Season 7: Retro Funding Missions

[LauNaMu]

Thoughts behind my votes:

I am voting in support of the Season 7 intent and the dev tooling mission, but will be voting against the onchain builders mission

I am glad to see that Foundation and Labs have come to a joint definition of a North Star for this Season and have publicly shared the roadmap for this upcoming Season and year. This will be helpful in orienting where the Protocol is headed in terms of technical development and what will be feasible and in support of these advancements.

Dev tooling mission: in favor

I am voting in favour of this Mission for two main reasons: 1) funding and the theme of the round had already been promised in 2024, and 2) open source dev tooling, many which are public goods, enable faster development cycles creating very positive ripple effects for interoperability and the Super Chains ecosystem growth.

Onchain builders mission: against

1. The description shared is the Sunny’s, or Base’s Onchain Summer rewards program, or Jumper’s. We already have all of those that require less overhead and deliver the results the Foundation and Labs (and its core devs) wish to see, I don’t think we need more overhead by involving Citizens, in a very minimal and limited way. Additionally, do we really need a fourth program throwing money at the same audience? That sounds like terrible ROI for the RetroFunding allocation.

2. We know nothing on how Citizens will be involved in this round. To me, this request is for the Citizens to sign a blank check for the Foundation to run the round as they best see fit. Had the Foundation included details on the process through which Citizens would be engaged, how feedback would be incorporated, etc I might have voted in favor. Had that been shared in the vote, we would have something to discuss, as it stands I don’t feel comfortable voting in favor.

While I recognize there is a lot of work going into the Rounds from so many people involved (Citizens and Foundation), I also strongly feel Retro has lost it’s “soul” and we’ve stopped exploring more nuanced problems of what other things an ecosystem needs to thrive. This is where having a diversity of Badgeholders is advantageous.

IMO Retro is turning into another Growth Grants Program, which is not a bad thing but it might be best suited for the Token House to evaluate given their priorities are short term gains by design.

[kokocares]

Hey @Griff I hear your rant and I understand the desire to focus on the best of the best. I always ask myself, how does someone/some project some dev that just particpated in ETHSafari get to be able to contribute? Although I understand that most contests work in a way where top 3 get prizes and the bottom 50% get nothing, I just want to point out that it’s not a great incentive structure especially for newer participants in the ecosystem. ESPECIALLY, when a lot of your beautiful feedback from RF3 was on how to highlight these projects that are not well connected. I know you warned us that it’s a spicy take but I am personally super excited for this round.

Super aligned on the Dev Tooling Mission Budget.

[Cotabe]

Disclaimers

1. These are my personal views and not representative of any entity.
2. While I have followed the discussions around Season 7 and have experience in the OP ecosystem, there may be gaps in my understanding. Feedback is welcome.

Supporting Season 7 and the Current Priorities

I support season 7 and the focus on interoperability. This should be our current priority. I also support the Dev Tooling and Builders round, although I agree with @kaereste on the importance of more details before passing the vote. Maybe this can be incorporated for the following seasons.

But more importantly, I want to give a take regarding the historical vision of Optimism, the current vision, and the execution of this vision.

The good:
Optimism has been consistently rewarding retroactively for impact, particularly in the Optimism ecosystem, as it should. I acknowledge and praise the huge efforts that @Jonas @ccerv1 and many others have put into experimentation and evolution of the mechanism acrros the 2024 rounds. Many builders, infra providers, governance stakeholders, and many more have received rewards for their work; this has been a game changer for many projects and a lifesaver for others. Furthermore, Optimism is accruing many wins for the Superchain and the OP stack is starting to consolidate as the main standard to launch an L2.

The bad:
I, like many, was very attracted to the techno-Optimist vision of Optimism. The ideas of impact = profit, properly rewarding public goods (as complex as that is), and hopefully (and purposely, if we want to) eventually, that vision even escaping the physical world. I think this was in the Optimism manifesto, which I couldn’t find in quick browse. This is why I keep most of my funds in Optimism, asked to be paid in this network and use it as my main chain. I think this is also why Optimism also has an attention premium from many web3 users and builders.

I’m sadly seeing this narrative slowly disappearing. I understand the competitive landscape and the importance of allocating funding for the development of dev tooling, infra, and attract builders. I don’t expect Optimism to fund a disproportionate amount of Public Goods (digital or physical).

To be extra clear, I think it makes sense to keep in the direction we are heading. Providing much more funding to the projects that make significantly more impact on the ecosystem. But when things disappear from a narrative and from the execution (our regular actions) is very hard to bring them back.

I think that if we are serious about having Optimism as an enabler of a techno-optimist world and the attention premium or other strategic identity benefits this might bring, we should keep some mechanism for:

a) Inclusivity. Keep attracting and rewarding newcomers.

b) Public Goods/Impact funding. Let the summoned phoenix of Optimism be one where strategic growth can co-exist with purposefully building for a better web and a better world. Despite focusing more funds on growth, let’s keep supporting Public Goods and real-world impact, even if the bag for it is considerably smaller. Think about it like social corporate responsibility. I think ENS is a good example of this.

Final comment:
Culture evolves. As a collective with a shared culture, our actions shape our culture, and culture shapes future actions. If we phase out the doing good while doing well narrative, funding public goods, and the hope for impact funding eventually scaping to the physical world in a techno-optimist future, our culture will evolve in the wrong direction, IMO.

So this is my rant for delegates, citizens, OP foundation, OP labs members and other stakeholders. Let’s dedicate most of our energy and resources on what is important now (interoperability), but also let’s find ways to maintain a techno-optimist culture where Optimism can become a Schelling point for positive change in the web and in the world.

[Cotabe]

In a totally different topic, I know details will be given in January. However, the more clarity the better for builders.

@Jonas @ccerv1 can you elaborate on your thoughts on evaluating internal txs vs standard txs?

[Griff]

@kokocares

Hey @Griff I hear your rant and I understand the desire to focus on the best of the best. I always ask myself, how does someone/some project some dev that just particpated in ETHSafari get to be able to contribute? Although I understand that most contests work in a way where top 3 get prizes and the bottom 50% get nothing, I just want to point out that it’s not a great incentive structure especially for newer participants in the ecosystem.

It depends, if the scope is to use Retro Funding as a way to bring new participants into the ecosystem… then sure, we should keep the distribution flat, and make sure everyone gets a little something. I would FULLY support grant rounds that do that and be excited to design a round around that.

But that is not the general consensus of the purpose of the millions of OP powering Retro Funding rounds, the idea I have heard is that it should reward impact that has already happened, and new contributors to the space have had relatively less impact than large long term professional contributors so far.

If Impact = Profit is the goal, then we have make the reward distribution match the impact distribution, which is more power law than linear distribution

I worry we are continuing that direction with the current distribution.

[brichis]

GM! I wanted to share my voting rationale here. As a Citizen, I abstained on both proposals because I wasn’t fully convinced to vote “for” for the following reasons:

1. Funding Overlap:
   I feel we are funding similar projects through different programs using comparable evaluation mechanisms (e.g., Retro Funding and The Sunnys). I’d like to see a better balance—on one side, a data-driven approach, and on the other, something more human-centric with significant community input.
2. Participation in Round Design:
   Since Rounds 4 and 5, it was expected that the Citizens’ House would actively participate in defining aspects like round size, but I haven’t seen this level of involvement.
3. Shift in Retro Funding Ideals:
   Over time, the vision for Retro Funding seems to have shifted. I recall the original disruptive vision that emphasized funding public goods projects and enabling contributors to earn a sustainable income to continue their work.

I understand why the rounds have evolved in this direction—there’s been a lot of feedback, and the participation rate from Citizens isn’t high, which makes it challenging to implement a fully bottom-up approach. I also recognize the strategy behind these changes and the good intentions of those driving Retro Funding and the Foundation Gov Team, as well as the hard work they’ve put in.

For these reasons, I abstained rather than voting against

[Liliop.eth]

As a Delegate, guest voter and RF participant I understand that Optimism is aligning itself with the Superchain Product Vision strategy with a strong focus on builders and attracting new chains to the ecosystem; however, I think it is relevant, given the conception and core of Optimism, to think about its governance and have its mission as a pillar, hopefully to see more information about it.

In my experience as a badgeholder, I was able to rescue some projects that needed to improve the UX and security of their platforms, although sometimes it is left aside, it is important to have a good and agile experience to attract new users and increase interaction, in addition to improving security and avoiding scams. Perhaps it can be a pillar in the evaluation, so that we have more and more competitive projects with good metrics.

I hope we will soon have more news about the next steps.

All the best!
Lili

[tunj10]

good updates about R7 but it’s not understandly which it’s in the scope of eveloper ext: there are block source in scope?

I wish so hope

[LXDAO]

LXDAO Governance Group’s Opinions on the Retro Funding Reform

1. Support for Retro Funding - S7 Missions:

• Support the continuous coordination of algorithmic experiments with human input to explore better integration of models and human judgment in governance allocation.
• Support the exploration of algorithmic experiments. In DAO governance and allocation, theoretical breakthroughs often drive experimental progress, as demonstrated by Deepfunding’s current efforts. Investigating algorithmic experiments has the potential to create better governance models.

2. Opposition to Retro Funding - Onchain Builders:

• Hidden Risks of Single Growth Incentives: We oppose the focus of Onchain Builders’ reward mechanisms primarily on SuperChain adoption rate growth and high-value on-chain activities (such as TVL). This single-minded growth incentive model may overlook the development speed of ecosystem diversity. After all, the diversity and complexity of the network are the soul of OP. The level of diversity and complexity also determines the extent to which OP is affected during market failures. Therefore, we should equally consider the opportunity costs related to diversity development.
• Current Proposal is Too Vague: The introduction of AI models tends to direct attention toward data and growth, but Base or OP’s advantages over competitors like Solana do not lie in these areas. We believe that continuous incentives for Onchain Builders are necessary, but they should focus more on theoretical innovation and support new experiments (e.g., each version of Uniswap has a certain level of groundbreaking nature). Theoretical innovation is abstract and requires voting by Citizen House’s Badge Holders. At this point, the problem AI models need to solve becomes “how to assist Badge Holders in completing their work more easily and with greater focus as the frequency of voting workload increases.” We look forward to seeing more details.

3. Support for Retro Funding - Dev Tooling:

• Support for Retro Funding - Dev Tooling.

4. Opinions and Follow-up Focus Points on Allocation Algorithm Experiments:

• Deepfunding’s experiments have provided an important insight for the continuous allocation experiments of Retro Funding’s algorithms: the node connections in dependency/growth relationship networks are continuous. Therefore, the new themes of each Retro Funding season should only serve as the focus direction, not the entirety. Projects that were selected in previous Retro Funding rounds and still have impactful contributions should receive consistent, long-term support.
• In Retro Funding S1~S3, the Citizen House spent a significant amount of time manually selecting “good projects with indirect influence on the network.” Some of these projects were even difficult to uncover through metrics and were relatively obscure (e.g., ZachXBT). However, the high time cost and low conversion rate left Badge Holders feeling overburdened. In S7, Retro Funding could invite some Badge Holders to conduct small-scale voting, listing their top 10 favorite public goods within the application scope, and conduct multiple rounds of experimental trials to refine the collaboration between algorithms and human judgment.