Mission Request made by @Chom and originally shared here.
Delegate Mission Request Summary
This mission request is designed to enable the developer community to contribute to the core OP Stack by engaging in research and implementation on various topics. Since this is a research problem, it’s possible that this may fail. In such cases, grantees are required to open source their implementation and create follow-up documentation that details the reasons for failure and any obstacles encountered. This approach ensures that even unsuccessful attempts contribute to the collective knowledge and progress of the OP Stack community.
S5 Intent: Intent 1 - Progress towards technical decentralization
Proposing Delegate: MinimalGravitas
Proposal Tier: Ember
Baseline grant amount: 250,000 OP (10k - 50k OP per topic, encouraged to submit multiple topics in one proposal)
Should this Foundation Mission be fulfilled by one or multiple applicants: Multiple
Submit by: To be set by Grants Council
Selection by: Grants Council and Developer Advisory Board
Start date: February 1st 2024
Completion date: February 1st 2025
Specification:
How will this Delegate Mission Request help accomplish the above intent?
Currently, OP Stack is developed mainly by OP Labs and a few contributors such as Test In Prod. The limited number of contributors and experimental opportunities poses a risk for OP Stack to lag behind significant competitors, such as Arbitrum Orbit.
The grant process used previously is not well-suited for research and experimentation because if a project does not meet its goals, the OP tokens are taken back. To address this, we propose creating a safe space for researchers to work on OP Stack without worrying too much about feasibility. Researchers can document their failures and obstacles, providing valuable insights for future researchers to build upon and improve.
Encouraging external developers to contribute to the research and exploration of OP Stack’s possibilities is vital. It ensures that OP Stack stays in line with market demands. This approach allows OP Labs’ core developers to focus on essential features without having to chase market trends, which often diverge from core implementations.
The goal of this mission is both research and implementation. Therefore, the team must include developers who are capable of implementing these topics.
Example of research topics:
- Research on enabling using ERC-20 token as a native gas token (Arbitrum Orbit has implemented)
- Research on redundant or decentralized sequencing (Credit)
- Tooling to enable circumventing a faulty sequencer (Credit)
- Research on batcher gas fee optimization (Example: Span Batch)
What is required to execute this Delegate Mission Request?:
- The teams participating in this mission should have members skilled in implementing the research topics.
- Developers need extensive experience in the relevant development field. Having a history of contributing to related open-source projects is a plus.
- The mission aims not just at research but also at the practical application of the findings. This requires a combination of theoretical understanding and hands-on technical expertise.
- Researchers are required to submit a comprehensive proposal, which should include:
- A list of research topics.
- Grant size justification for each topic.
- The main researchers and developers’ relevant past experiences.
- The potential uses and advantages of the proposed topics.
- An initial plan for implementation, which may be modified during the project.
- The implementation work should be carried out on a repository or forked repository that is open-sourced to the public.
- Whether to submit a pull request to the core repository is optional.
- By January 2025, researchers need to provide a report detailing their work. This report should cover the implementation process, results, use cases, and an account of any failures or challenges encountered.
- It’s preferable for one entity to submit a single proposal covering multiple topics, rather than multiple proposals unnecessarily.
How should the Token House measure progress towards this Mission?:
- Monitor open source GitHub repository for progress.
- Monitor adoption of the research and implementation.
- Report document published after completion or failure by January 2025.
How should badgeholders measure impact upon completion of this Mission?:
- Assess the extent to which the research and implementation are being utilized and adopted within the relevant community or by target users.
- Monitor mentions and discussions about the tooling on various social media platforms and forums.
- Analyze key metrics on GitHub such as Issues, Pull Requests, Stars, Watches, and Forks.
- Incorporation into the official Optimism documentation (https://docs.optimism.io)
- Integrated into the core repository or Optimism mainnet
Have you engaged a Grant-as-a-service provider for this Mission Request?
No external service provider was engaged for this Mission Request.
Has anyone other than the Proposing Delegate contributed to this Mission Request?
This mission request is drafted by Chomtana.