Season 7: Retro Funding Missions

Retro Funding Missions 🔴
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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?