[READY TO VOTE] Facilitate capital migration to the Superchain

Mission Grants 🏹
1

Delegate Mission Request Summary: This request is a moonshot; it is dedicated to strategically facilitating the migration of Mainnet capital onto the Superchain, aiming to position Optimism as the most promising and secure destination for this capital shift. This is not mere liquidity mining going after mercenary capital; this task is a major, holistic one geared specifically to getting capital permanently onto the Superchain.

S5 (Collective Intents: Season 5): Intent 2: Grow the Superchain

Proposing Delegate: Jack Anorak

Proposal Tier 16: Fledgling Tier

Baseline grant amount: The grant amount proposed is 500k OP, which is a sizeable but well tuned investment in courting the $31b in total value locked and 300b in Ether market cap alone.

Should this Foundation Mission be fulfilled by one or multiple applicants: Unlimited applicants up to budget. Individual grants will be evaluated and asks refined by the Grant Council in collaboration with the various applicants. Trust tiers should be factored into these asks.

Submit by: To be set by Grants Council

Selection by: To be set by Grants Council

Completion date: Dec 31, 2024

Specification

How will this Delegate Mission Request help accomplish the above Intent?

One of my longest-held theses has been that from a competitive standpoint, one of the biggest determinants of an L2’s success will be the migration of risk-averse Mainnet capital onto an L2. To date most capital has remained on L1 for security reasons; L2s are, to many, way too unproven to test the many risks bridging onto an L2 entails.

I believe that when this body of capital is ready to migrate, much of it is going to move to the L2 that presents significant promise and safety. And I think most of that capital moves only once. So we need to be that L2.

Optimism is now getting to a place where we can credibly attract much of this Mainnet capital. Fault proofs are on the horizon, crosschain specs are taking shape, we have major players on our side. I think it’s now time to start making moves to attract this capital.

As mentioned above, the idea here is not simply to provide incentives to pull capital over. That may be part of the solution, assuming there is adequate justification. But in crypto we’ve tried this many times to little effect.

What is required to execute this Delegate Mission Request?

Phase 1

  1. Research to understand the identities, risk profiles and needs of Mainnet capital holders and protocols as well as possible pull solutions
    This research must include information on:
  • User interviews with large capital holders revealing their opinions about L2 migration
  • Breakdown of capital ownership on Mainnet and characterization of entity type and propensity to migrate
  • Potential short-term means of attracting Mainnet capital
  1. Research and incentives to bring over the 31b of protocol TVL on Mainnet, which is inherently stickier than user capital.

Phase 2
May include but not limited to:

  • Preliminary infrastructural work not already underway to facilitate capital migration
  • OP incentives to facilitate active, permanent migration of capital
  • Commitments by Superchain partners to use their own resources to bring capital over
  • Other initiatives

How should the Token House measure progress towards this Mission?

  • End of Phase 1 should produce an actionable report that can be used to inform Phase 2
  • Research should be publicly posted as it is generated and edited
  • Phase 2 work varies but in general there should be periodic updates of spend, uses, and mapping to project plans.

How should badgeholders measure impact upon completion of this Mission?

  • Large wallet migration
  • Capital migration
  • Meaningful infrastructural improvement that is noticeable on, e.g., L2Beat

Have you engaged a Grant-as-a-service provider for this Mission Request?
No.

Has anyone other than the Proposing Delegate contributed to this Mission Request?
No

3 Likes
2

Hey @jackanorak – just wanted to flag this as a proposal that still needs delegate approvals in order to move to a vote. If you are no longer interested in pursuing this proposal – please disregard this message. In order to see the delegates assigned to your proposal those can be found here. The deadline to provide feedback and approvals for Mission Requests is February 7th at 19:00

Cheers!

3

I’ve submitted I think 13 mission requests. This one and ([DRAFT] Layerwide new project support are I think the two most ambitious of the lot, and there’s been almost no coverage of any of it. Would love to get some more attention and feedback on it.

4

This is the type of thing that is so crucial for the future success of Optimism. I would love to see the proposals for this mission.

I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

5

Hey @jackanorak can you tell me if this is supposed to be picked up by only one entity for 1M $OP or multiple?

The goal is good. Get more capital to Optimism.

But the amount is huge. At current prices that’s $3.3m. Would need a quite strict definition of what completion means for the grant. And still the amount is humongous. So would like to see more details on how the amount would be split between potentially multiple applicants, what the goals would be to unlock a payment (the phases do not contain amounts at the moment).

Also perhaps something more concrete than research. I would make it more strict. Not only bring capital over succesfully but make it stay for at least Xmonths.

6

We are a delegate with sufficient voting power and would like to see this go to a vote

7

Oh, it’s definitely multiple. This needs to be a thoroughly decentralized effort - some user/capital research, some concrete building based on informed hypotheses, incentives, anything that moves the needle on getting that mountain of liquidity over here.

My thinking is that a piece of this scope would be determined at the application level, similar to builders and experiments, where if there are liquid tokens offered (which would be in the case of some sort of incentives driving and, to your point, keeping capital here), clear milestones would have to be met. But most i envision would be distributed as locked grants with a high bar set for met expectations.

This is one where we have a clearly defined goal but I think my imagination as to how to get there has limits. So I want a big big carrot to get other people thinking seriously and moving toward this goal. The Grant Council can determine which of these proposals are useful and credible.

1 Like
8

GM @jackanorak! I understand the significance of this Mission Request, but I believe the requested amount is quite excessive. Considering the allocation of 1.5M for Growth Grants and 1.5M for Builder Grants, this already occupies 3M out of the 4M total budget for this Intent. Therefore, if we add the 1M from this Mission Request, it essentially excludes other Mission Requests if it receives approvals and ranks well during the voting period. Specifically, this request alone would displace three others where you’re proposer/sponsor, without even accounting for additional requests from other Sponsors/Proposers. I’m not sure if this was your intention. I’ll wait to observe how this Mission Request progresses before giving my approval.

9

I’ve moved this one to Intent 3 in anticipation of this issue - need to figure out how best to scale back these asks correctly. I’ll knock it down to 750k for now.

10

Ah I see. Yes you are right the mission request’s purpose is this indeed. State a goal but it’s up to the applicant to convince us it’s feasible to get there.

Not convinced there can be a good application for this to deserve 1m$ but at least would love to see the applications.

I am an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

11

i don’t think there’s a single entity that can do this - it’s like we need all the levers from all the people today. and to that end i wouldn’t want to see a single entity taking a large chunk of this one up

and yeah part of this is definitely about attracting the applications and directing attention to this goal

12

I’m an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote!

13

I think this request has already enough approvals to pass, so below could be seen as just my opinion an not a request to adapt the proposal itself.

I believe this is a very important and meaningful mission request proposal, but its scope to wide right now, resulting with an oversized budget allocation.

I’m absolutely supportive of the phase 1 of this request as such research if done properly could help us make many better decisions down the road of making Superchain more attractive for onchain capital. It could also tell us a lot about the level of understanding (which I’m afraid won’t be high) of Superchain concepts and premises within those capital holders/managers.

That phase 1 of the proposal is quite challenging in itself as well! Organizing interviews several large capital holders is a major undertaking, compiling results from those interviews in a meaningful and actionable way is yet another one. And it all requires good understanding of both Superchain architecture and promises and its implications on the DeFi ecosystem as well as what large on-chain capital is and how it works. I think there is a limited set of people/orgs in our space that can produce such a research in a meaningful way.

Combining this with any Phase 2 execution and deliverables on the outcomes of said research is too much to expect in my opinion. Having those two very different (imo) sets of goals under one umbrella can both push away rational proposers that can provide significant value for Phase 1 (but not necessarily Phase 2) and attract wrong kind of proposers that already have some idea of what they would like to do in Phase 2 and will simply push Phase 1 in a minimal way as a distressing necessity to move forward.

Moreover, as you mentioned, the necessary architectural improvements to make Superchain premise a reality are on a horizon, but they’re still not there yet, so any real Phase 2 outcomes are contingent to Superchain roadmap.

For these reasons I would much rather see this mission request cut down to just Phase 1 and focus on just the reasearch (but really meaningful, top quality research) on the challenges and possible ways to address them. This could serve as an input for better defined and scoped future seasons’ missions to experiment on the outcomes of this reasearch.

3 Likes
14

I disagree. Research is kind of useless without any implementation and substantial deliverables imo. I think this mission needs both phases and the budget fits the request.

2 Likes
15

I agree to disagree with you on that point then. :slight_smile: There’s an enormous value in research without particular implementation in mind, just for the sake of research and broadening our understanding of the topic. And it’s not uncommon for good buidlers not to be good researchers and vice versa.

2 Likes
16

Hey! I’m concerned about the Baseline Grant Amount for this Mission. It’s currently under Intent #2, and even if it were moved to Intent #3, it wouldn’t fit, especially considering a Mission like this one:

I’m unsure where these budgets are coming from, but I think some of them are excessive. While I understand their importance, I believe the amounts are too high. I’m concerned that if they pass and rank well during the Voting Period, they will displace a number of innovative approaches that could help grow Optimism.

17

i have no involvement with that other one so can’t speak to it.

the amounts aren’t too high; the budgets are too low. and this is how priorities work - you put more resources into the stuff that matters more. maybe the others should ask for less.

but i’ll take this down to 500k.

18

I’m not 100% sure why this feedback was put here instead of under the primary post. Agreed with @jackanorak; the overall budget for the missions is too low.

We have a real opportunity to bring large amounts of capital on-chain and open it up to an actual use case with Perps. Centralized Perps protocols are doing 50B in volume per day (Binance), and if you add in many more of them, you’d be in the realm of 100-150b in trading volume per day.

If we want to incentivize the capital migration to Optimism that we’d all love to see, which can help to grow many other protocols and innovative use cases, we must be willing to go to new lengths to support it. Perps is a product with a clear product-market fit and is loved by high-value users, liquidity providers, and so on.

1 Like
19

ah also - I am an Optimism Delegate with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote

20

Maybe I didn’t explain my point well, but let’s imagine that the 700k proposal passes and achieves a good ranking during the voting. Then, this proposal that was at 750k also gets a good place during the ranking, but what happens? The sum of both is 1.45M, and the budget for that intent is 1.33M. In my opinion, having decreased the budget gives the opportunity for both to be included, and still a few more. At the end of the day, it’s just feedback, and I might be wrong, so feel free to ignore my comment; I won’t take it personally :slight_smile:

1 Like