This is tough for me to wrap my head around.
I think you are trying to create a distinction where there really isn’t one.
Your objection was:
Curve: You must acquire (or have acquired) and lock veCRV on Ethereum mainnet to access incentives designed to facilitate growth on Optimism.
Velodrome: You must acquire and lock veVELO on Optimism to access the incentives designed to facilitate growth on Optimism.
In both cases, you need to acquire “the project native token to be part of OP incentive”, though as @GuyWithKeyboard just noted this is not limited to “buying” as you suggest.
If I am understanding your attempt at a distinction, for Curve you are saying you see no issue with requiring the acquisition of veCRV to access OP rewards, despite the fact that it leaks value and activity from Optimism to mainnet. But in the case of Velodrome, you don’t think it is appropriate because it requires the acquisition of new tokens?
So there is something intrinsically better about requiring the acquisition of a project native token when you you include both existing AND new veCRV lockers on mainnet rather than focusing the incentive just on new veVELO lockers on Optimism? Even when considering in our case the result is millions in new capital locked in the ecosystem, versus value leakage?
This seems really hard to square fren, especially given when you’ve supported other proposals that likewise “require the acquisition of project native tokens” to access the incentives such as Balancer and Beethoven.
And to be clear here, I think the Curve proposal is a perfectly acceptable given the technical limitations that exist at the moment to them supporting a fully native solution. It may be worth it to the ecosystem even if the incentive isn’t quite as efficient. But, I’m just struggling to find coherency in your suggestion that it’s okay in the case of a solution that is objectively less optimal for Optimism and not okay in the case of an example that has demonstrated itself to be a ecosystem growth multiplier.