[READY TO VOTE] Layerwide new project support

🏹 Mission Requests
1

Delegate Mission Request Summary:
This mission aims to provide new business support for projects within the Optimism ecosystem, including projects with approved grants in previous governance seasons. This program will focus on delivering support for major back-office and dev concerns faced by new startups, things such as RPC access, audits, legal counseling, dev agency work, business formation, tax prep, and so on.

S5 Intent Please list the Intent your Request aligns with here: Intent 2 - Grow the Superchain

Proposing Delegate: Jack Anorak

Proposal Tier: Ember

Baseline grant amount: 300k OP

Recommendation for 6 months of work and breakdown

Submit by: To be set by Grants Council

Selection by: To be set by Grants Council

Start date: If applicable

Completion date: Aug 1, 2024

Specification

The idea that Optimism has an opportunity to leverage the size of its ecosystem to support new project development was a major impetus behind the RFG program, which is in a sense a predecessor of this one. This program would formalize this thesis and would allow the Collective to:

  • Provide a point of contact for projects in the ecosystem looking for new business support
  • Partner with service providers to offer much-needed in-kind support for new projects
  • Solidify itself once again as the premiere launchpad for new projects, pushing the envelope of what ecosystems can provide to promising projects.

The structure would work similar to how RFGs did previously; service providers will apply for Mission Grants, and then the Grant Council will determine which service providers receive the grants and which projects ultimately get those grants.

This might be an additional lift for the Grant Council, so this budget could include some small addition to compensation, or RPGF could cover it. I’d want to see the Grant Council vote to accept responsibility here.

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

  • Simply put, you don’t have the Superchain without committed builders. The best way to get committed builders is to offer them users, a good dev experience, and a wealth of community and support. This Mission Request focuses on the last piece.

What is required to execute this Delegate Mission Request?

  • A broad range of selected service providers that commit to some high-quality service level in exchange for granted OP. These will include but are not limited to:
    – Smart contract audits
    – Free RPC coverage
    – Back office help, e.g., taxes, business formation, legal
    – Short-term agency development work
  • Distribution of these subsidized services to selected project grantees

All service providers must be understood to be at the top of their respective fields. It is essential that we offer through them the kind of professional support that is time efficient and longitudinally beneficial for us as an ecosystem.

  • Please list responsibilities and/or expected deliverables
  • Commitment and delivery of services
  • Rubric for selection of grantees and administration of service distribution

The idea would not be to try to stand up an entire incubator program; that’s not in scope for missions. Rather, proposals will offer some specific subsidized service or software to future projects.

Proposals should describe, in concrete terms:

  • What is the builder profile we’re targeting with our service?
  • How would our in-kind support help this kind of builder?
  • What about this service we are offering is important or helpful enough for this builder to come deploy on Optimism or consider Optimism the best place to build?
  • Do we have evidence that many new projects need help with this service?
  • How are we the demonstrably the best at what we do?

How should the Token House measure progress towards this Mission?

The only way here is to track the selection of vendors and project grantees. It would be good to get ongoing feedback on what sorts of services would be desired. This is a relatively small amount asked for such an ambitious project - the hope is that we could see some minimal successes and parlay them into something broader in the second half of the year.

How should badgeholders measure impact upon completion of this Mission?

  • Growth in users, transactions, or sequencer revenues directly attributable to granted projects
  • Growth in new deployments generally
  • Copying of this program by other ecosystems
  • % decrease in overall deployment costs for builders
  • number of onboarded builders for whom support would have been a make-or-break obstacle

Proposals must outline concrete standards of success.

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? If so, who, and what parts of this application did they contribute to?

No

EDIT: offered additional guidance below in this thread: [READY TO VOTE] Layerwide new project support - #16 by jackanorak

11 Likes
2

Hi @jackanorak! This is an interesting Mission Request - Just to clarify, is the idea that service providers interested in providing services to select grant recipients would apply to this Mission Request? I believe that is the intention but it wasn’t completely clear when reading. Would be worth clarifying :slight_smile:

2 Likes
3

Yes, that’s right. I’m imagining this more or less following how RFGs worked but for this specific scope. But the GC has to be okay with this, probably?

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4

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

2 Likes
5

500k seems high tbh but depends on actual scope, projects. Pretty easy to get played here or used for free services with no real gain, like if certik were to offer audits would just be a money sink for garbage even though most think theyre reputable. Would be good to see some more info wrt scope, limits, who can get grants/use services/rates for services.

2 Likes
6

Yeah this is one where we have to lean on the grant council to properly vet things

But the idea has to be to leave this open-ended enough to allow projects to come in specifically with asks that appeal to new projects – so what do new projects need?

RPCs
Audits
back-office support
legal guidance
bootstrapping / investment
ecosystem guidance
distribution
server hosting
productivity/office suites

and so on. the idea is that this would be all part of a somewhat coordinated effort so you can offer bundles to promising projects. basically what you could get from an accelerator

I wanted to shoot for this because this is foundationally the most impactful thing we can do as an ecosystem, let providers come and apply to be preferred providers. this is something where everyone wins, and it’d be a huge step forward for ecosystem funds in general

1 Like
7

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!

1 Like
8

I’m an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and I believe this proposal should move to a vote.

We’ve seen several grant proposals in the past addressing selected issues from the set mentioned here, but just separately from others (so RPC provider offered RPC cost subsidy, some platform provider offered their platform cost subsidy, etc.). This request allows for mission proposals addressing umbrella offerings covering several separate aspects that could significantly help to kickstart early stage initiatives to a working MVP (in an accelerator-type of way). I like the overall idea and would love to see if there’s an interest from the potential proposers.

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9

Bringing the amount on this one down to 400k to trry to accommodate more missions. Please consider a look at this one - this would carry on the RFG work and keep us at the forefront of grants.

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10

Fully support this, developer support is essential.

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

1 Like
11

flagging @Pr0 for final comments. Taking down to 300k in light of probability that many of these are going to be first-timers so can’t get that much. so also taking down to ember

1 Like
12

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

1 Like
13

Looks like this has the necessary 4 approvals but just in case we’d like to also signal our support for this mission. Attracting high quality service providers to support projects would be a major boost to the ecosystem. We are an Optimism delegate with sufficient voting power and believe this proposal is ready to move to a vote.

1 Like
15

The Grants Council has opened early submissions as an Indication of Interest for this mission request here

For your application to be considered, the Mission request must pass the Token House vote on February 14th. Submissions will not be considered if a Mission Request is not approved on the 14th.

16

The Council has collectively decided to reject all oustanding propsals under this Mission and invite them to resubmit with more attention paid to the spirit of the Mission. Because I sit at an unusual position as the author of this mission and a member of the Grant Council, I’m going to offer some guidance on what we are looking for.

The summary:

An even more succinct way of putting this is: imagine the kind of support a startup incubator provides to startups; startups need this support, and the incubator has the size and resources to offer it. We can offer this kind of model.

Imagine a highly promising project led by a handful of independent builders. They have some funds but not much—and, more importantly, they lack time and other resources to build out their project beyond what they are individually capable of managing.

There’s a lot they have to take care of or fund: audits, RPC costs, deployment costs, yes, but also business formation; legal preparation; payroll; fundraising. If they are deploying a token, there’s liquidity, treasury management, regulatory concerns, etc. The list goes on, but what unites these areas is that they are essential to new projects and often prohitively resource-consuming. Audits, for example, are essential and expensive enough that many projects turn to fundraising specifically to afford them.

There are also business concerns that could, under the right circumstances, be addressed as part of this Mission: new venture strategy; business development; hiring; marketing, etc. Our bar is especially high for service providers in this sphere; there are many who claim to offer these services, but few can at the level we’d hope to be able to offer, which is at the top of our industry. It is of course also very difficult for a DAO to oversee this kind of service.

All of this is to say that proposals should consider, in concrete terms: who is the builder we’re targeting with our offer? How would our in-kind support help this kind of builder? What about this service we are offering is important or helpful enough for this builder to come deploy on Optimism or consider Optimism the best place to build? Do we have evidence that many new projects need help with this service? And, finally: are we the demonstrably the best at what we do?

17

Hi Jack,

Thank you for the detailed clarification regarding the Mission.

I have a question regarding the scope of proposals, specifically about targeting builders within the superchain network. Would offering services aimed at supporting these builders align with the Mission’s objectives?

For example, I’m considering proposing web development services to assist superchain teams in launching their ecosystem pages. Would such a service be considered relevant and within the scope of this Mission?

Thank you!

1 Like
18

This is the answer provided by @jackanorak on discord

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@lavande can you share your opinion on this? This mission is part of Intent 2 and I find it a bit unclear whether proposing web development services to assist superchain teams in launching their ecosystem pages fits here or not.

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19

I think that could be considered under the second bullet point!

1 Like
20

This Mission Intent is great - making it as simple as possible for new projects to build on Optimism and access the services they need is crucial. A gap to fill would be around streamlining access to these service providers by helping projects understand which service providers are good, how to contact and contract with them, etc. I.e., a directory of service providers across the outlined areas.

We would love to contribute and build this out! @jackanorak, @lavande, let us know if this is of interest - happy to draft a first version and iterate with you and any other relevant parties involved.