Round 3 Voting Rationale

Retro Funding 🔴
5

After talking with various people and thinking more through it, I’ve made significant improvements to my rationale. I believe it is almost ready and I’d love your feedback on it.

Purpose

  1. RPGF: To implement impact=profit in practice
  2. Evaluate projects rigorously, using a balanced scoring system and lists from reputable badgeholders

Impact = Value contributed to the Optimism Collective
Profit: Economical value extracted (grants, rpgf, fund, payments)

Vote Allocation Strategy

  • 40% (12M OP) for projects assessed through our scoring system.
    • We’'re thinking of quantitatively evaluate 378 projects in 6 sub-categories. Each category has a specific budget, and projects are compared within their categories.
  • 40% (12M OP) allocated to curated lists endorsed by trusted badgeholders.
    • We’ll use lists to vote for projects across the other 10 categories we won’t evaluate ourselves. Regardless, we will keep an eye on projects in each list to ensure quality.
  • 15% allocated to TOP projects | 4.5M OP
    • We’ll use this portion of our allocation to reward the most impactful and aligned projects of the ecosystem. We will be very selective and generous with these projects. Trying to overcompensate for their amazing work.
  • 5% allocated to alternative projects | 1.5M OP
    • This part of our allocation will go to projects that don’t fit within our voting framework or others lists but that we believe they should receive an allocation.

Scoring system: 12M OP

The 6 sub-categories we are considering evaluating with this scoring system: applications, governance contributions, developer education, evangelism, wallets, events.

Objective

Evaluate projects with an objective, quantitative method

How it works

Projects are divided and evaluated into sub-categories. Then, within it, they receive a score from 1 (low) to 3 (high) across 4 criteria, the adjusted multiplication of these scores provides the overall project score and will determine OP allocation.

Highest score: 256 | Average: 81 | Lowest score is: 16

Evaluation criteria and scores

  • Metric strength | Based on Metrics garden for each sub-category
    • 1: Low
    • 2: Medium
    • 3: High:
  • Alignment with Collective’s Values | Open access, long-term, innovation | This criteria stays the same across all sub-categories.
    • 1: Low: Not clearly aligned with values.
    • 2: Moderate: Somewhat aligned but may prioritize other values.
    • 3: High: Fully aligned with values, demonstrating them in outcomes.
  • Money extracted from the collective | This criteria stays the same across all sub-categories.
    • 1: High Extraction: +125k OP
    • 2: Medium Extraction: 10-125k OP
    • 3: Low Extraction: 0-10k OP
  • Metric quantity | Benchmarked against projects of the same sub-category. Will evaluate a max of 2 metrics per project.
    • 1: Low
    • 2: Medium
    • 3: High

Additional considerations

  • We know this is not the perfect scoring system. We know there is lots of room for improvement. We are doing our best and will improve as we do, please reach out for feedback, it is greatly appreciated.
  • Projects must be related to Ethereum, Optimism, L2’s, or blockchain technology.
  • Filter question: What important problem is this project solving?
  • We should vote 0 OP for a project that has made no impact. If we abstain from voting, we are expressing our indifference and that doesn’t penalize the project.
  • If we believe a project should receive funding but won’t evaluate it, our vote matters to pass the threshold
  • Our scoring system uses an Adjusted Multiplication Factor: each score gets a +1 before multiplication, reducing the penalty for low scores in one category.

Sub-categories where we will use other Badgeholder lists: dev services, dev tooling, research, gov research, gov tooling, ethereum development, op stack tooling, op stack research, discovery tooling, portfolio tracker.

Special thanks to:

@LauNaMu For her amazing work on the metrics garden and the Re-categorization of projects, these 2 resources have been key to develop my rationale.
@Jonas: For List-pilling me (I’ve decided to allocate 12M OP to valuable lists of trusted badgeholders!
@ccerv1: For creating and sharing their insights of OSO and his help with some spreadsheets:)
@Michael and @ethernaut For our brief but insightful conversations on their ideas/thoughts

Final comment

I am very excited for this, it’s being very interesting. I’d love to hear more insightful comments/ideas/questions.

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