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:
- Website: https://www.otterspace.xyz/ 11
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/otterspace_xyz 1
Similar OP Governance proposals:
- Boardroom - 100K OP tokens
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.