Thanks for the write-up @katie. I outlined some of my thoughts:
Committees
I agree that Committees should not continue into the next season. I hope we can learn from their shortcomings during the upcoming reflection period (and potentially longer), with the goal of reintroducing a more effective Committee system in the future.
At Devcon, I was able to speak with delegates and some Committee members, and many were quick to express their dissatisfaction with the current process. Most complaints were about the review periods being too short, conflicts of interest arising between some committee members and grant applicants, and the pressure that is put on Committee members, all of whom are part-time and unpaid.
Presently, the primary responsibility of the Collective is to decide where to allocate OP which brings a large burden on part-time Committee members who essentially became gatekeepers of a multi-million dollar treasury overnight.
With few exceptions (maybe only Overtime?), Committee recommendations were in line with the winning side of votes. They have a major impact on the entire proposal process but we can clearly see them pressed for time, often submitting proposal approvals and recommendations only hours or minutes before they are due. We should seriously consider extending the Voting Cycles.
Grants
My biggest concern was one raised on the most recent Governance call: 20% of the entire Governance Fund was used in the first 140 days of the Collective’s existence. And while Optimism has grown across every metric during that period and incentives certainly helped, a large number of OP grants were misused or even outright misappropriated.
The Collective needs to put together an urgent response and start running a tighter ship with the treasury. The reality is that sustainable apps/projects can succeed on Optimism without incentives, and the Collective should generally grant smaller and smaller amounts to fewer and fewer projects as time progresses. On this week’s call, a rep from @GFXlabs put it bluntly when they said we “are not currently being good stewards” of the treasury, and I have to agree with them.
There are dozens of examples of blockchains/dapps that wasted large treasuries on a few months of incentives. Optimism is incredibly important for the future of Ethereum and we cannot allow governance to follow a short-sighted path.
Vibe
I think the personal attacks and overall animosity that arose in this forum and Discord over the last few months are unacceptable. Thankfully it seems the majority of delegates rose above the nonsense.
This may come across as harsh but it’s all out of love, I may be a smol delegate but have been in this community for a while and am concerned with the direction things are heading. I remain a capital “O” Optimist and continue to build on Optimism every day.