Season 7: Governance Fund Missions

Governance Fund Missions 🏹
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Special thanks to members of the Feedback Commission for discussion and review.

In Season 7, Governance Fund Missions will focus on contributions, across the Superchain, that make progress towards success metrics. That means only projects that meet eligibility criteria ensuring their contributions are measurable onchain will be supported in Season 7. While that means a sub-set of contributions will not be rewarded, we must first refine and perfect the ability to reward an important set of contributions before expanding our capabilities to measure additional contributions. The entire Collective will be focused on measurable, on-chain contributions in Season 7, allowing us to better assess and compare token allocation methods.

Grants Council Mission

  1. Expected impact on the Intent:

    The Grants Council makes grants, on behalf of the Token House, in an effort to make progress towards the Intent. In Season 7, all Governance Fund missions will work towards the below success metrics, which the Foundation believes will create progress towards the Intent:

    • Increase Superchain TVL (denominated in ETH)
    • Increase Stablecoin TVL across the Superchain
    • Increase Wrapped Asset TVL across the Superchain
    • Increase Bridged Asset TVL across the Superchain

    Why these metrics?

    Launching interoperability will be a Season-long project. In advance of interop going live on the Superchain – and allowing the Collective to focus on driving the cross-chain asset transfer metric mentioned in the intent – these TVL-related metrics will help prepare the Superchain for robust adoption of interoperability once it goes live.

  2. Total budget: 10M OP from the Governance Fund

    1. Please note this is relative to 18M in Season 6. However, 12M of the 18M was reserved for a specific Superchain grants program, which distributed large grants to enable OP Chains to run their own grants programs as the Grants Council was otherwise constrained to supporting applications on OP Mainnet. This Season, grants can be made across eligible chains based on their ability to move TVL metrics, so there isn’t a need for a dedicated portion to enable OP Chains to run their own grants program. That means the portion the Grants Council has full discretion over actually increased by +4M (from 6M to support applications in Season 6.) The Grants Council Budget was 9M OP in Season 5.

  3. Eligibility: Projects will need to have, or plan to have, onchain contracts deployed on eligible OP Chains and may be subject to additional eligibility criteria similar to that outlined here. Additionally, project participation in the market may be subject to additional criteria determined by the Grants Council. The eligibility criteria for OP Chains will be shared in January; you can expect roughly 10 chains to be eligible.

  4. Selection Algorithm: It is at the discretion of the Grants Council to determine their own selection algorithm. Selection algorithms (which have taken the form of public rubrics in the past), must be made public on the forum before the first round of selection takes place.

  5. Evaluation Algorithm: Projects selected by the Grants Council will be assessed, based on their ability to generate contribution towards the success metrics defined above, by OP Labs or Open Source Observer on the measurement date.

  6. Measured Outcomes:

    1. Increase Superchain TVL (denominated in ETH)
    • Increase Stablecoin TVL across the Superchain
    • Increase Wrapped Asset TVL across the Superchain
    • Increase Bridged Asset TVL across the Superchain

  7. Measurement Date:

    • End of Season 7

Decision Market Mission

In 2025, Optimism is partnering with Butter and Uniswap Foundation to test the efficacy of decision markets in relation to alternative methods for predictive token allocation decisions, such as a council structure. You can read more about this collaborative experiment here. We will publish additional details about this experiment in the coming months.

  1. Expected impact on the Intent:

    As we understand how to improve decisions about which grants drive strategic outcomes, we are more likely we are to achieve our Intents. In Season 7, all Governance Fund missions will work towards the below success metrics, which the Foundation believes will create progress towards the Intent:

    • Increase Superchain TVL
    • Increase Stablecoin TVL across the Superchain
    • Increase Wrapped Asset TVL across the Superchain
    • Increase Bridged Asset TVL across the Superchain

    Why these metrics?

    Launching interoperability will be a Season-long project. In advance of interop going live on the Superchain – and allowing the Collective to focus on driving the cross-chain asset transfer metric mentioned in the intent – these TVL-related metrics will help prepare the Superchain for robust adoption of interoperability once it goes live.

  2. Total budget: 500k OP from the Governance Fund

  3. Eligibility: There are two dimensions of permissionless eligibility: 1) forecasters who participate by betting in the market and 2) projects that have set up pools in the market.

    • Forecasters: Participation in the prediction market will be permissionless — any non U.S. resident can sign up and “play.” Forecasters may be required to disclose conflicts of interest.
    • Projects: Projects will need to have, or plan to have, onchain contracts deployed on eligible OP Chains and may be subject to additional eligibility criteria similar to that outlined here. Additionally, project participation in the market may be subject to additional criteria required to apply to the Grants Council. The eligibility criteria for OP Chains will be shared in January; you can expect roughly 10 chains to be eligible.

  4. Selection Algorithm: The decision market serves as the selection algorithm itself, serving as a public indication about the projects that the market believes should receive grants.

  5. Evaluation Algorithm: Projects selected by the decision market will be assessed, based on their ability to generate contribution towards the success metrics defined above, by OP Labs or Open Source Observer on the measurement date.

  6. Measured Outcomes:

    1. Increase Superchain TVL
    • Increase Stablecoin TVL across the Superchain
    • Increase Wrapped Asset TVL across the Superchain
    • Increase Bridged Asset TVL across the Superchain

  7. Measurement Date:

    • End of Season 7, and quarterly thereafter.

Additional details about related to the above Mission will be published at a future date.

9 Likes
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Tagging relevant contributors for my question:

@system @Gonna.eth

It’s a great overview of season 7. I had a few questions about how the grant council will conduct grants.

  • What’s not clear; Will the same process be used (submitting to Charmverse and the grant council reviewing)?
  • Are these new metrics used for future optimism builder /growth grant applicants?
  • The only way to be eligible for a grant is to have a live contract on the superchain?

These are some of the questions that arise when I read this. As a delegate and grantee it helps allot to list the changes between season 6 and 7 in a simple table for the grant application process.

Hope to learn more soon,

Bless,

0xR

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Why are all the metrics only focused on TVL? Can’t we get another metric… like onboarded users using multiple superchain chains, or reducing clicks for bridging, or some other metrics that support superchain interop?

This basically says, go after CeFi and Defi, but non-finacial applications, there is nothin for you here.

Is there any room for the Grants council to take a leap on an app that would impact other metrics besides TVL?

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How will the mission proposal mechanism work this season?

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Yet to be confirmed. You can find various discussions/talks about the subject in several posts, like S6 GC Final restrospective that suggest the general direction the process probably will take.

What seems to be a rule of thumb for S7, is that the metric/s that any MR use, will need to be the following (i suppose either one or several of these):

  • Increase Superchain TVL
  • Increase Stablecoin TVL across the Superchain
  • Increase Wrapped Asset TVL across the Superchain
  • Increase Bridged Asset TVL across the Superchain