[READY] [GF: Phase 1 Proposal] Optimistic Railway

ARCHIVED & OLD Missions Governance Fund: Phase 1
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Project Name
Optimistic Railway

Author Name
Max Meier

Number of OP tokens requested
400,000

L2 Recipient Address
0x4fbc12896fB949FE0F885e5Ce18b704DC549Ec2C

Relevant Usage Metrics
Currently in early development. No public information yet to indicate platform usage.

Optimism alignment
We are building the 4 dimensional railway of the metaverse - the infrastructure to connect social dapps and enable massive on chain gaming. The cost is too high and the speed too low on mainnet for casual users. Optimism allows for low cost of entry and high user rates, which is absolutely necessary for scale and interconnectedness.

Our tools give the metaverse components a place and time, which gives us the ability to create a connection graph to unites the various worlds in novel ways. Map your 3D island, connect like minded groups, or connect anything represented on-chain and help form the neurons of our digital consciousness. These are the portals that will connect our experiences.

Optimistic railway is like an on-chain mass transit system, making possible the connection to any world from any world. Move as an individual or as a group. Take a solo or group tour of digital art galleries, join a virtual scavenger hunt, compete in a massive trivia game, or a massive squid game with your NFTs. Mass transit enables unification between collective spaces and encourages coordinated activities for truly unique group experiences.

We can build these railways on many chains, and ultimately will, but we would first like to focus on optimism as it has a proven record of success and is directly integrated with Ethereum.

How will the OP tokens be distributed?
Core team & operations will receive 90%, and 10% will be used to incentivize users through ā€œFree playā€ entries in our initial games designed to be connected through our system. The core team & operations distribution will primarily be allocated for the following purposes: team compensation (building out core product, public UI, and community support), general project expenses (web services, deployment costs, etc.), and marketing costs (advertising, social media management, cultivating strategic partnerships).

How will this distribution incentivize usage and liquidity on Optimism?
The tools built on here are designed to utilize continual micro-transactions, which are ideal on Optimism. Additionally, we will distribute tokens minted on Optimism as in-game rewards in our flagship product, an interconnected on-chain arcade. We are bringing coin operated games to the metaverse, using small amounts of ETH or other tokens to purchase credits, similar to popping a quarter in the arcade machine. This model allows ongoing liquidity by encouraging the flow of in-world tokens to users and accumulating micro transactions that may ultimately be used as liquidity for newer tokens that will live on Optimism.

Why will the incentivized users and liquidity remain after incentives dry up?
Once users are in the system, they will continually be incentivized to re-circulate in world currencies to keep the economies alive, but even without that, the pay-to-play micro-transactions will sustain liquidity as long as development around these arcade style games and experiences continues. If the speed of transactions remains fast, the cost of gas remains low, and the gameplay / community experiences remain fun, the community will have little reason to leave.

We intend to grow alongside the entire ecosystem and the initial incentives are just opening the door. As we build more fun experiences and allow all creators to connect to our meta-railway, the user growth can and will continue organically. Additionally we can issue new tokens with added benefits to longtime community members to incentivize future activity during potentially slower growth phases.

Over what period of time will the tokens be distributed?
This distribution will take place over 1 year total. It will be distributed from the core team portion monthly for 12 months, and from the community incentive pool as soon as the product is ready for beta testing.

How much will your project match in co-incentives?
We will match 2:1 in in-world tokens or freeplay vouchers. For every OP token received from this distribution, we will give away 2 of a similar rarity token or 2x the amount of in game credits of relative value, e.g. if 1 billion OP tokens exist and we received 1 million, we would mint a utility token of ours in a similar quantity of 1 billion, and give 2 million tokens directly to the community as incentives to use this system on Optimism.

A commitment to success.
We are committed to building a functional community tool and we hold ourselves accountable to the deliverables. As such, we would like to lock up 50% of the tokens allocated to this proposal for a minimum of 6 months.

In order to obtain this half of the funding, we should prove that we have met a predetermined set of goals, outlined below. Only after completion of these goals or 6 months, whichever is later, we will submit another proposal outlining our accomplishment and requesting the remaining 50% of allocated tokens.

Depending on the preference of the foundation, either of 2 options can be implemented:

a. During this lockup phase these tokens can be controlled via a multi-sig wallet, such as a gnosis safe, with our project wallet as a signer in addition to one or more representatives of the Optimism foundation. From this safe, these tokens can be invested in a pool on Beethoven (Balancer on Optimism - https://op.beets.fi/) to provide liquidity to the community and have an additional positive impact until the OP tokens are available for collection.

b. The tokens can remain in the governance fund, without any temporary LP lockup, and are distributed as normal once the second proposal is approved.

All of the following goals must be met in order to unlock second half of funding:

  • Core contracts published on Optimism
    • Railway Hubs
    • Hub Registry
  • Public beta available to developers
  • Upgrade plan to account for future development and smooth transitions as railway is improved
  • Collection of example dapps demonstrating capabilities of railway
  • Community website with active resources and points of contact
  • Sufficient documentation to integrate OR into new projects
  • Community forum or discord server to give active feedback and get questions answered
  • Report published on the state of the Optimistic Railway with plans for continued development
3 Likes
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Your proposal should be posted in this section, just to keep the forum in order.

2 Likes
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Thanks @AxlVaz, it wasnā€™t letting me change it to that section earlier, but was able to just now.

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Who are the core team?

Do you have a website?

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The core team is:
Max Meier - https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxmeier/
James Pollack - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamespollack
Daniel Dugan - https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-dugan-a98ba84b/

Weā€™ve known each other for years and recently started working together to build out the web3 space with a focus on proving out and pushing maximally on-chain gaming.

No website for the project yet, public contracts are available at

1 Like
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Hey @studiomax, thanks for submitting this proposal. Iā€™ve added [DRAFT] to the title above.

To get this ready for a vote, you should:

  • Circulate this proposal in #gov-temp-check on Discord for community feedback.
  • When you feel like this proposal has good buy-in (from feedback here and/or in Discord), you can update [DRAFT] in the title to [READY] and weā€™ll include it in the next voting cycle on Snapshot.

The first voting cycle for GovFund Phase 1 proposals will run June 22 ā€“ July 6.

More details on the process above can be found in the Operating Manual or on Gov Fund Phase 1: How to create a proposal

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Added some additional commitments based on feedback received.

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Iā€™d encourage you to adjust the 90:10 ratio in your token distribution only because the Phase 1 token allocations are meant to incentivize usage and liquidity on optimism and Iā€™d personally prefer to see a 10:90 ratio focusing most of the incentives directly on usage and liquidity.

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Hi @Justin , thank you for providing early feedback on phase 1 proposals.
on this,

Phase 1 token allocations are meant to incentivize usage and liquidity on optimism

do you have any reference or guideline released by OP that I might have missed, I thought Phase 1 is more relaxed and Phase 0 was more focused on liquidity and usage. Governance Fund Overview | Optimism Docs

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As the voting date is approaching, I would like to write my final thoughts on this proposal.

Pros:-

  1. Matching co-incentive.
  2. Doxxed team
  3. willing to lock 50% of token request until a progress has been made.
  4. willing to do a multi-sig with OP Team
  5. Initial project goals are well defined

cons:-

  1. 90% is going to product development
  2. New team

Although 90% of funding is going to dev but they are matching the 2:1 incentives once the project is live. Team is new but I am willing to give them benefit of doubt, we all have to start someday, right?

Suggestion:-
I believe OP team will not be in a capacity to do a multi-sig, so either either break this into two proposal and submit it again when you have made some progress. Either way, I support this proposal.

Note: I might change my thoughts if what Justin has said is true.

3 Likes
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Hi @studiomax and @OPUser

Iā€™m interested in the 50% Lockup that you are implementing, and that OPUser considers a ā€˜Proā€™.
How would this work in practicality?

Would the Optimistic Railway team have to submit another similar Proposal to this same Governance Fund (before it ends in 6 months), or would it be something managed directly between the Optimistic Foundation and the Optimistic Railway teams?

If I can get my head around this works in practicality, then Iā€™m looking at introducing it into my own Draft Proposal.

I appreciate any advice, from either or both of you, on how you envisage this will be implemented beyond the vote.
Thank you for your time and any assistance.

Kind regards,
Axel

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Hi @Axel_T , let me explain this with an example.
You have wallet, you know the seed-phrase/private key which means you are in full control of the address and all the asset on that address.

In Multi-sig, more than one entity is owner of address. Lets say, there is a multi-sig address with three owner, you, bob and alice, and you agreed that two party approval is needed to move the funds, in that case, each transaction will need approval from at least 2 parties.

You can create one such wallet on gnosis wallet.

I mentioned it as pro as this shows more transparency, although i highly doubt the OP team has bandwidth to participate in mult-sig

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Thanks @OPUser
I knew about multi-sig wallets, and a certain misplaced 20M tokens :roll_eyes: introduced me to gnosis wallet, but Iā€™m still only aware of these as concepts and have never used either before.
So, if this was how the Lock Up was going to be implemented then I really appreciate the insight. Cheers!

Depending on your location, have a good day or good evening :slightly_smiling_face:
Kind regards,
Axel

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Happy to help, its quite easy to set up the wallet. You need at least 3 entity to set up the wallet and will take max 10 min of your time.

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Yeah, Iā€™m checking out the website now https://gnosis-safe.io/ :smile:
Thanks again,
Axel

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Here are a couple references on what Phase 1 is about. This project is in alignment with all of those stated goals.

The goal of the Governance Fund is to empower the OP community to proactively incentivize future growth of projects and communities in the Optimism ecosystem.
Governance Fund Phase 1: How to Create a Proposal

On Matching:

Although not a strict requirement, the Optimism Foundation recommends that each project submitting a Governance Fund proposal include a commitment to match OP token incentives with their own project incentives (when the project has the capital and capacity to do so).
Governance Fund Overview | Optimism Docs

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Thanks for the support!

On the topic of a multi-sig lockup:

This is a valid point. We can modify the proposal to leave this as an option to the foundation. We will be submitting a second proposal to unlock those either way, so if this is too cumbersome, we donā€™t need to make it overly complicated with the extra staking.

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I agree, you are giving them an option, if they want to take it or not, its their call.

I would suggest change the proposal from Draft to Live so that other delegate can also provide their feedback, remember that you are seeking full funding for development and I believe they will have own comment on this.

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OP token has a market value - your proposed matching strategy sounds like youā€™ll be matching with tokens that only have ā€œvalueā€ in your game which does not cost you anything to do. There is effectively no match here if my understanding is correct.

Locking the funds for 6 months is a lot more operational overhead than simply you returning here in 6 months to make a new proposal and update us all on your progress. You do mention supplying liquidity on BeethovenX so much love for that :heart:

The problem here is itā€™s very difficult for me to assess whether paying your salaries to make this game(?) is a good use of funds. If you work for 6 months and realize this is not a good idea anymore weā€™ve wasted OP. You could make the game then no one plays it and you realize it wasnā€™t such a good idea - again weā€™ve wasted OP.

The much cleaner way to do this in my mind is you find backers willing to support you during development - whether thatā€™s raising through gitcoin, seed round, whatever. Then you return here with a working product ready for Optimism users and we simply sprinkle some OP incentives on what is already working and showing traction. Thereā€™s just too high of a risk we spend 400k OP on this proposal and it ultimately leads to no new Optimism users or usage, thus I donā€™t think I can support it.

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We know this is a new project, and one of the few proposals on here that isnā€™t already built, hence the accountability section. The concept is not a game, it is the underlying infrastructure to connect games, dapps, and metaverses. A major feature is allowing players to move as a group, rather than an individual between these worlds. We will be demonstrating the capabilities of the system through a mario-style world-map of connected experiences, but the free play incentive can be applied to any dapp built on the system.

There is some cost to run transactions through the Optimistic Railway, as with anything on the blockchain. We will use tokens to pay these costs as well as allowing hub operators to collect a small fee if desired. Whether using our token or a native token like ETH, ā€œfree playā€ is essentially the same as paying gas plus these operator fees. Our system is designed to minimize gas for many users doing the same type of transaction, however this will never be a free operation on the blockchain so our proposed incentive will translate into real value, and can be adjusted to match the market value of OP received.

2 Likes