reports add a lot to the ecosystem.
However, we have some dilemmas with their proposals, since, as Messari themselves clarify that optimism would be hiring a “service”.
On the other hand, in case it is contracted as a service, we believe it should go through another governance process.
Finally, the appearance of a counter-proposal reaffirms that it would be appropriate for governance to more calmly define the appropriate approach for this type of service and what it implies, considering the offers on the table.