TL;DR
This comprehensive data compilation documents RetroPGF’s evolution across Rounds 1–7, from a $1M experiment to a 16M OP dual-track system.
Key insights include:
- Budget scaling from $1M to 30M OP peak
- Participant growth from 24 to 178+ voters with innovative guest voter experiments
- Voting mechanism evolution from quadratic to metric-based systems
- Strategic pivots across infrastructure, governance, developer tooling, and on-chain builders
- Consistent winners like Protocol Guild and go-ethereum demonstrate sustained public goods funding
- Projects like Uniswap and Aerodrome show growth-focused allocation
This resource consolidates all RetroPGF data in one place, showing how the program successfully embodies “impact = profit” while adapting mechanisms to reward diverse ecosystem contributions.
RetroPGF Strategy Evolution by Round
Round 1: Early Optimistic Ethereum Contributors
Core Goal: Reward early projects that contributed foundational value to the Optimistic Ethereum ecosystem before the Optimism Collective officially launched.
What Was Incentivized:
- Projects delivering technical, educational, or community value to Optimistic Ethereum
- Contributions made before formal incentives existed
- Work supporting early adoption and ecosystem growth
Strategic Impact: This inaugural round served as the first experiment in retroactive funding, validating that “impact = profit” could work in practice. It established foundational processes and priorities for future rounds while recognizing contributors who laid the essential groundwork for the Collective’s emergence.
Round 2: OP Stack
Core Goal: Fund public goods supporting OP Stack development, usability, and awareness.
What Was Incentivized:
- Infrastructure and dependencies are critical for building or deploying the OP Stack
- Tooling and utilities empowering builders and governance participants
- Educational efforts are increasing understanding of Optimism’s technical and social systems
Strategic Impact: Accelerated OP Stack adoption as Optimism’s foundational technology while supporting the goal to scale Ethereum through modular, open-source architecture. This round strengthened ecosystem self-sufficiency by rewarding contributors beyond core protocol development.
Round 3: Multi-Category Expansion
Focus Areas: OP Stack, Collective Governance, Developer Ecosystem, End User Experience & Adoption
Core Goal: Reward contributors who created a measurable positive impact for the Optimism Collective, closing the gap between impact and profit in alignment with the impact = profit principle.
What Was Incentivized:
- Contributions supporting development, growth, and adoption across the Optimism ecosystem
- Work advancing OP Stack, governance infrastructure, developer tools, and user experience
- Projects with meaningful impact not fully compensated by market mechanisms
Strategic Impact: Fully embodied the Collective’s core philosophy while introducing collaborative voting via the “Lists” feature. This round established the Citizen House as the primary decision-making body for RetroPGF and promoted long-term alignment by rewarding real-world value creation across multiple ecosystem dimensions.
Round 4: Onchain Builders
Core Goal: Reward builders who deployed contracts on the Superchain and contributed to increased blockspace demand and collective value.
What Was Incentivized:
- Projects deploying smart contracts to any OP Chain within the Superchain
- Onchain products driving measurable activity and adoption
- Builders contributing to ecosystem growth and network utility
Strategic Impact: Advanced the “impact = profit” vision by directly rewarding usage while supporting Superchain expansion. This round encouraged long-term public goods sustainability through demand-driven rewards.
Round 5: OP Stack Contributors
Core Goal: Reward contributors to the OP Stack core infrastructure, research and development, and accessibility tooling.
What Was Incentivized:
- Core Ethereum infrastructure supporting the OP Stack
- Research advancing modularity, performance, and decentralization
- Tooling making OP Stack more accessible to developers and users
Strategic Impact: Reinforced OP Stack as a critical public good for the modular Superchain vision while ensuring continued investment in foundational infrastructure.
Round 6: Governance Contributors
Core Goal: Reward impactful contributions to Optimism Governance, including infrastructure, analytics, and leadership that strengthen decentralized decision-making.
What Was Incentivized:
- Delegates demonstrating leadership, education, and proposal authorship
- Governance tooling and dashboards are improving transparency and user experience
- Analysts and researchers providing insights into governance behavior and trends
Strategic Impact: Treated governance as infrastructure critical to protocol legitimacy and scalability. This round supported experimentation in decentralized coordination while encouraging sustained community engagement in protocol direction.
Round 7: Dual-Track Innovation
Onchain Builders Track
Goal: Reward projects enabling cross-chain activity and driving Superchain adoption using data to measure real onchain impact.
What Was Incentivized:
- Cross-chain dApps and interoperability protocols
- Multi-chain builders creating sticky onchain experiences
- High-impact projects with measurable Superchain activity
Dev Tooling Track
Goal: Reward core tooling projects, empowering developers to build scalable, high-quality Superchain applications.
What Was Incentivized:
- Foundational tools like compilers, debuggers, libraries, SDKs, and frameworks
- Infrastructure-as-a-service tools for deployment, monitoring, and testing
- Open-source tools improving developer experience, security, and performance
Strategic Impact: Strengthened Superchain foundations while reducing barriers to entry for builders. This dual-track approach demonstrated program maturity by specializing funding mechanisms for distinct ecosystem needs.
Budget Allocation and Distribution Analysis
| Round | Budget | Allocated | Key Focus Areas | Top Recipients |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| R1 | $1M | $1M | Ecosystem Infrastructure | Ethersjs, go-ethereum, EthGlobal |
| R2 | 10M OP | 10M OP | Infrastructure, Education, Tooling | Protocol Guild, L2BEAT, Geth |
| R3 | 30M OP | 30M OP | Multi-category Expansion | Protocol Guild, go-ethereum, Solidity |
| R4 | 10M OP | 10M OP | DeFi, Infrastructure, Wallets | Layer3, Zora, LI.FI |
| R5 | 8M OP | 8M OP | Core Protocol, Client Implementation | go-ethereum, Protocol Guild, Solidity |
| R6 | Min: 1.1M OP Max:3.5M OP | 2.4M OP | Governance Infrastructure | OSO Insights, numbaNERDs, EAS, growthepie, Developer Advisory Board |
| R7 (Onchain Builders) | Upto 8M OP | 6.6M OP | Cross-chain apps, User-focused dApps, Ecosystem expansion | Uniswap, Aerodrome, Velodrome |
| R7 (Dev Tooling) | Upto 8M OP | 6.6M OP | Open-source frameworks, Compilers, Debugging tools, Infra | Viem: Typescript Interface for Ethereum, Hardhat, Solidity |
Voting Mechanism Evolution
Algorithmic Progression
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Round 1 - Early Optimistic Ethereum Contributors:
Simple quadratic voting viaquadraticvote.cowith $1M distributed based on quadratic scores among 24 badgeholders. -
Round 2 - OP Stack:
Custom interface with median-based scoring, where 74 badgeholders allocated 10M OP across three categories. -
Round 3 - OP Stack, Collective Governance, Developer Ecosystem, End User Experience & Adoption:
Advanced quorum system requiring a minimum of 17 badgeholder votes with 5M OP maximum per project, using median aggregation among 146 participants. -
Round 4 - Onchain Builders:
Introduced metric-based impact scoring with normalized 10M OP distribution and 500K OP cap per badgeholder per project. -
Rounds 5 - OP Stack Contributors and Round 6 - Governance Contributors:
Implemented ballot-based weights with category allocations, introducing guest voters alongside badgeholders using normalized and capped distributions. -
Round 7 - Onchain Builders + Dev Tooling:
Citizens and guest voters voted on the reward algorithms that were ultimately used to distribute funding to projects.
Participant Growth and Diversification
| Round | Citizens | Guest Voters | Total | Selection Method |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| R1 | 24 | - | 24 | - |
| R2 | 74 | - | 74 | - |
| R3 | 146 | - | 146 | - |
| R4 | 133 | - | 133 | - |
| R5 | 84 | 27 | 111 | GitHub EigenTrust algorithm |
| R6 | 102 | 76 | 178 | Random sortition from Superchain users |
| R7 | TBD | TBD | TBD | Past recipients + Superchain organizations |
Key Insights and Patterns
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Consistent Infrastructure Investment: Projects like Protocol Guild, go-ethereum, and Solidity received funding across multiple rounds, demonstrating the program’s commitment to foundational public goods.
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Strategic Evolution: The program progressed from broad ecosystem support to specialized tracks addressing specific needs like governance infrastructure and developer tooling.
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Data-Driven Maturation: Later rounds incorporated sophisticated metrics and monthly tracking, showing evolution toward evidence-based allocation decisions.
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Balanced Growth Focus: The dual emphasis on infrastructure and usage-driving applications reflects a mature understanding of ecosystem development needs.
This comprehensive evolution demonstrates how RetroPGF has successfully scaled from experimental concept to sophisticated funding mechanism, consistently embodying “impact = profit” while adapting to meet diverse ecosystem needs across governance, infrastructure, and application development.
This data compilation was developed through the collaborative efforts of @Chain_L, @ARDev097, @Mary17, and @jason42 from LamprosDAO, combining diverse perspectives and expertise to provide the Optimism community with consolidated RetroPGF information in one accessible place.
Stay tuned for our next post, where we’ll analyze this data to uncover key patterns, insights, and recommendations for the Optimism community. While we research patterns, we share this as it seems to be a better aggregation of everything related to RPGF (now RF)
We welcome any feedback or suggestions from the community to help improve our research and make it more valuable for everyone!