Rewarding Impact: The Next Era of Optimism RetroFunding

Transcript

hey guys um so I'm Marine from optimism I work on infrastructure Partnerships so I'm actually the messenger for this presentation about retr funding um retroactive public good funding and so okay now it's up and down okay yeah um yeah so this is spearheaded by my colleague Jonas but I'll share some um overview about what it is and the latest round we have going on so first and foremost um retroactive public good funding so public goods are thing with a lot of um a lot of impact and historically little funding so don't get stuck up on the word Public Funding in this case I mean historically it's

sort of like something that delivers well-being to people in this case web 3 optimism Etc we think of it as essentially like what's contributing to building an open and fair internet uh owned by none um so with that being said protocols um and this is an old graphic please don't get stuck up on it but Protocols are essentially um set up to incentivize like network security right like not continuous Improvement not research and development um you can essentially see like Bitcoin ethereum back in the day were spending something like $16 million a day um on security and I think the ethereum foundation in

like something like 2020 had a budget for of like 30 million for the year year so that gives you um an idea and so with that in mind like what's essentially like a sustainable mechanism that we can have in place um to ensure funding of of public goods and uh essentially make sure that impact gets rewarded so at optimism um we came up with something called retroactive public goods funding previously known as retrop pgf and now known as retr funding uh it's essentially a sustainable mechanism and I'll go into the details uh right after about like what makes it

sustainable but essentially we want to ensure that individuals um receive rewards for their contribution to the optimism ecosystem the super chain and uh yeah the broader web 3 space as a whole and so and why retroactive um because we think it's easier to essentially reward things that happened in the past than things that will happen in the future uh but with that being said maybe a small caveat that we also have standard grants that reward things that will happen in the future but this is the broadest and like biggest pool of funds we have and uh it's yeah it's set up this way and maybe a bit more on the yeah I think I can touch on it on this

side uh a bit more about the process um optimism the governance is essentially set up as like a bamal system there's a token house so all holders of op and the citizens house delegates um from across this space and these are the individuals that are essentially like voting on how to distribute the funds and which project should receive them and every round we're iterating on this and making sure to give them all the tools they need um to be able to do that properly um cool okay okay yes the master plan so why what about this makes it sustainable right so we think that the demand for op block space and when we say op block

space op main net and now the super chain um obviously that generates sequencer revenue for op mainnet specifically 100% of sequencer revenue is is um is earmarked for retr funding um and for super chains so networks um other networks built on the on on the op stack that are um essentially giving back a portion of their sequence or Revenue uh 15 % well that entire chunk of um change is also is also earmarked for retr funding so this is what makes it well if the flywheel is enacted which um then with this retro funding we redistribute it to

uh to builders to businesses to open source project all of this we believe that this is going to essentially incentivize um values to users and Builders and it's going to create this flywheel that that's then going to create create more deband for this block space and kick um yeah kick off this flywheel so that we eventually have an ongoing endless um pool of funds to redistribute so a little bit more it's an ongoing process it's a continuous experiment uh ever since optimism was started in 2021 uh this has been this has been set in place so the first round was essentially a million dollars back then because there was no op uh was

distributed to 58 open source projects then fast forward um a year and a half in 2023 a bigger round 10 million op tokens um I think back then I want to say we had 200 projects so it's essentially like growing yeah it's it's growing by an order of magnitude more or less each time the latest round we had um 30 million op tokens were were distributed and uh this upcoming round so we've essentially like updated and maybe yes let me go to the next one so as I said this is a continuous experiment right so we're learning from each round um and we are

redesigning the way the rounds are structured the way the community is voting on it um the eligibility requirements so this is a bit example of some feedback from round two and how it went to inform round three design um I'll leave this up so you guys can look a bit into it but um importantly some more feedback from round three was that this last round was essentially open across all categories so Builders so apps could apply um op stack contributions like for example open source clients like gu um op stack infrastructures for example like uh open source block explorers like block Scout

so all this was lumped into one category and everybody would could apply and so this made it quite difficult for the citizens to be able to judge on all these different types of projects so since then we've restructured it uh now in its specific categories with the upcoming one being Builders actually apps um and other aspects that we've noted was that there wasn't essentially like standardized um uh verifiable and comp terrible metrics so this is also something that we've put in place for these upcoming rounds and uh lastly some of the feedback was that it's

some projects felt like it could be a bit of a popularity contest to be able to get like the delegates vote so now we've changed it and delegates don't vote on a specific project but instead they vote on metrics and those projects that meet those metrics um essentially then it gets distributed AC across um all those projects so yeah just a bit of examples to show you how this is an evolving space and um yeah my colleague Jonas essentially spends his time uh between rounds in focus groups learning taking the feedback and ideally improving every round so with that being said um round four is currently ongoing so you have until so if you built so

okay a few eligibility which I'll go to into right after but essentially if you're um an app builder and you've deployed on the super chain op mainnet base orora mode fraxel um you're you're eligible we're Distributing I want to say in this round how many 10 million tell 10 million op in this round specifically um so you can go check it out at retrun that optimism. IO um yes let me um I'll leave the the elig ility up here but essentially it's having deployed a contract um having usage and essentially what uh criterias we're looking to reward is those

projects that are generating demand for optimism blog space um that have generated act um interaction from repeated users that I brought new users so think of this yeah as any um app deployed um across the super chain and so if you're a new Builder to the space and have not not yet um deployed a project or are or had not deployed it on one of these chains before then we're going to be running um as mentioned earlier these rounds continuously forever ideally so um you can expect it uh to change a bit as I said as we're improving continuously but uh for Builders around this is essentially what we're looking at and and I think um I

think we'll share these slides after so and you can if anybody has any questions you can set check the site before go check out retr funding. optimism. IO for all these details um cool and so what's coming up so like I said one of the feedback was that it's very difficult to have open rounds with no scope so now we've broken it down the upcoming ones are the op stack um so this think a bit of it as those contributions that are improving like the foundational elements of um dop infrastructure so things that have delivered value in the pass for example um all the work done around like EIP 4844 span batches fault proof um all that good stuff that would fall under

that round then governance I mean at op we're spending a good bit of time and effort to build up um a capture resistant uh governance structure so any tooling around this any um any resources would fall under that round and then what I'm particularly excited about on the interest uh side is is developer tooling so block explorers RPC providers oracles data indexer all that good stuff um would fall under that category and yeah that's that's it that's I don't know how many of you already knew retr funding prior how many this is a new funding mechanism but um yeah any

questions uh any feedback I will be available in the back in the networking area thank you so much