Optimism Collective to Transition Retroactive Public Goods Funding to Narrow Scoped Rounds

The Optimism Collective is set to make changes to its Retroactive Public Goods Funding (Retro Funding) program based on learnings and reflections from previous rounds. One of the key takeaways is that the broad round scope overwhelmed badgeholders and applicants, leading to a call for more focused and smaller rounds.

The scope of a round outlines the type of impact being rewarded and can range from a narrow and opinionated scope to a broad and inclusive one. Previous Retro Funding rounds (1, 2 & 3) featured a very broad scope, rewarding all types of impact made to Optimism. However, as the rounds scaled in size, this approach led to several drawbacks, including overwhelming citizens in their voting decisions and making it difficult for builders to understand what impact is being rewarded.

To address these issues, the Collective will experiment with narrow scoped rounds, which are expected to drive and measure builder behavior more effectively, adapt round design to scope, and allow for better prioritization. By leveraging a narrow round scope, the Collective aims to embrace different types of contributions and optimize for the most accurate impact assessment within the scope of each round.

The transition to narrow scoped rounds requires the Collective to make prioritizations, which may result in some types of impact not being rewarded by Retro Funding in the short term. However, the goal remains to reward all impact made to the Optimism Collective, and these optimisations are expected to bring the Collective closer to achieving this goal in the long term.

For the remainder of 2024, Retroactive Public Goods Funding will exclusively experiment with rounds featuring a narrow scope and pause the execution of broad scoped rounds. The Foundation will open source plans for the proposed rounds in 2024 shortly to advance the transparency of the design process.