Season 7: Intent

Special thanks to members of the Feedback Commission for discussion and review.


This post outlines the main strategic goal of the Collective for 1H25 (Season 7 Intent) and highlights the contributions the Collective will support towards that goal. The audience for this post is all contributors towards the Collective.

If you’re a builder and want to understand how to Get a Grant - skip to here.

Don’t want to read? Watch the Season 7 Intents explainer video instead.


Season 7 Intent

The Foundation recently outlined our two year vision for the Superchain. Executing on this vision will require collaboration among all of the Collective’s contributors. The Collective uses Intents to guide these contributions so that OP Labs, the Foundation, OP Chains, the Token House, the Citizens House, and the many builders helping to make the Superchain a reality are all working towards the same goals.

What are Intents?

Intents are high level strategic goals the entire Collective works towards.

All contributions in the Collective should be working towards the Intents.

In Season 7, we will have one Intent, focused on a core pillar of our Superchain Product Vision: Interoperability.

For more information about Interoperability and the Collective’s overall strategy, see this.

Cross-chain asset transfers will be defined as the movement of an asset between two chains that relies on underlying Superchain interop messaging – which delivers consistent security assumptions and 1-block latency UX.

Moving this metric requires the launch of Interop on the Superchain. In advance of Interop launching, Collective programs will aim to grow a set of supporting metrics (described in the Governance Fund Missions section below) to prepare the Superchain for successful adoption of Interop.

Note: While the Season 7 Intent focuses the Collective on making progress towards the Superchain Product Vision, our commitment to decentralization has not changed. The goal is not to have the Foundation and OP Labs accomplish these Intents by ourselves but rather to build a governance system capable of accomplishing these goals without us in the future.


Roadmaps

In an effort to improve transparency and coordination with Collective contributors in working towards this Intent, OP Labs and the Foundation have published high level public roadmaps for the next 6 months. This is big step towards enabling more Collective contributions, a critical step in decentralization. More detailed technical roadmaps will be provided at the beginning of next year.

The core development program led by OP Labs will work towards these Intents via the public roadmap outlined below:

Development Projects Budget How is impact evaluated?
Deliver the MVP for interop that showcases the functionality between at least two OP Chains 4M OP Full functionality including interop proofs audited and delivered to the Superchain.
Deliver upgrades to OP Chains to reach Stage 1 1.5M OP L2BEAT recognizes these chains as Stage 1.
Build infrastructure and processes to safely scale upgrades for the Superchain. 1.5M OP Deliver multi-threaded 64 bit Cannon to Superchain, create a robust incident response process for SEV 0 / SEV 1 incidents vetted by the Foundation and automate deployments using op-deployer.
Deliver alternate Rust Stack and make progress towards Stage 2. 1.5M OP Deliver OP Reth as one of the sequencers that can be run in production and release Kona (alternate fault proof program in Rust) and Asterisc (alternative Fault Proof VM targeting Risc V) running live offchain alongside the current Go implementation.
Drive adoption of ERC7802 and add support for interoperable ETH. 1M OP Support interoperable ETH between at least two chains and support 100+ ERC7802 deployments.

We estimate 9.5M OP from the Foundation Budget will be required to execute on the above roadmap.

The Foundation will work towards these Intents via the growth and governance roadmaps outlined below:

Growth Projects Timeline Budget
Growth Campaign: Stablecoin TVL Q1 2M OP
Growth Campaign: TBA Q2 2M OP
Grow the set of Stage 1 Chains on the Superchain Q1-Q2 5-10M OP
Ecosystem Partnerships to support Interoperability Q1-Q2 5-8M OP
Ethereum L1 Marketing Q1-Q2 1M OP
Airdrops Q1-Q2 5-10M OP
Governance Projects Timeline
Improve Credibility of Elections Q1
Onchain Governance Fund Q1
Grants Council Autonomous Operations Q1
Improve Data Infrastructure Supporting Retro Funding Q1
Increase Votable Supply of OP Q1-Q2
Voter Selection Experiments Q1-Q2
Improve Security Council Operations & Upgrade Workflow Q2
Propose Interop Blockspace Charter Q2
Ship Permissionless Proposal Rights v1 Q2
Staking Collective ETH Q2
Total estimated budget 2M OP

We estimate 22-35M OP from the Foundation Budget will be required to execute on the above roadmaps.

While the Foundation’s budget doesn’t require approval, we have provided our best estimates of the cost of supporting these roadmaps in an effort to better inform the budgeting process in other parts of the Collective (such as the Token House and Citizens’ House.) Line item estimates for Growth projects indicate tokens distributed through the program described. Line item estimates for the governance team roadmap are not provided as they are difficult to estimate on a standalone basis.

Note: These are estimated budget amounts. The Foundation may spend more or less than these estimates to execute on these roadmaps. To reference actual spend, the Foundation publishes budget reports twice per year on the forum here. The Foundation currently operates with the budget allocated to the Foundation in the initial token supply. If the Foundation needs more tokens to continue operating in the future, additional token budget will be subject to governance approval.


Missions

Collective contributors play a critical role in executing on strategic initiatives which fall outside the core teams’ roadmaps. Collective contributors work towards the Intents by executing Missions. Missions are specific initiatives aimed at making measurable progress towards an Intent. They are clearly scoped, and can be executed by Collective contributors start-to-finish in less than 12 months.

Missions may be supported by the Foundation, Retro Funding, or the Governance Fund. This is an expansion of the previous scope of Missions. The goal is to unify the Collective’s token allocation system under one common set of goals (Intents) and one common allocation framework (Missions). All impact generated by Missions will be evaluated on standardized and regularly recurring measurement dates.

Note: The Season 7 Intent is ambitious and therefore, some Missions may extend into Season 8. The eligibility criteria for OP Chains will be shared in January; you can expect roughly 10 chains to be eligible.

Foundation Missions

In Season 7, the Foundation will publish a series of Missions, supported by the Foundation’s budget.

In an effort to further decentralize this process, the Foundation will ask the Developer Advisory Board to select applicants and assess milestones towards completion. The Foundation will ask OP Labs and/or Open Source Observer to measure additional impact at the end of the Season.

More detailed specifications for Foundation Missions will be made available at the start of Season 7. They may include projects like:

  • ERC-7683 Integration with Native Interop: Support cross-L2 sends via Intents natively integrated with Superchain interoperability
  • ERC-3770 Integration with Native Interop: Support cross-L2 addressing with Superchain interoperability
  • Multichain Paymaster Support: Execute parallel transactions on multiple chains without gas
  • Superchain Interop Oracle: Cross-chain oracle service that retrieves real-time price feeds ETH L1 or other supported Superchain network using interop

The Foundation may issue additional Missions throughout the course of Season 7, similar to the Grants Council’s “rolling mission requests.” Most Missions are not fully specified. This is intentional as it allows the Foundation to partner more closely with the Developer Advisory Board and Open Source Observer and/or OP Labs in defining the metrics for success and measurement.

Project Budget Fund Who selects projects? Who evaluates impact? When is impact evaluated?
Foundation Missions 6M OP Foundation (Unallocated) Developer Advisory Board Open Source Observer or OP Labs At the end of the Season

6M OP from the Foundation Budget will be reserved to support the above Missions. This is separate of the budget referenced above to support core team roadmaps.

Retro Funding Missions

The Citizens House will work towards two Missions in Season 7.

Project Budget Fund Who selects projects? Who evaluates impact? When is impact evaluated?
Retro Missions up to 16M OP Retro Fund All eligible projects can participate OSO proposes evaluation method, badgeholders select Regularly throughout Season
Retro Funding: Onchain Builders up to 8M OP Retro Fund
Retro Funding: Developer Tooling up to 8M OP Retro Fund

Note: We previously referred to a Round 7 in 2024 focused on developer tooling. That initiative will become part of the Retro Funding: Developer Tooling program in 2025, running throughout Season 7 rather than in a discrete “Round.”

These Missions have been chosen in order to focus on being able to accurately measure an important sub-set of contributions. The plan is to refine and perfect the ability to reward these contributions before expanding our capabilities to measure additional contributions. While not reflected above as a Season 7 initiative, the Foundation plans to propose an OP Stack program, starting with a limited scope around supporting Ethereum Core Development, in Season 8.

For more information on Retro Funding in 2025, and how it related to our long-term commitment to Ether’s Phoenix, check out the Retro Funding 2025 blog post.

Additional details about Citizen involvement and voting details related to the above Missions will be published at a later date.

Up to 16M OP will be requested from the Retro Fund to support these Missions, to be approved by Citizens.

Governance Fund Missions

The Token House will work towards two Missions in Season 7. The objective of all Governance Fund Missions is to make progress towards growing Superchain TVL, as measured by the metrics below.

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. The Collective’s hypothesis is that a vibrant, interoperable economy will lead to long term growth and continued development.

The Governance Fund Missions will reward progress towards growing Superchain TVL, by making grants that move the sub-metrics below.

  • 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
Project Budget Fund Who selects projects? Who evaluates impact? When is impact evaluated?
Governance Fund Missions 10.5M OP Governance Fund Grants Council; Decision market participants Milestones and Metrics Council and/or Open Source Observer At end of Season
Grants Council Mission 10M OP
Decision Market Mission 500k OP

There are two Missions to allocate grants, using different methods, in an attempt to move these metrics.

  • Grants Council: The Token House currently entrusts the Grants Council to make grants from the Governance Fund. In Season 7, it will be at the discretion of the Season 7 Grants Council to determine the best way to make grants that move these metrics across the Superchain. This means the Grants Council will no longer be constrained to the Mission Request process or to making grants on OP Mainnet. Grant policies apply, regardless of the configuration of the grants process.
  • Decision Market: In Season 7, we will experiment with an alternate way to make grants from the Governance Fund. The Foundation will facilitate an experiment in conjunction with Butter and the Uniswap Foundation to run a decision market. Grants will be allocated to projects based on the outcomes of a decision market which predicts the project’s ability to make progress towards the success metrics.

10.5M OP will be requested from the Governance Fund to support these Missions, to be approved by delegates.

Season 7 Missions – Summary

Project Budget Fund Who selects projects? Who evaluates impact? When is impact evaluated?
Foundation Missions 6M OP Foundation (Unallocated) Developer Advisory Board Open Source Observer or OP Labs At the end of the Season
Retro Funding Missions 16M OP Retro Fund All eligible projects can participate Open Source Observer proposes method, badgeholders select Regularly throughout Season
Governance Fund Missions 10.5M OP Governance Fund Grants Council; Decision Market participants Milestones and Metrics Council and/or Open Source Observer At the end of the Season

How do we measure impact in Season 7?

All Missions will work towards the same Intent. All impact will be measured, across the Collective, on the same, recurring measurement dates. Specific details about Retro Funding and other measurement mechanics will be provided throughout Season 7.

How does this move the Collective towards Decentralization?

  • Coordinating the entire Collective around the same set of Intents and publishing public roadmaps are big steps towards enabling more Collective contribution thereby reducing reliance on core teams
  • To see all the steps we are taking towards decentralization in Season 7, please see the Guide to Season 7.

What does this mean for delegates?

  • Join the Foundation AMA on December 3rd
  • In Special Voting Cycle #31a, delegates will vote to:
    • Ratify the Intent
    • Vote on each of the Governance Fund Missions (2)

What does this mean for Citizens?

  • Join the Foundation AMA on December 3rd
  • In Special Voting Cycle #31a, Citizens will vote to:
    • Ratify the Intent
    • Vote on each of the Retro Missions (2)

Check out the Reflection Period Guide for a step-by-step walk though for delegates and Citizens.

10 Likes

These are my thoughts, comments and feedback on S7 updates.

Strategic design

  1. I strongly support the decision to focus on a single Intent for Season 7. Having the entire Collective aligned towards interoperability should lead to more focused execution and clearer outcomes.
  2. The presentation of “Roadmap Projects” with clear budgets and expected results is excellent for clear execution. I have two questions:
    1. How will we track these projects throughout the season?
    2. What mechanisms will ensure successful execution verification?
  3. The move to make the Governance Fund onchain is a good step towards transparency and accountability.

Retro Funding changes

  1. I like the experimentation of making Retro Rounds with recurring rewards.
  2. We need more clarity on the algorithm process and specific citizen involvement mechanisms.
  3. I think we should have governance-focused Retro Funding rounds in S7
  4. While I understand the Foundation’s decision to lead these changes, greater initial citizen involvement would have been valuable. In addition. More frequent discussions and decisions about the Citizens’ House, including potential elevation of participation standards is needed and important.

Additional feedback

  1. There seems to be a gap in the Foundation’s approach to co-creation with the Citizens’ House. While the proposals are solid, the process feels more top-down than collaborative. I would encourage more active engagement and co-creation with Citizens in future planning and decision-making processes.
  2. Given that interoperability is the most important theme of S7, and that Superchain chains are the backbone of this, do we have an official list of the Superchain chains?
  3. Airdrop Budget: I noticed the 5-10M OP budget for Airdrops, which nearly matches the Grants Council allocation. This raises the following questions:
    1. What’s the strategic rationale behind this substantial allocation?
    2. How will we measure the success of these airdrops?
    3. Can we get more precise budget figures instead of the current 5-10M range?
  4. How will the govNERDs structure look like for S7? Foundation Mission, a Council?, a team requesting $ to the Gov Fund?
  5. I like that explainer videos were added to the post, but having a higher production quality (more visuals and edition) would increase retention and undestanding of the topics.
  6. I think this blogpost about RF should have been posted in the Forum https://optimism.mirror.xyz/zWlA9LROAzRee5BFqbquYHawmruKzLmXbONp_hcCwE4
7 Likes

Hey @dmars300 the superchain eco website has information on this. You can check it out herehttps://www.superchain.eco/

1 Like

Hi @dmars300! I’ll do my best to respond to your questions below

Strategic Design

  1. Roadmap Projects are presented for transparency and supported by the Foundation’s Budget. Additionally, the OP Labs team plans to share a more detailed roadmap in early 2025. If the Foundation is ever to request additional budget from the Collective, that would be the time to compare execution against these roadmaps. Until then, we’re sharing these to help Collective contributors better understand how to complement our efforts and to inform decision making about their own community budgets.

Retro Funding Changes

  1. More details on the role of Citizens and how the mechanics of each Retro Funding Mission will be provided after the Missions are approved but in advance of the process roll-out (after the start of the new year given voting cycle timelines.)

Development of the Citizens’ House

The Citizens’ House will be asked to ratify the Intents and vote on each Retro Funding Mission for the first time, consistent with our approach of gradually increasing the role Citizens in this process.

Our main focus regarding the continued development of the Citizens’ House right now is to improve the ability of the Citizens’ House to accurately measure impact and to experiment with the Citizenship selection criteria (via guest voter, and other, experiments.) While this approach may seem slower initially, it will enable the reduction of the role of the Foundation faster, as it allows for the establishment of the public infrastructure (evaluation algorithms, selection mechanisms, and data pipelines) that Citizens will need to make these decisions in a future-proof and governance minimized way over the long-term.

Airdrops

The budget for airdrops was part of the initial token distribution, and the Foundation has distributed that budget slower than expected. For various reasons, airdrops are not something that governance manages or supports via the community treasury.

govNERDs

govNERDs will continue to be supported via Foundation Mission Requests, as are the other NERD programs (techNERDs).

6 Likes