[READY] [GF: Phase 1 Proposal] Raptor

[Karlos7785]

I support and vote yes for this proposal.

[OPUser]

In the current form, I support this proposal and team can move the proposal from Draft to Ready.

Why I am supporting this proposal:-
Pros:-

1. Good cause, protecting the settlement layer is public good.
2. Promote decentralization
3. Team is transparent and willing to provide quarterly report on funds
4. Proposal is aligned with OP Ethos.

Cons:-

1. New project and team, at least to me.
2. 800K seems like a big number but at the time of writing the comment, 800K roughly translates to 10 validator node
3. Pseudonymous team, necessarily not a bad thing but it does not help building trust.

cc @netrunner

[netrunner]

Thank you for your endorsement @OPUser, I appreciate it.

In regards to the considerations raised, it is true that I prefer to remain pseudo-anonymous for OpSec reasons. However, my actions have not, as I have been a significant contributor to the development of other protocols and assist projects using my experience.

You can see some of my most recent contributions to CowDAO here: [1], [2], [3]. For anyone who is unfamiliar with CowDAO and CowSwap, it is a protocol spun out of Gnosis DAO which has done over 8 Billion in trades. They have also recently added me as a Signatory and Grant Committee Member overseeing a 2.4M per annum (annualized) grants program.

I look forward to your trust and support in realizing Optimism’s Vision in supporting public goods such as Validators Nodes which benefits Optimism, Ethereum, and the Collective as a whole.

[Cryptoz]

The issue is for the OP grant to pay its self you would need 21 years of ETH staking based on the current APR. If you compound you might reduce that by 15%-20%, however if you are taking 50% for your self then this will be further increased.

The other problem is that you have said ETH should go up in value at a larger ration compared to OP. That might happen, but even if it always is ahead 5x more then OP it would still require 4 years if you used 100% of the rewards!

ETH will be here for decades but it might just take you decades to repay the grant in burning OP

[MinimalGravitas]

I’m slightly confused as to why Optimism would fund Raptor in particular to run nodes? This isn’t offering a service that anyone else couldn’t do themselves, so what in particular is the advantage of giving you 10 validators worth of OP as opposed to, for example, giving 32 ETH to 10 members of the Optimism Collective to spin up validators?

Running nodes isn’t a specialized service and I’m not sure what you’re offering. If we approved this proposal would it not set a precedent for anyone who wanted to do the same?

If Ethereum was desperately short of validators, and running them was incredibly difficult then this proposal might make more sense as a public good… but neither are the case. Giving 10 validators to one entity doesn’t even seem like it makes sense from a decentralization maximizing position as it would obviously be better to distribute them to 10 unconnected operators.

Please can you expand on why this proposal would make sense? Maybe I’m missing something.

[Disclaimer - I run a RocketPool ‘minipool’ validator so may have some bias towards their decentralized staking service]

[netrunner]

Thank you for your questions @Cryptoz.

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.

The Public Goods Funding program is a series of grants, not loans, and they are intended to support Optimism’s Vision of a decentralized ecosystem of aligned entities operating together for the collective good of everyone.

Burning OP tokens is our way of saying thank you for supporting this essential public good to support and decentralize the Ethereum network. Over the long term it will make an impact, however it is a small grant, so it will take time. 50% of all validator rewards are spent on burning OP tokens and the other 50% is to fund more validators.

Thank you for taking the time to review this proposal.

[netrunner]

Thank you for your questions @MinimalGravitas.

Firstly, public goods like Validators Nodes are an essential part of the Ethereum ecosystem.

I believe requesting funding to spin up these public goods aligns with Optimism’s Vision. This is why Optimism is Granting 100% of centralized sequencer profits to Ethereum protocol development, because funding public goods is a core part of Optimism’s ethos.

In the example you presented, this would make no sense since the Ethereum development team would already have all the funding it required. The reason Optimism is doing that is because it is the right thing to do.

I agree with your points that it would make sense for 10 seperate entities to seek funding to run Validator Nodes as it aligns with Optimism’s Vision, but since neither is happening, I am honored to be the first to request funding, and I hope it sets a precedent showing that communities like Optimism that rely on Ethereum are willing to fund public goods that help the network.

Also, in regards to your staking pool / rocketpool minipool validator service, it is a very different thing to a full validator node using a dedicated machine and various execution layer clients to prevent a single source of failure for the network. As Ethereum’s own documentation states this is extremely beneficial to the health of the network, and in turn for Optimism.

I look forward to your support.

[solarcurve]

I have to echo @MinimalGravitas’ comments. I don’t view converting 800k OP to ETH so Raptor can run validators to be a good use of funds. The case for this being a public good funding is not very strong - I think we can find higher impact causes to support.

[netrunner]

I’ll have to disagree with you, and so do most of the others on this forum, but let’s find out what the community decides when this goes to a vote.

Thank you for taking the time to review this proposal.

[MinimalGravitas]

@netrunner

Firstly, public goods like Validators Nodes are an essential part of the Ethereum ecosystem.

I believe requesting funding to spin up such goods aligns with Optimism’s Vision.

My main question though is why would funding you to run multiple validators be a public good in particular? It’s not a specialist skill that requires outsourcing to other people.

A quick look on Dune shows that just of the small group of people that own an NFT from the collection used in my profile picture, 53 out of 1056 are solo stakers, and 12 run RocketPool nodes (which still involves running clients etc - Prysm and Nimbus in my case).

https://dune.com/mtitus6/EVMavericks-Resume

Across the whole Ethereum network there’s currently around 10,746 synced nodes, running 403,108 active validators in total. I don’t think it makes sense for Optimism to give ~$400,000 worth of OP to you in order to bring those numbers to 10,767 and 403,118… it might be a public good but if so it’s negligibly impactful.

[netrunner]

I’ll have to disagree with you, as I believe every single node counts, and providing this public good to further decentralize ETH Infrastructure a worthy cause.

Raptor intends to roll out similar proposals with many other aligned communities, and in due course it won’t be just 10 nodes, it will be in the hundreds, with thousands of validators.

But let’s find out what the community decides when this goes to a vote.

[MinimalGravitas]

I think you may have missed my question:

@MinimalGravitas

My main question though is why would funding you to run multiple validators be a public good in particular?

[netrunner]

Raptor intends to roll out similar proposals with many other aligned communities. Optimism would be an important part of that collective supporting ETH infrastructure.

ETH infrastructure is a public good that aligns with Optimism’s ethos and I believe the community will agree is worthy of funding.

Thank you for taking the time to review this proposal, and good luck with your own RocketPool minipool validator service, I think it’s fantastic you are also supporting the network in your own way.

[Optimus]

After reviewing all the comments here I am inclined to agree with @OPUser and support this proposal.

Why? It’s the only proposal so far offering to support the network. Most of the other proposals are relying on LPing and boosting incentives, using liquidity bribes or spending it on marketing, which makes it very difficult to spot the public goods.

It doesn’t matter to me that the team is small, only that they are following the intent of the public goods funding proposal.

@OPUser

Pros:

1. Good cause, protecting the settlement layer is public good.
2. Promote decentralization
3. Team is transparent and willing to provide quarterly report on funds
4. Proposal is aligned with OP Ethos.

[William]

This experiment look interesting, I’ll be following this!

[Takeshi_Kovacs]

I have to agree with @Optimus here. The addition of any number of decentralized validators is a valuable contribution to the network. If a centralized pool falls subject to a hack or coordinated attack, only the decentralized validators will keep the network safe.

[Cryptoz]

I don’t see how this has any relation to public good. It basically to fund you to run nodes and profit, also its not like Ethereum is short on nodes or validators. It seems like more of a proposal for you to setup your venture rather then something that benefits Optimism or a public good.

[netrunner]

Hi again,

To quote a conversation I had with superphiz.eth (Ethereum Beacon Chain Community Health Consultant) - I’ve also asked him to leave some feedback here when he gets the chance:

“Any addition of decentralized validators is a valuable contribution to the network. We often think about it in terms of optics (i.e. “how does it look to the world when we’re centralized vs. decentralized?”) but the REAL value of decentralization comes when much of the stake IS centralized. Decentralized validators are the ones who will remain honest an propose slashing against the misdeeds of a centralized staker. Another way to think about it is decentralizing operations - if centralized validators are attacked in a coordinated way (even if by a natural disaster), it may be the few decentralized validators that keep the network humming.”

[MinimalGravitas]

I don’t think anyone is disputing the general benefit of people running validators.

There’s already a discussion here broadly in favour of retroactively airdropping OP to 8,666 solo validators, with each address receiving in the order of 324 OP tokens (regardless of how many validators they run on the node):

Airdrop Ethereum Validators (Beacon Chain Contract Depositors)

Addresses that deposited to Beacon Chain Contract ( ETH validators ) should be included in further distributions I think this deserves its own thread so I created one as I think it will get buried under the airdrop #1 feedback purpose of this thread is to gauge interest and discuss before a governance proposal can be made. not to criticize airdrop #1, instead look forward and support rewarding beacon chain depositors in subsequent community distributions Why Beacon Chain depositors These ac…

What I don’t think you’ve sufficiently answered is why your company in particular should be given 800,000 OP to run validators?

From a public goods funding perspective it doesn’t fit with Optimism’s retroactive model

Retroactive Public Goods Funding

as you aren’t already running them, it’s not retroactive if you’re wanting all the funds to do this before you start… and from a decentralization perspective you’ve yet to explain why giving you the funds to run 10 is beneficial as compared to asking to run one validator and suggesting others do the same.

I will be very interested to read a comment from SuperPhiz here, it’s entirely possible that I’m missing some benefit that you are offering, but if that’s the case it hasn’t yet been made clear.

[netrunner]

Hi again,

Thank you for taking the time to review this proposal.

The benefit is that Raptor will run the Nodes further decentralizing the Ethereum mainnet, and will use 50% of the rewards to burn OP. The other 50% will be spent on spinning up more nodes.

Our intention is to seek funding from other communities and in return they help us keep Ethereum secure, and also have their tokens burned.

As per Optimism’s own documents:

“The Collective is a band of communities, companies, and citizens united by a mutually beneficial pact to adhere to the axiom of impact=profit. This is outlined in depth in the Optimistic Vision.”

You yourself state the importance of running Validators here.

@MinimalGravitas

Surely encouraging people to do this fits precisely with how the airdrop and Ethereum’s Phoenix are supposed to work. What better public good to incentivize for the ecosystem than getting more people to stake themselves (whether with a minipool or solo staking).