Our Journey on Optimism [2024] | Quarter 1
TD;DR.
WakeUp Labs’ journey on Optimism in the first quarter of 2024. What we’ve been contributing to the OP ecosystem.
Intro.
We’re diving into 2024 with optimism! As the new year begins, our focus remains clear: to keep collaborating with Optimism, actively engaging with OP enthusiasts, and bringing all our expertise to the table.
Let’s review the first months of the year.
Beginning in 2024, we received the exciting news that we were awarded the Optimism Retro PFG grant.
These grants play a key role for software development teams, particularly those lacking substantial funding. Given the high costs associated with development, especially when your team possesses unique skills, securing financial support becomes essential.
For companies backed by big venture capitalists or possessing ample funds, they can afford to experiment freely. However, initiatives like rpgf are transformative. With OptimismFND support, development teams with limited funds can now actively contribute to the Ethereum-compatible ecosystem.
For WakeUp, this support brings three significant benefits:
- Provision of resources and additional motivation to build Public Goods. These projects, open-source, benefit the community by enhancing user experiences and aren’t intended for direct monetization.
- Advancement of future payments. Grants for building Public Goods typically come with a vesting period. During the development phase, salaries must be paid out, yet actual payment is received only upon project completion and after a predetermined period. Utilizing part of RetroPGF2, we’ve covered some costs as we develop a funded public good, anticipating payment a year later.
- Facilitation of ongoing training, alignment, and competitive salaries. Meeting the demands of a proficient “Blockchain” Developer is challenging. Protocols are constantly evolving, requiring developers to understand the underlying mechanisms. Moreover, delving into niche programming languages like Solidity, Rust, and Cairo is an ongoing endeavor. The user experience of decentralized applications (dApps) often poses challenges, making it crucial for developers to empathize with users. Those who meet these criteria possess skills highly sought after by projects offering competitive pay. However, as good developers are also in demand to build public goods, they deserve fair compensation, which rpgf aids in providing.
In summary, initiatives like RetroPGF are incredibly valuable for growing software development teams, as they nurture, fund, and integrate them into the ecosystem, enabling them to continue adding value.
Our co-founder Gonzalo Silman shares a reflection on this here 
Going forward in 2024, we successfully deployed the RFG-1: Data Request API, a service for querying the OP blockchain for specific past moments, empowering developers to access historical states.
Know more about this development here
Later on we developed a use case for the RFG-1: Data Request API.
As an example of what you can build with Retro’s APIs, this demo retrieves OP Token balances for a wallet address on a chosen date or block on the Optimism Network. You can effortlessly explore any ERC20 token.
You can check it here
To close the quarter, we applied to the badgeholders’ missions!
With 6 proposals, we aimed to continue collaborating with the OP ecosystem.
These missions are the specific projects taken on to hit targets previously set. They’re all about getting things done efficiently and effectively.
You can find these proposals here
Conclusion.
So far, these are our contributions to the OP Ecosystem during the first quarter of 2024. As we make more in the future, we’ll be updating this thread to keep you informed about our Optimistic Journey!
You can follow us on our social media accounts 
Thank you!