Season 7: Retro Funding Missions

Retro Funding Missions đź”´
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Special thanks to members of the Feedback Commission for discussion and review.

In 2025, Retro Funding will focus on data-driven impact measurement with a human-centered approach. These Missions have been chosen to focus the Collective on being able to accurately measure an important sub-set of contributions. We must first refine and perfect the ability to reward these contributions before expanding our capabilities to measure additional contributions. For more information on Retro Funding in 2025, and how it relates to our long-term commitment to Ether’s Phoenix, check out the Retro Funding 2025 blog post.

While not 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.

Retro Funding Missions

The Collective is consolidating token allocations under a unified Mission Framework, aligning Retro Funding with other token allocation programs within Optimism. While Retro Funding continues to pursue the impact = profit vision, this alignment of the entire Collective around a common Mission framework will ensure cohesive operations across all token allocation programs.

What is an Evaluation Algorithm?

An Evaluation Algorithm defines the measurement of output and outcomes of a Mission. This can involve both human qualitative assessment and data-driven quantitive measurements. Rewards are allocated by running the evaluation algorithm at one or multiple measurement dates. The Evaluation algorithm used in Retro Funding Missions will evolve throughout the Retro Funding program based on the feedback by selected Citizens.

Retro Funding: Onchain Builders

Retro Funding: Onchain Builders rewards projects that drive cross-chain asset transfers, enabled through interop, by growing the Superchain across eligible OP Chains.

  1. Expected impact on the Intent: Drive cross chain asset transfers by growing the Superchain economy and growing the adoption of interop among onchain builders
  2. Total budget: up to 8M OP from the Retro Fund
  3. Eligibility: Projects are eligible who have deployed their own contracts on supported OP Chains. To claim a contract, the deployer address of the contracts needs to sign a message in the Retro Funding sign up. Contracts deployed by factories are attributed to the factory deployer. Detailed eligibility criteria will be published by the Foundation near the start of the program.
  4. Evaluation Algorithm: The first iteration of the evaluation algorithm will be selected by Citizens before the start of the mission. Impact will be rewarded within the following topics:
    1. Growth in Superchain adoption
    2. High-quality onchain value (e.g., TVL)
    3. Interoperability support and adoption
  5. Measurement Date: Monthly, starting in February. Rewards will be delivered on a monthly basis.

Additional details about Citizen involvement and voting details related to the above Mission will be published at a later date. See context on how we these Mission were determined here.

Retro Funding: Dev Tooling

Retro Funding: Dev Tooling rewards toolchain software, such as compilers, libraries and debuggers, that support builders in developing onchain applications on the Superchain. The Dev Tooling round originally planned as “Retro Funding 7: Dev Tooling” in 2024, will be folded into the ongoing rewards for Dev Tooling throughout 2025.

  1. Expected impact on the Intent: Support onchain builders in developing interop-compatible applications
  2. Total budget: up to 8M OP from the Retro Fund
  3. Eligibility: Eligible projects include those that have created an open source repository and/or package. Verification requires linking the package’s GitHub repository to the Retro Funding signup. Packages published on npm or crates will be attributed to the GitHub repository listed in the package manifest. Projects which are not eligible include applications and network services (any APIs, hosting platforms, monitoring, etc.). Detailed eligibility requirements will be provided by the Foundation prior to program launch.
  4. Evaluation Algorithm: The first iteration of the evaluation algorithm will be selected by Citizens before the start of the mission. Impact will be rewarded within the following topics:
    • Adoption by onchain builders
    • Importance of the tool in onchain application development
    • Features that support superchain interop adoption among builders
  5. Measurement Date: Monthly, starting in February. Rewards will be delivered on a monthly basis.

Additional details about Citizen involvement and voting details related to the above Mission will be published at a later date. See context on how we these Mission were determined here.

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Whoaaa, It’s quite surprising to see a shift in focus toward supporting only developers and builders, seemingly sidelining governance and other categories, which has been a core pillar and a unique selling point of the Optimism chain. Governance has played a crucial role in fostering community involvement and decentralization, distinguishing Optimism from other blockchain ecosystems. This strategic pivot raises questions about why Optimism has chosen to focus solely on developers for this season or year.

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last year already lack of general round that helps non dev/builder/governance,this year it happened again
oh gosh…

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Season 7 has a singular intent of interoperability. All the missions including Retro Funding missions are designed towards furthering this intent, like driving cross-chain asset transfers.

Also RPGF 6 that just concluded had a heavy focus on governance. Its important to have a vision across the entire onchain spectrum i.e. devs, community/ chain users, art, liquidity/rwa providers, governance etc.

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I totally understand that each season has its own theme (for example, Season 7 focuses on interoperability), but the idea behind the Retro Funding program is to reward the broader ecosystem. That’s why we’ve had many categories in the past to reward contributions across the entire ecosystem. However, what I’m seeing now is that retro funding has become more narrow in scope, especially since Retro Funding 2024 afterwards, where it seems to focus only on developers. I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing, but I’m curious as to why the focus has shifted.

At the same time, I believe we can still focus on the theme of the season without limiting support for other areas. Instead of narrowing the scope, perhaps we could consider adjusting the allocation or finding a balance that makes more sense.

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Season 6 was exclusively about governance, ignoring the very categories on which season 7 will be focused. So I don’t understand where you see a shift away from governance. It’s seasonal. Season 8 should compensate.

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Nice to have updates about Round 7! But it’s not clear what it’s in the scope of dev tooling: are block explorers in scope?

Also, I see that

So that doesn’t include tools that are not open source, but still offered for free?

Really curious to know about this, because it can have a very huge (positive or negative) impact based on the answer.

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Thank for your view :pray:t2:, In my view, it feels inconsistent for the long term. If you’re building something and suddenly there’s no funding that aligns with your project anymore, you can’t predict when it will happen again—maybe next year, or never. Also, to clarify more, not only governance, but the other categories as well. If the retro funding KPI is to drive more TVL or transactions, that makes sense, but what exactly is retro funding goals?

Note that; this is only my perspective, happy to know what you think too! :muscle:t2:

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do I understand the process correctly?

Citizens decide en eval algo at the beginning of the season, then distributions are done monthly based on that algo for the rest of the season to project who signed up. Can we add a veto for citizens in case this algo breaks and someone games it?

@Jonas

BTW this sounds like a major improvement thanks!

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Exact details will be shared before Season 7 actually begins! There will be an evaluation algorithm chosen by the Citizens, which will run over time and make regular payouts (I defer to Jonas on the exact periodicity.) There will be mechanisms to ensure that the algorithm is regularly monitored and improved, and in the case of a significant deviation from expected results, Citizens would likely be asked to re-assess the selection.

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