2) Season 4: first retrospective
The introduction of the missions introduced a new mechanism for paid contributions by governance in a work fist and get paid manner. The introduction of the missions introduced a new mechanism for paid contributions by governance in a pay-for-work manner. For this, four different verticals were decided, called “intents” to address specific needs expressed by the Collective or completely proposed by third-party teams. Here we want to express a condensation of thoughts that arose during cycle 13 that is orthogonal to different proposals or in the processes in which this opportunity was carried out.
I) Intent 3: very impact-dependent, less about the actual product
Due to the nature of this scope of the intent and resulting proposals, we saw how difficult is to evaluate the final product and the effectiveness of the features in fulfilling their “functionalities”, being anchored to the wait for results by KPIs to check even the usefulness of the mission. It means that it is possible that the objectives are met but even so the funding has been misallocated.
II) Intent 3: too much for users, not enough for Builders
There is a saturation of proposals related to education in terms of expected audiences, which potentially overlap in the regular case (not many new users are benefited from these initiatives but they do have a wide reach among the existing community). Particular case of Latam, with 5 proposals, 4 of them with clear connections to each other, and therefore, a similar starting point before reaching a wider public.
On the other hand, there is a lack of initiatives to educate new developers as future builders of real applications in Optimism. This is a pity and an unwanted situation since it means a lack of investment in real use cases for Optimism, the only way to stay competitive and grow steadily in number of users and activity. Intent 2 still contributing in this aspect with the builder sub-committee, but introducing new developers from zero to hero still being great to have.
III) Intent 3 & 4: effectiveness density vs time, battling obsolescence
One of the most frequently asked aspects is the commitment to prolong the final product once the mission period has ended. While this condition applies to all intents, the evolving nature of governance and change in its design and ecosystem is even more noticeable in educational materials and content. On several occasions there is no evidenced commitment to address this fact (and it is natural that this is the case), but it should be taken into account to maximize the benefits of missions with more explicitly aligned collaborators in the long term and not just waiting for the next retroPGF.
IV) All intents: need for OP distribution doesn’t imply suboptimal allocations
From the last voting cycle with the ratification of the budget, the distribution of the OP token didn’t reach the one stipulated for the Foundation budget. We understand the importance in the circulation of the OP token to make it more liquid, distributed and usable by more users for governance purposes, however, among delegates we should take care of the treasure, no matter the amount, from any possible grant farming intention, lessons learned of the first and second seasons of Optimism in 2022.
V) Reflection: how to increase the efforts on uniqueness
Ultimately, governance coordination is looking for ways to encourage differentiation between proposals and building real products. Governance needs to provide a better incentive base to avoid incentive gaming between Missions and retroPGF: more review time, incentivized delegates to curation tasks from earlier stages.