I know that “impact = reward” has been a guiding light for RPGF, and thus concerns about rewards > impact should be taken seriously, especially to ensure long-term sustainability and legitimacy of the mechanism. I also understand the gut reaction that “lower turnout should mean lower total reward”.
That being said, it isnt clear to me that a mid-round pivot in this fashion is a helpful approach. Please consider;
- This round includes the category “Ethereum core maintenance”, which is of existential importance to both Optimism and any project built on Optimism
- As Tim indicated, the “turnout” should be contextualized properly; funding from this round will be distributed to hundreds of extremely impactful individuals
- Rushing a vote that biases towards reducing funding is harmful to the legitimacy of RPGF, especially considering that I havent actually seen any arguments that “8M OP is disproportionate to the impact generated in this round”
Simply increasing or decreasing funding for rounds is a very blunt instrument that will be less effective at balancing “impact” and “reward” versus introducing checks and balances into the voting mechanism itself. Earlier rounds trusted badgeholders to roughly dictate “how much” funding projects could get, but this was removed in newer rounds for the sake of simplicity and homogeneity. Perhaps a middle ground needs to be explored.
If we do in fact move forward with this vote, I will vote to keep the round size as-is. I hope I wont have to!