Upcoming Retro rounds and their design

[Ariiellus]

The good the bad and the ugly

The Good

Smaller Rounds

Excellent decision to transition to more narrowly scoped rounds. With fewer projects to review in future rounds, it will be easier to assess the impact for badge holders. This is a great move!

Upstream & downstream

Dividing projects into two categories based on their impact on Optimism is an excellent initial step. This approach could yield a wealth of intriguing data for analysis, especially as various on-chain projects provide distinct metrics in their applications.

Experiments

It would be beneficial to receive additional information on this matter, particularly regarding how juries will be selected or, better yet, voted. By integrating this with the GovScore, we will swiftly gain a deeper insight into the identities of the citizens and their areas of expertise. However, please ensure that this does not result in additional power being granted to The Foundation.

@lefterisjp

Impact juries

That I am not so sure about. Who is sorting the citizens? The foundation again right? So this takes power away from the citizen house and into the foundation.

The Bad

Initiatives outside of the scope

I believe that this move will demotivate a lot of builders in different levels. @lefterisjp & @postpolar have just mentioned some great individuals and team who have made greats contributions to the ecosystem.

The Ugly

Decentralization is a joke

I don’t understand why to push 4 new RPGF rounds instead of openly asking both houses if they agree with this move. It could be a great strategy to achieve progressive decentralization, rather than making decisions behind closed doors without temperature check the sentiment of the community and hoping that people who believe in the idea of a “Collective” will be pleased.

I’m agree here with @cp0x:

@cp0x

This is not the first time that a fund acts in some of its own interests, without paying attention to the DAO, which essentially must make decisions, otherwise it is not a DAO at all.
One such case is a token sale (definitely two):

1. Token Sale – September 2023
2. Token Sale — March 2024

Seriously, does someone expect us to just cover our eyes and not demand answers?

No more public goods branding

This is probably the biggest mistake here.
It’s obvious that throwing away the Public Goods part is open widely the door to more VC backed projects. One of the major debates during RPGF3 revolved around whether a VC-backed project qualifies as a public good. This move feels like a slap in the face

@timdaub

I’d welcome the public goods concept back, I think it’s what made the program really compelling and innovative.

@Marcus01

Previous RPGF: make public goods, open source them, make an impact, get a chance to get my funding
Now RPGF: come grow in my superchain ecosystem and I’ll give you funding based on cold, data-driven metrics

Impact is not just vanity web3 numbers.