Thank you @jrocki.eth for writing this up.
Please keep in mind that I am only a community member of Dope Wars, Dope DAO has never paid for me for any type of work, and my views here are my own and do not represent that of the Dope Wars community or DAO.
I feel that we have done everything that has been asked us based on delegate feedback from our first proposal (seeking 1M OP), and in the week of feedback for this proposal (400k, reduced to 300k based on feedback)
For example, from our first 1m OP proposal @lefterisjp wrote:
I want to stress this splitting up the proposal. Even if you indeed need 1M $OP for 2 years of development, making 1 new proposal every 6 months is a much easier way to get this approved. You could even mention in the initial proposal that you will in total need 1M $OP and plan to follow up with more as the milestones of your proposal are completed and that delegates should only approve if they are comfortable with you coming back for more in doses like that.
And then
This is a hard vote for me as a delegator has contacted me in Twitter and asked me to specifically vote YES here, and since I really like what you are building and how you are doing so.
But the amount is simply too high for a single proposal.
If you follow through again later with splitting this into multiple proposals as I suggested above, with each proposal representing a certain milestone of the project it will be much much easier for me to vote in favor. Which is something I really want to do.
I think the same applies for most other delegates.
Please don’t be discouraged and resubmit another proposal taking in all our feedback.
And this from @linda:
Thanks for sharing your proposal. Similar to other delegates, I feel the amount requested is too high and I would prefer this amount to be broken up into multiple batches based on the progress/traction of the fund usage so I will be voting no on this specific proposal. Happy to re-review for a future one!
We got a Yes in that proposal for 1m OP from current NFT & Gaming Chair @jrocki.eth:
YES
Dope Wars will be putting the funds to good use in order to bring a new cohort (gaming) of users into the ecosystem
And this from @quix
We voted yes on this proposal. The Dope Wars team was the first major NFT project to move from layer 1 Ethereum to Optimism (before there was a marketplace). They have a strong track record of technical development and community building. We believe it’s important to support novel use cases of NFTs, and funds given to Dope Wars are likely to support the type of interesting experiences that bring new users to Optimism.
Moving to the first iteration of current proposal, we updated things to reflect the current state of DW, and based on advice like the above from the previous proposal, dropped our ask 60%. We then dropped it another 25% (to 300k) based on forum feedback, and structured and began internally implementing RADIP, primarily based on the guidance of NFT & Gaming Committee member @OPUser
We did not receive feedback from Committee member @Michael, who voted NO. From Michael’s delegate commitment post:
My Web3 interests:
Economics, Infrastructure, DeFi, Social Impact, Wallets
My skills and areas of expertise: Software Engineering, Machine Learning/Robotics, Economics, Finance, Product, Education
My favorite Web3 projects: Optimism, Gnosis Safe, CowSwap
I think it important for delegates to note the lack of mention of anything NFT or gaming related in Michael’s post, and also to note that they did not provide any public feedback to DW.
Personally, it feels that the OP delegates are simply more comfortable with DeFi, and we all could speculate on a number of reasons for this. But I believe this is short-sighted. I am highly interested in the gov processes being worked on here and the OP Vision in general. However, it would be a shame to see Optimism become a farming-centric chain rather than one that takes risks in innovative areas with potential for massive disruption via public goods framework, within a vertical that has seen huge traction on other chains.
EDIT: Delegates should note that only 2/5 committee members voted NO. Due to an abstention (which would have otherwise been a YES), there seems to have been an impasse.
Neither of the 2 NO voters have joined the DW discord server, the most obvious place for due diligence.
There were no other projects for this committee to vet this cycle.