RetroPGF Experimentation: Voting Algorithms

Based on my experience in receiving 3 grants: Ambassador, Individual, Optimism_CIS I would like to highlight the following shortcomings of the previous round of grantees and possible solutions:

  • Real contribution of nominees for Optimism and the ecosystem
  • Inactive badgeholders
  • Metrics evaluation

All of these shortcomings were picked up by me while participating in RPGF3 and analyzing those who received OP distributions. To do this, I analyzed all recipients of the End User Experience & Adoption category

Solution

  • Real contribution of nominees for Optimism and ecosystem.
    I propose to introduce a system with Karma for nominees. It offers tracking of activity over the entire content creation period, as well as participant behavior outside of the Contributions provided for review. Grantees who did not create content for OP, or who made low quality content (trivially translating official announcements through google translator and publishing it on their media) have already been noticed.
    Here are some examples:
  • Agora - Home of Optimism Voters
  • Optimism Agora
    I would not like to note the rest, as it would be too subjective. Therefore, I have highlighted the most obvious examples of poor or no counterparties.

It is necessary to create a working group of badge holders who are ready to keep records at least for existing grantees and to monitor not the total contribution from date N to today (if we are talking about those who have already received a grant), but to assess the contribution from RPGF3 to RPGF4. Yes, there are examples of large projects that need more time for implementation, but they should also report on the changes that have taken place in the given period.
The badgeholder group should be anonymous to RPGF nominees and defined within the collective.

Solution

  • Inactive badgeholders
    The first solution solves this problem as well. By dividing into working groups to check “Karma”, many people will understand the real contribution of badgeholders.
    Another question: What to do with inactive ones? In this case, either cancel them or add more of them by selecting proactive community members.
    This is a question of technical plan and decentralization in voting.

Solution

  • Evaluation of metrics
    The most sensitive question. We have already seen examples of distributing grants to those who do not create value for the ecosystem, but at the same time it is important to notice the participants whose work is happening within the project. Again, segmenting the working group working on Karma will help in this case. Some groups will study the contribution of developers, some will research the contribution of media, and some will study internal participants whose metrics cannot be attributed to populization, but whose contribution is also important to the ecosystem.

Conclusion:
Yes, I have little familiarity with the internal and technical workings of badgeholders and RPGF, but I have proceeded from external data available to the average user.
I hope the comments and solutions described above will help the team in improving the work.
Thanks.

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