Recognizing Impact: Critical Context for RetroFunding Reviewers and Governance Participants

Retro Funding Missions đź”´
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Urgent Context & Request

We request your urgent attention regarding critical governance infrastructure and contributions that deserve recognition in RetroFunding Round 6 - both for immediate evaluation and to strengthen future rounds.

While our Optimism Fractal Respect Game Events application was approved in RetroFunding Round 6, three complementary projects that created distinct, verifiable impact were mistakenly declined as duplicates. These essential contributions risk going unrecognized due to round design changes, technical issues during review, limited awareness of the novel governance processes we’re pioneering, and several other factors detailed in our Appeal to the Foundation and detailed documentation about Recognizing Impact in RetroFunding Round 6 .

Team Impact & Innovation

These projects represent the work of dedicated events and development teams - three full-time contributors working exclusively on Optimism for over a year, plus three additional contributors dedicating several months each. Together, they’ve created proven systems for democratic scaling, built essential reputation infrastructure, and fostered critical collaborations across the Superchain. Through hundreds of onchain attestations and extensive engagement from delegates, council members, and builders, these initiatives have demonstrated significant value for the Collective’s governance processes.

Recognition & Path Forward

Despite providing comprehensive documentation during initial review and detailed appeals, most of our team’s contributions remain excluded from recognition in Round 6- including technical infrastructure and our team’s other events that are explicitly excluded from the approved application. This situation impacts not only our team’s ability to sustainably build critical infrastructure, but also affects the Collective’s capacity to properly recognize and reward demonstrated impact. There are two paths forward:

  1. With less than one day remaining in Round 6 voting, badge holders and guest reviewers can support all four projects by recognizing their comprehensive impact through the Optimism Fractal Respect Game Events application.

  2. For governance participants reviewing this documentation at any time, these experiences provide valuable insights for improving RetroFunding’s ability to recognize demonstrated impact, achieve its core axiom of impact=profit, and help summon Ether’s Phoenix.

We greatly appreciate badge holders and reviewers who take time to carefully evaluate these contributions, as well as governance participants engaging with this documentation to help strengthen RetroFunding’s recognition processes. Your attention to these matters directly supports the Collective’s vision to fairly reward public goods creation.

Purpose & Overview

This documentation serves both immediate evaluation needs and longer-term improvement of RetroFunding processes. For each project, we provide comprehensive evidence of demonstrated value through:

  • Concrete metrics and implementation evidence
  • Documentation of unique contributions
  • Critical role in Collective governance
  • Verification through community feedback

Beyond immediate review needs, this documentation aims to:

  • Increase awareness of critical governance infrastructure
  • Demonstrate recognition challenges faced by builders
  • Provide insights for improving future rounds
  • Support continuous evolution of RetroFunding

The following sections provide concise overviews of four projects strengthening Optimism governance, with comprehensive documentation available through the linked resources for each initiative. Together, they demonstrate both immediate value and broader insights for the Collective’s evolution.

Note: All metrics and impact evidence presented below reflect the RetroFunding measurement period of October 2023 - September 2024. For a brief visual overview of these initiatives, you can watch our presentation from our recent RetroPitches event series.

Optimism Fractal Respect Game Events: Pioneering Democratic Scaling

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Optimism Fractal serves as a primary hub for pioneering governance processes, testing governance infrastructure, and connecting leaders on the Superchain. Following our core intents of fostering collaboration, awarding public good creators, and optimizing governance, we’ve created proven systems for measuring contributions and scaling democratic participation.

Key metrics demonstrate concrete impact:

  • 43 weekly Respect Game events enabling governance experimentation
  • Over 350 presentations about contributions to Optimism
  • Over 50 unique participants and a highly engaged community of governance builders
  • 58 community proposals and democratic council initiation processes with over 220 votes
  • Successful implementation of governance processes by other Superchain communities like ZAO Fractal

Our events have fostered critical governance development by:

  • Providing consistent testing environment for tools
  • Enabling rapid feedback from active users
  • Attracting developers through reputation-based recognition
  • Pioneering custom built tools (operating on the OP Mainnet)
  • Building community around governance innovation

We’ve received outstanding feedback from governance leaders across the ecosystem, including Developer Advisory Board members, top Token House delegates, council members from various governance bodies, and key builders. Over 100 curated testimonials demonstrating impact can be explored at OptimismFractal.com/feedback.

Learn more:

Optimystics Tools: Essential Infrastructure for Democratic Coordination

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Optimystics Tools provides critical reputation and identity infrastructure that has been maintained and enhanced over the past year by a dedicated development team separate from event facilitation. Our infrastructure directly supports Optimism Governance by enabling decentralized peer evaluation and onchain attestations that enhance both RetroFunding and Token House grants processes, while also providing critical infrastructure that addresses core needs identified by the Foundation for scaling both houses of the Collective.

Key metrics demonstrate concrete impact:

  • ~350 consensus transactions representing ~1,500 onchain attestations
  • Each consensus decision involves 3-6 participants evaluating impact
  • Multiple engagements from delegates and grant recipients
  • Comprehensive feedback from governance leaders verifying utility
  • Integration of Respect Tokens across multiple protocols and systems

In addition to supporting grants processes, our infrastructure addresses core needs identified by the Foundation for scaling both houses of the Collective:

  • Provides tested onchain infrastructure for expanding the Citizens’ House through reputation-based processes, directly addressing the Foundation’s identified need for “experimentation and clarity”
  • Facilitates deliberative discussions through Fractalgram and Respect Games apps, supporting transparent evaluation, consensus building, and decision-making at scale
  • Creates foundation for both houses through sybil-resistant reputation systems, democratic resource allocation frameworks, and onchain governance execution

Learn more:

Eden Fractal Events: Educational Foundation for Democratic Scaling

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Eden Fractal, an independent community focused on governance innovation, provides essential educational infrastructure for developing scalable democratic processes. Through focused bi-weekly events, we pioneer advanced implementations of fractal democracy while facilitating critical knowledge transfer between experienced practitioners across the Superchain.

Key metrics demonstrate concrete impact:

  • 37 bi-weekly events enabling deep technical exploration
  • Average 5-7 participants fostering focused governance discussions
  • Comprehensive documentation of governance experiments
  • Regular participation from builders across OP Mainnet, Base, and other networks
  • Successful initiation of fractal governance on Base

Our events have fostered critical governance development by:

  • Providing dedicated space for advanced governance exploration
  • Enabling extended technical presentations and implementations
  • Facilitating collaboration between governance innovators
  • Supporting knowledge transfer across Superchain networks
  • Creating foundation for scaling democratic processes

Learn more:

Optimism Town Hall + RetroPitches: Democratic Discussion & Evaluation

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Optimism Town Hall and RetroPitches offer essential governance education, community coordination, and impact evaluation spaces through an open forum enhanced by democratic topic selection. Our Cagendas and OPTOPICS systems pioneer the use of on-chain reputation for collaborative agenda-setting while facilitating critical discussions about Optimism governance.

Key metrics demonstrate concrete impact:

  • 17 weekly events facilitating governance education and discussion
  • 3 RetroPitches events showcasing of 13 RetroPGF projects with badgeholder participation
  • 35 topic proposals with 49 votes from community members (May-Sept)
  • Cagendas and OPTOPICS implementations with active participation from 12+ members
  • Approximately 40 diverse participants joining events
  • Comprehensive coverage of Season 6 processes, RetroFunding improvements, and governance tools

Our events have fostered critical governance processes by:

  • Enabling direct interaction with governance mechanisms through structured discussions
  • Facilitating knowledge transfer between experienced participants and newcomers
  • Supporting RetroFunding through novel evaluation methods and educational resources
  • Creating dedicated space for deep dives into governance development
  • Receiving consistent positive feedback from Grants Council members, delegates, and builders

Learn more:

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Recognizing Impact: Supporting Public Goods Today and Tomorrow

These four projects have each created verifiable impact - demonstrated through onchain metrics, consistent stakeholder feedback, and direct alignment with RetroFunding Round 6’s stated intents. They represent exactly the kind of public goods that RetroFunding aims to recognize and reward. Together, they have played critical roles in advancing Optimism governance through proven technical infrastructure, facilitation of essential governance processes at our events, and pioneering implementations that strengthen democratic coordination.

Supporting These Projects Through RetroFunding Round 6

For badge holders and guest reviewers finalizing evaluations before voting ends tomorrow, supporting the Optimism Fractal Respect Game Events application represents the key pathway for recognizing this comprehensive body of work. This application enables the sustainable development of all these complementary initiatives that strengthen Optimism Collective governance.

Our team of three full-time and three part-time contributors has dedicated over a year to developing and testing these systems, yet most of this work remains unrecognized. Unlike many projects in the governance leadership category that have already received substantial funding from the Collective, we have operated primarily through volunteer efforts, with only modest support from RetroFunding Round 3 split between four contributors.

We greatly appreciate your consideration in helping recognize this demonstrated impact during these final hours of voting. We welcome any questions or feedback about these contributions. For those interested in supporting fair recognition of governance innovation, we invite you to share this post or our twitter thread providing a concise overview of the situation.

Collaborating to Summon Ether’s Phoenix

While voting for RetroFunding Round 6 is ending tomorrow, the insights gathered through this experience can help strengthen RetroFunding’s ability to recognize and reward impact in future rounds.

We encourage you to explore the detailed evidence above showing each initiative’s demonstrated impact, critical role for the Collective, and distinct value. For additional context around recognition challenges in RetroFunding, we also encourage you to review our Appeal to the Foundation and Recognizing Impact in RetroFunding Round 6 analysis linked at the top of the post. Together, these materials offer a valuable case study highlighting key opportunities for improvement, including:

  • Recognition challenges faced by governance builders
  • Opportunities for enhancing impact evaluation at scale
  • Ways to strengthen RetroFunding’s assessment of demonstrated impact

Based on our experiences with this round of RetroFunding and our work optimizing governance and impact evaluation systems over the past year, we look forward to sharing specific proposals for enhancing these processes. These include allowing adequate time for review while increasing opportunities for builders to be rewarded for their impact.

We invite you to join our weekly events where we pioneer and test powerful new approaches to governance coordination and public goods funding. We also encourage you to explore our educational resources and open-source tools, many of which are linked above, to learn more about these innovations.

To everyone reviewing these materials and considering how to fairly reward impact with profit - both in this round and future improvements - thank you. We look forward to working together to help the Optimism Collective actualize the Optimistic Vision and fulfill the axiom of impact equals profit through RetroFunding.

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Regarding duplicate applications, this is a serious misunderstanding.

I can see some logic behind rejection reasons concerning the eligibility of some of the applications, but the arguments provided concerning duplicate applications are weak, to say the least. They are basically saying: “this is a duplicate project, because it was submitted by the same person and these projects are related”. Well, if the same organization cannot submit multiple project applications or if these projects cannot be related then the rules should state that clearly. Instead, the application process enables you to create organizations and add multiple projects to them. This is completely misleading. The application process revolves around projects (each application being a project) but reviewers judge teams or even worse people from these organizations who submit and their uniqueness.

A larger picture

I understand that for a person who is new to fractals and respect game it might seem like all one same thing (it might be hard to differentiate projects within our ecosystem of fractals). This highlights a weakness in a review process. And it is the same weakness as in all public goods funding platforms: Recognition of public goods is a bigger problem than rewarding public goods. Rewarding public goods is relatively easy once you get recognition of public goods right. In other words, recognizing and distinguishing public goods is like 80% or more of the complexity behind rewarding public goods. And it’s the part that needs the most innovation and experimentation right now (especially through social games like Respect game)

This brings us to the reason why these initiatives should be funded. Fractals like Optimism Fractal and EdenFractal are primarily focused on this very problem: recognizing public goods. And it does so without requiring hours of reviewers reading through walls of text in applications. I wrote about potential for rpgf to integrate with Optimism Fractal a while ago.

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