Why not continue to incentivize Overtime with Phase 0 funds?
- Because phase0 allocation has been 50% distributed already with the remaining allocation reserved for other buckets long before Overtime came to life
- Who is to say that we wont try to reallocate more of remaining OP tokens towards Overtime? We strongly believe in Overtime and you better believe we will try our earnest to make it a huge success story for both Thales and Optimism.
300k OP tokens ask was made with the aim to avoid contention for smth that is clearly a promising product. I am not making a case that 300k is a trivial amount, but so many projects with much less to show in both traction and aligned interests have been endorsed, and you are throwing a fight against allies here.
Many chains are eager to have Overtime and have reached out, but I speak at least for myself in saying that I want to maintain it Optimism native for the foreseeable future. However, we have a governance in place that is watching this proposal very closely, so I feel some committee members should zoom out a bit from their typical poorly written NPC AI questions and consider the communityâs sentiment, PR and the bussiness side of their recommendations.
Respectfully, we went above and beyond with details in this proposal and in replying to your questions, so I dont feel there is value in more of the same arguments.
I will leave you to your best judgement.
5 Likes
I think it could potentially be helpful to take more of a hybrid approach where you provide a short TLDR with a link to a more detailed review of the proposal.
That way someone who just wants a thumbs up or thumbs down can get it and anyone looking for more details on how you arrived at you conclusions has that option.
As I mentioned in Discord today, I think itâs important to make sure that protocols feel their work was understood, accurately represented, and fairly evaluated. Especially in the context of a ânoâ recommendation. I think this would help.
This could also help the two committees to ensure there is a reasonable degree of consistency in their evaluations so the current delta in their approval rates (currently 75% for Committee A vs 33% for Committee B) doesnât become more egregious.
1 Like
There is no requirement that the DeFi Committees have similar approval rates or that even such a metric should concern people. Itâs very plausible their approval/denial ratios are different because theyâre evaluating different projects. Calling differences in outcomes âegregiousâ is just an invented metric used to discredit the work of one or both committees.
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I read this threat from beginning to end and Iâam puzzled and pretty disappointed how you end up thinking requested amount is too high for Overtime product and rejected maybe the best written and deserved project on OP.
I mean I do not get what they need to provide you to get additional funding ?
One of a kind product which does not existing anywhere else on blockchain, they give you growth numbers which no other project has and you are simply questioning how the numbers would be if there is no incentives at first place ? really ?
I thought all purpose of OP token was to drive new users and volume
I think this decision is a disgrace for OP platform and you guys really should think again about how your committee give their decisions and what their real intentions are
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There is no requirement, you are right. I disagree it should not be a cause for concern. Right now it looks far easier to get passed through Committee A than Committee B though admittedly weâre working on a small sample size at the moment.
If we use the Shadow Committee as a control, they seem to be far more in alignment (80% approve) with Committee A (75% approve) than Committee B (33% approve). My fear would be that they are evaluating proposals differently enough that it is driving substantially different outcomes, but it is difficult to evaluate without more line of sight into Committee Aâs underlying thinking.
Voted yes - This was a tough one because it is against the Defi Committee C recommendation and I am not super familiar with the Overtime platform or sports betting. However, I feel like sports and gaming is another very undervalued sector of defi. The amount requested is very reasonable and the token distribution plan is well thought out. I feel this project has the potential to attract new, non native crypto users and drive overall ecosystem growth. I am in support of this proposal.
6 Likes
Right now it looks far easier to get passed through Committee A than Committee B
Itâs already been explained that the committees evaluate different projects, so divergent outcomes are not unusual at all.
If we use the Shadow Committee as a control
Why would we do that? Itâs not an official committee and itâs outcomes are as independent as any other committee. Do you want people to evaluate proposals objectively? Or do you want mandated approval ratios for all committees?
My fear would be that they are evaluating proposals differently enough that it is driving substantially different outcomes
Yes, we know. You think DeFi Committee Aâs reviews are too short. You think DeFI Committee Bâs reviews are wrong. Youâve said so publically here, on twitter, and on the discord.
I donât think the statistical issue is relevant at all, and pressing it just makes it look like youâre trying to discredit them with bogus statistics.
Friend, once again I think we will have to agree to disagree. I think it is indeed a problem if the numbers lead proposers begin to believe one committee will likely pass them and another will not. I suggested more details from Committee Aâs reviews as a way of mitigating that and hopefully driving more consistency in the process. As usual, you disagree. Fair enough.
On a separate note, it is very exciting to have my first reply guy. Truly an honor!
Iâm voting For, against the committee recommendation on this one. I believe sports betting is an underexplored area for both crypto in general and Optimism in particular. Overtime has established some product-market fit, but itâs nowhere near enough so I hope to see much more aggressive market to normies outside of crypto. The timing is right with the greatest sporting event upcoming, which makes me lean on the side of For. However, I acknowledge that the committeeâs concerns are very valid, and Iâm obviously unimpressed by Thalesâ (lack of) execution of the previous grant. This will be my final âbenefit of doubtâ vote for the community.
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Completely unique native product? Good volume? Actual new users? Enormous potential?
-Defi committee C vote no. GG OP governance.
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I think Scaleweb3âs last explanation is directionally correct in emphasizing experimentation and validation but makes a few key errors that I think lead to an opportunity to make suggestions on how committees can go about their work.
Iâll take this opportunity to show where I think this review is lacking context or due consideration. All quotes from Scaleweb3âs explanation of his committeeâs conclusions.
Fee rebates.
we are a bit worried that they may largely accrue to the current power usersâŚwant to see their impact and how well they do in onboarding new users
If I understand this correctly, the fear is that Overtime will not deliver on getting new users to the door and thus that rewards are recycled by current players. Hereâs the thing: you canât evaluate this grant the way you would liquidity mining.
To explain why, Iâll start by highlighting a fundamental misunderstanding of the protocol:
If pricing & fees are already better than on centralized platforms and arenât holding back adoption
This is incorrect and is the first presumption that should have been validated in the course of assessing the grant. Overtime have demonstrated that fee rewards are required to make the protocol economically competitive at both the small and large bet level with the objectives of bootstrapping 1) volume growth and 2) user growth. The question isnât whether organic user growth is achievable without rewards; user growth demonstrably requires fee rewards due to the need to compete with centralized book spreads before a threshold of userbase and volume is met. Determining this threshold isnât straightforward but even getting a rough idea is essential for understanding whatâs at stake. When asked, the Overtime team said that they can be economically competitive at $1mm weekly trade volume, which translates to an achievable but not easy 4x increase in use (this would also roughly get to 240 daily traders).
In other words, what Overtime are asking for is a textbook example of a catalytic grant. The subsidy ensures competitiveness until enough scale is reached for the protocolâs economics to independently continue to attract users. It is unlike, for instance, liquidity mining, where what was initially uncompetitive in most cases becomes uncompetitive/undifferentiated again and the target users go somewhere else.
The position that youâre not sure about the strength of Overtimeâs adoption because theyâve used some incentives so far is like saying âyes, the plane looks well-builtâŚletâs see it fly without the wings.â The fact that the World Cup is happening next month, as is the capability to let LPs feed into the AMMs, means that withholding a grant for three weeks is setting Overtime up to fail because they simply canât get the competitiveness they need themselves.
More thorough DD would also have encouraged Overtime to reveal the source of this competitiveness, which the Shadow Committee did (and resulted in that table being generated), or determine what sort of balance between scale and volume would have to be reached to get to that independent competitiveness (answer: you need lifers and about $1mm weekly volume).
Go-to-market and Onboarding
If these users are indeed your target audience, you have to do a lot of education, wallet onboarding sessions and much more (also good use of grant money) - we lack a bit of fantasy to see the impact on non-existing crypto user onboarding.
A cursory look reveals an interesting fact about sports bettors (and gamblers in general): they are among the most crypto-savvy populations out there. Centralized gambling sites have been taking crypto from wallets for at least twice as long as the ScaleWeb3 Twitter account has existed. As far as new onboarders to crypto-based betting go, theyâre some of the lowest-hanging (and most valuable!) fruit you can get. They also are a very unique kind of userbase, which requires a vertical-specific GTM â i.e., you need to follow the expertise of people who know what matters to these players, and a lot of it in this case has to do with pricing in an arguably commoditized product. You also want to go to where the majority are and solicit participation from some of the largest players.
An experienced sports bettor himself, Spreek, who works closely with Overtime, will tell you this.
Even though Scaleweb3 hasnât intuited this fact despite his experience with prediction markets (which have also been taking crypto for years), itâs still important to be able to substantiate your claim with a question or two to the proposing team.
Co-incentives
This was not detailed enough in our opinion as it completely depends on your governance. From a young project, we donât expect huge monetary co-incentives but certainty on incentives, potentially a pre-approval from your community to match x% (or not), would help the evaluation of the proposal.
Iâve been on this for weeks so I wonât belabor the point, but I continue to question the need for too much definition up front when there is inherent uncertainty in Thalesâ need to build up their own resources and ensure an appropriate backstop for their operations. Iâd go so far as to say that itâs on committees to have proposal-specific explanations for why they want to see co-incentives if theyâre going to vote one way or another on them.
A final point, because I think we ought to hold ourselves to a higher standard when assessing these proposals (after all, these are enormous grants) â
Overall, each of these initiatives is good use of grant funding (and we donât want to judge the merits of the different initiatives) but there was some detail missing to get a clear picture for the use of funds & onboarding.
Unfortunately, there was little time for feedback and discussion of this proposal as our committee took it over on a short notice. That said, I, Julian, personally looked into this proposal probably longer than into any other on this forum as we saw great value but were keen to understand the details.
Scaleweb3 says that he conducted exhaustive due diligence but also didnât have time for basic details to be surfaced. You canât have it both ways. Get enough information to make a review or punt on the recommendation.
Overtime posted their review at the very start of this voting cycle, and they were the only proposal initially assigned to Scalewebâs committee. If they find that they didnât have enough time to manage even this proposal, thatâs a problem.
A final note: this is not an attack on Scaleweb or Committee B. I am (and have been) trying to demonstrate the kind of work and understanding I believe ought to go into these recommendations. The stakes are high.
3 Likes
Re Fee rebates: link was provided that showed that top 10 users accrued more than 50% of fee rebates in first weeks.
The quote you shared re pricing/fee competitiveness to centralized platforms was one of our questions during review before we made the recommendation. Hence, exactly what you ask us to do 
Re World Cup: 50K Op was reserved. This is likely a great invest for OT and Op as mentioned. We made sure that our recommendation would not jeopardise onboarding.
Re adoption: we shared our belief that prediction markets and especially sports betting are likely one of the early killer apps. Early traction is good. 60 unique active users aka addresses is still a small amount - especially with active incentives.
That said, good proposal, happy to see the co-incentives got clarified after our recommendation (100% matching 
) and looking forward to see great adoption in the coming months.
Edit: In our opinion, a small difference in assessments led to different recommendations. Our committee C was looking for a bit more specifics/details on some parts of the proposal and generally more inclined to support grants with a clear scope for <= 6 months to evaluate and potentially lead to follow-up grants whereas Jack & his committee prefer to give teams a bit more slack. We wouldnât say approach 1 or 2 is necessarily better for the growth of the Optimism ecosystem but the former helps with accountability.
Iâm abstaining from this proposal. Iâm not familiar with sports betting at all but understand the counterpoints in the thread that this could be a highly underexplored area which is why Iâm not following the committee recommendation of no. However, I donât feel strongly enough to specifically go against the committeeâs recommendation especially given my lack of knowledge in the sports betting space.
2 Likes
I am voting against this proposal following DeFi C committeeâs recommendation.
I see many delegates voted against the committeeâs recommendation here so I took some time to read the thread in detail and I find myself to agree with the notes pointed out by @OPUser in the committee review.
Specifically the fee rebates comments and the fact that the same team has already received a 900k OP grant from Phase 0.
2 Likes
[Final]
Voting: Against
Following our own DeFi C committee recommendation. We (as community) understand the add-value that the Overtime team thinks can bring into Optimism regards sports user base. But the project receiving a large amount months ago was an important point in our decision.
So weâre clear on this:
Does this mean that if this proposal hadnât passed, you would not have voted for the proposal with a âslight adjustmentâ in the ask suggested by your own committee? Because a vote next cycle wonât have changed the fact that Overtime had gotten a Governance grant.
Context from the committeeâs review, emphasis mine:
However, we recommend NO as we believe reducing the remaining uncertainties, getting buy-in from your community, and slightly adjusting the Ask will make the proposal better, help with future accountability (+ avoid setting a bad precedent), and resubmitting in 2 weeks (!) is the best way to go.
@padzank can you provide a Telegram handle or other contact method so the Optimism team can get in touch about paying out this grant! Feel free to DM or email palash@optimism.io