Retro Funding: Moving from broad to narrow scoped rounds

[Carlosjmelgar]

Thanks for this great post signaling the shift from broad to narrow round scope. It’s easy to overlook that RetroPGF is still a fledging funding mechanism, and yet, has already played an important role in identifying and funding meaningful contributions to Optimism, the Superchain, Ethereum, and in many cases, physical/ local public goods.

@system

Drive & measure builder behavior: A narrower scope allows builders to better understand what will be rewarded in the future. It allows the Collective to focus marketing efforts on reaching the relevant audience for each round. Further, it enables improvements in the measurement of impact created as a result of a Retro Funding round. Measuring the effectiveness of Retro Funding is key for the Citizens’ House to be able to make informed allocation decisions.

RetroPGF has served the collective well in attracting talent from other ecosystems based on the impact = profit meme/ mantra. On the flip side, it has also created contributor/ grantee entitlement. Narrow round design should provide more clarity and reduce this entitlement we’ve seen in previous rounds. Props to everyone involved for listening to the community and making these changes so quickly.

@system

Adapt round design to scope: Different types of impact can be addressed by different types of round design. By leveraging a narrow round scope, we can embrace the different types of contributions and optimize for the most accurate impact assessment within the scope of the round.

Do new round designs also identify badgeholder domain expertise and segment allocation power? This could help address RetroPGF3 concerns pertaining to badgeholders overlooking the most impactful protocols in favor for social layer contributions. Lists were a great idea to help with this, but it sometimes resulted in soft collusion, self dealing and omissions based on personal interests/ competition. It could be interesting to see contributors focus on their area of expertise to prevent being overwhelmed by the inevitable increase in applicants.

@system

To advance the transparency of the design process, the Foundation will open source plans for the proposed rounds in 2024 shortly.

Wen ser?
Will teams have ample time to pivot to other forms of impact after learning their work has been deprioritized? We might see a wave of disgruntled contributors if they feel they spent months on an impact journey that wasn’t fruitful. I’m sure comms teams are already working on a crisis management strategy for this inevitability.

Another slightly related topic - Will we see any changes in how badges are earned/ given?

[Hellofady]

I think moving to narrow scoped rounds means clearer choices and hopefully, better results.

But also, some good projects might get left out because they don’t fit the “tight” focus.

It’s all about finding the right balance between making things simpler and keeping everyone involved & happy.

[charlesfreeborn]

A welcome development and am looking forward to the learnings from this new approach

[santicristobal]

Hi everyone,

Very interesting decision, I’m super curious to see how Round 4 will look like in practice. I believe this is a huge change, and while there are some risks in moving to more narrow rounds, I feel it’s a step in the right direction for a few reasons:

• Feedback from Round 3 made it quite clear that something had to change, specially considering that the number of applicants will most likely keep increasing.
• We already have some good experience and learnings from “broad” rounds after 3 iterations.
• Specific (smaller) rounds should be much easier to handle and I envision this smaller rounds are much more likely to become “more frequent” in the long term (similar to gitcoin rounds).

That said, it still feels like a bold move and I would love to have more details on how things are gonna work out. I also feel it’s very important to communicate this change as broadly as possible, since there are many teams whose work might be affected as a result.

Another concern worth raising is the following: if we have specific rounds, with “domain experts” deciding on each round, we will for sure have more “informed/educated” voting, but aren’t we risking centralization? I feel that the chances of collusion/gatekeeping/friend-favouring are much higher if you only have let’s say 40 badgeholders per domain.

This might be already thought of since probably the number of badgeholders will increase, but I’m very curious to have more details on the thought process and the analysis done behind the decision.