[READY] [GF: Phase 1 Proposal] Otterspace

Awesome then, thanks for the clarification! This looks great to me. I’d like to also formally endorse this proposal.

“I am an Optimism Delegate Delegate Commitments - #50 by NathanVDH with sufficient voting power and l believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.”

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Could you explain how the strategy behind the ETH purchase will be and how you are going to avoid the farmeo of this airdrop?

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Thanks, @AxlVaz for the question. To clarify, this is how I understand your questions and what I’m responding to (please correct me if I misunderstood part of your question).

1. How will we purchase the ETH? (If you were referring to why we plan to purchase ETH, may I point you to our response above to OPUser’s question?)

We consider the following aspects as relevant: the frequency of swapping, the time period over which the swapping will take place and the amount swapped each time.

Concerning the frequency and time period, we plan to swap OP into ETH at regular intervals and, therefore, not all at once. As we plan to distribute the tokens over a period of 12 months, we will likely follow a monthly/bi-weekly swapping schedule. In the first months, we will swap less OP into ETH and then increase this monthly swapped amount as the user base grows.

This way, we should receive, on average, a reasonable exchange rate without exerting any significant impact on the liquidity or the price of the underlying assets.

2. How are we going to avoid the ETH being farmed in this Airdrop (e.g., programmatically draining the account of ETH)?

We consider the following aspects relevant for this question: how the ETH is distributed, who gets access to the badge allow list & airdrop, and how much ETH is exposed at a given time.

How the ETH is distributed:

Our product & engineering teams are currently looking into the trade-offs associated with either airdropping the tokens, using a relayer contract, or meta transactions, all to enable robust & easy adoption and onboarding of users. At the time of writing, we consider the airdrop to be the best approach. The event triggering an airdrop would be an address added to the badge allow list for the first time and only once per address across all badges.
Given this, we believe that beyond ensuring the safety of the technical implementation, two additional control handles exist for us: (i) Who gets access to a badge allow list & airdrop & (ii) how much ETH is exposed at a given time.

Who gets access to the badge allow list & airdrop:

During our ongoing private Beta, we are personally in touch with representatives of all DAOs using Otterspace, and using Otterspace is subject to going through our onboarding & screening. Therefore, we currently have influence on who gets access to a badge allow list as we work with them directly.

Once we open up the product and enable any DAO to start using the app, we will retain a screening process and make the airdrop subject to approval. Any DAO could use Otterspace, but in order to benefit from the Airdrop we would first need to speak to and screen the DAO representatives, to ensure that they represent the DAO that they claim. We would then only enable the airdrop for organizations that we have screened to ensure that only entities that we deem trustworthy have access to airdropped ETH. Our product is tailored towards DAO workstream leads and coordinators issuing badges. These individuals typically would know the individuals to whom they issue badges, thereby acting as a web of trust.

How much ETH is exposed at a given time:

In addition to ensuring that trustworthy DAO representatives use the badge allow list & the airdrop, we also plan to limit the exposure of ETH. The ETH will be primarily kept in the Otterspace Gnosis Safe, and the contract that controls the airdrop will be “topped up” periodically to ensure that at any given time, only the ETH amount necessary to serve the new incoming user base is in the contract and thereby exposed to potential threats.

This is the working state of our considerations on ensuring the safety and correct allocation of the token grant. We appreciate all feedback on this and will keep the Optimism community updated on our progress as we go (provided the approval of the grant).

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Proposal looking good!

Do you have a product demo video that you can link since it’s hard to assess the product without actually being a DAO admin.

Also how would you say you differ from Galaxy which also allows to issue badges based on on & off-chain criteria?

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Good Proposal, but imo a bit early to ask for a grant. Let them proof themselves a bit first. Good luck!

Thanks @cryptotesters for the comment.

I’ve recorded a product demo video here, so you can get a feeling for what we are building.

Concerning Galaxy/Galxe, we differ on the technical and the use case side. Technically, Galxe is using mostly ERC-721 NFTs, which are transferable. However, as far as I’m aware, Galxe are also experimenting with some modified ERC-721s that are non-transferable. Nevertheless, we believe that non-transferable NFTs need their own standard for longer-term adoption, hence why we are involved with EIP-4973.

With regard to the use cases, we see some similarities between Galxe and Rabbithole, as both are focused on capturing web3 user achievements for user acquisition (in the case of Galxe, predominantly users for DeFi apps & protocols). On the other hand, we are explicitly focused on DAOs and higher-assurance cases such as badges representing roles within a community & enabling the associated permissions (e.g., access permissions or governance). If we look at DAOs outer layers (i.e., new people coming in), Rabbithole and Galxe may focus on that layer, whereas Otterspace focuses on the inner operations layer. Considering collaboration opportunities, we reckon that Optimism can acquire new users, particularly in the DeFi or NFT trading space with Galxe. Whereas with Otterspace, Optimism can acquire more DAOs and DAO contributors.

While Otterspace badges are currently distributed to contributors using manual attestation, we are also working on capturing on-/off-chain activities and expect this functionality to go live later this year.

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Great proposal. Room for many innovations in the space, and all user accretive tech should be welcome at Optimism imo.

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Thanks that was helpful!

What kind of use cases are you imagining DAOs will choose to go for with your infrastructure?

Does your product have some easy integrations e.g “Include all token voters/snapshot voters/LP’s etc. on allowlist, or off-chain e.g allow Twitter followers, Discourse members to mint” ?

Or is it all manual uploading of addresses that the DAO admin has handpicked beforehand?

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I have voted against this proposal.
My reason for voting against is OP will be sold.

I refer to…

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Currently, the four key use cases that we see from our work with the private beta participating DAOs are:

  1. Governance (e.g., supporting Radicle DAO’s distribution of influence, wherein RAD tokens will be delegated to badge holders to distribute governance influence within the DAO)
  2. Community membership & engagement (e.g., the Bankless DAO season passes)
  3. Access management (e.g., token-gating Discord or documents based on Badge ownership - we are working on this with Guild at the moment)
  4. Education & credentials (e.g., issuing Badges to record course completion as intended by Token Engineering Academy & Token Engineering Commons)

With regard to your second question, at the moment, addresses are added to the Badge allow list either manually by DAO admins or via our API. We are working on a feature to soon support the automated attestation of Badges within our product based on meeting on-/off-chain conditions (e.g., have bought token X before, participated in governance, etc.).

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Thank you for the feedback @Butterbum

Our swapping of OP to ETH is based on our understanding of the third point of the “no sale” rule in the Grant Proposal Template [OLD]

As outlined in the proposal, a part of the requested OP will be swapped to incentivize user adoption, this would apply to a maximum of 70% of the requested tokens. Further, we are very open to using a mixed airdrop containing OP & ETH, which would (i) facilitate the adoption of the product on Optimism, (ii) encourage users to get involved in OP governance (e.g., by trying out token delegation), and (iii) reduce the total amount of OP that is swapped/sold.

We appreciate the community feedback and input on this.

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I understand it is open for interpretation, but my understanding of " Does not include using OP to incentivize usage ." is ~ using OP to incentivize usage does not constitute as selling OP.

Where as in this proposal Otterspace intend to sell 70% of the allocation.
In my mind this +/-$70,000 bill will ultimately get pushed over to the users/holders of OP.

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

Otterspace is building infrastructure for DAOs to issue Badges (soulbound NFTs) based on DAO members’ on & off-chain actions. The idea is that these Badges can help DAOs to perform non-financialized governance, automate permissions (access rights, etc.), manage community-specific reputation/credentials, and create better incentive systems…

The product is in closed-beta right now with a handful of DAO’s actively using Otterspace.

External links:

Similar OP Governance proposals:

3. About the following

The proposal was detailed and the authors responded to several questions raised around implementation details.

4. About the proposal valuation

  • Added value (good to bad): good. Otterspace intends to bring some valuable tools for DAOs to the table to rewards its most active members & experiment with more plutocratic voting systems.
  • Impact or expected usage (high to low): low to medium. There are several projects offering similar functionalities than Otterspace. It remains to be seen whether DAOs will integrate Badges into their workflows and whether this will have a positive impact on DAO operations.
  • Current Status [Development stage/Open Source?] (early to ready): somewhat ready. For now, they have a functional platform which is being live-tested by a handful of DAO’s. As part of this grant they intend to on-board more DAO’s and eventually open up access to their platform altogether. Their contracts are open-source and they are contributing to an EIP- standard for Soulbound tokens. and several integrations, but developers are encouraged to use the Socket bases for new use cases.
  • Expenditure plan and distribution (appropriate to inappropriate): standard. They intend to sell 70% of their $OP grant to $ETH and airdrop $ETH to Badge claimants to make up for incurred gas costs. The remainder (30%) is intended to be distributed as additional incentive to integration partners .
  • Amount requested (high to low): high. The amount seems high for a project of this type and the impact of the grant is questionable. Transaction costs on Optimism are low so the barrier to claim Badges for DAO contributors is low anyhow. A similar approved grant request by Otterspace to the Radicle DAO requested merely $12,500. Especially the “bribes” to integration partners seems redundant and could lead to Nepotism ( free money for friend projects).

5. KPIs and impact tracking

To track the success of the campaign it would make sense to track:

  • #accounts with airdropped $ETH
  • #of accounts that claimed their Badge
  • #of accounts that did their first Optimism tx claiming their Badge
  • #of DAO’s issuing Badges
  • a written report with case studies how DAO’s successfully implemented the Badges

6. FINAL RECOMMENDATION: No.

We like the problem space Otterspace is solving for and the fact it’s building its infrastructure natively on Optimism. However, the requested amount doesn’t seem reasonable given the state of project, current usage statistics and the expected usage of funds. We consider it appropriate to request a reduction of at least 30% of the amount requested for the next cycle in case it is not approved in the current cycle.

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Voted no - Following Tooling Committee recommendation

Voted against, following our committee’s recommendation. We strongly encourage the project to resubmit with a reduction of at least 30%.

Vote: No

Rationale: It is an interesting product, but I don’t believe it necessarily warrants a grant from the governance fund. It’s also quite early in its stages, with much competition. I don’t see a grant accelerating adoption.

Thank you for detailed feedback @krzkaczor

We appreciate the review and will incorporate the feedback in our next proposal!

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The PoolCollective voted against, following the Tooling Committee’s recommendation.

Unfortunately, the proposal seems to have been endorsed for Snapshot prematurely.
I don’t see the size of the ask as a problem here. The issue is the usage of funds that do not align with the “no sale rule” that is laid out by Optimism governance.
A basic pivot to distributing $OP instead of exchanging it for $ETH first, would solve the problem and fund a highly beneficial Optimism native project. Hoping to see a refined proposal up on Snapshot again next cycle.

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Snapshot vote - not passed