RetroPGF Simulated Voting: 13 Selected Impactful Projects Eligible for 10M OP
#517
Hi, good morning!
The writing style of this article is very different from previous ones, discussing not a single topic but rather organizing the 195 projects currently registered for the 2nd RetroPGF (Retroactive Public Goods Funding) into categories, and inviting everyone to join me as a simulated reviewer to decide together how to allocate a total of 10M OP in funds.
Simulated voting
At the end of last year, I had announced that participating in the second RetroPGF would be a brand new attempt this year and a major event for Blocktrend. In January, I invited everyone to complete the registration form for this RetroPGF, hoping to eventually receive up to 10 million OP tokens (currently worth about 800 million NTD) in reward subsidies, and promising to return all OP tokens received by Blocktrend to each paid member. Now the day of the awards is getting closer and closer.
If the number of OP tokens received by Blocktrend is large enough, the value of the tokens each member receives may exceed the subscription fee initially paid. This creates an economic incentive for people to subscribe to the media. The more people subscribe to Blocktrend, the more resources we have, creating a greater impact and entering a positive cycle. This is the goal RetroPGF hopes to achieve.
However, how many OP tokens Blocktrend can ultimately receive depends on the voting results of the "committee members" (badgeholders). The two-week voting period is underway, and the final results will be announced next Friday (3/24). Although there are only 90 committee members worldwide with voting rights in this RetroPGF, this article hopes to invite each Blocktrend reader to play the role of a "one-day committee member" through simulated voting.
If you had the power to decide how to allocate 800 million NTD, which projects would you choose to vote for?
Each committee member has 100 votes, and the number of OP rewards each project can receive depends on the weighted average of the final votes. Through this simulated voting, everyone can see the projects applying for RetroPGF subsidies, the contributions of the projects to the Optimism ecosystem, and also experience the pain committee members go through during the review process.
Next, I will first announce the list of selected projects I carefully picked from the 195 projects, and then explain the evaluation criteria and insights I used as a one-day simulated committee member. Other projects will be placed in a separate form. After reading, please feel free to leave a comment sharing which projects you would like to vote for and your thoughts on the selection process.
Selected Projects
This time, RetroPGF is divided into three main categories: infrastructure, education, and tooling and utilities. Let's start with infrastructure.
Infrastructure
A total of 43 proposals fall under this category. The most closely related to the infrastructure category are blockchain node software, such as Geth, Lighthouse, or Nimbus. While these names may be unfamiliar to the general public, if the blockchain were likened to a spaceship, the node software would be like engines from different manufacturers.
The reason for having multiple brands of engines operating simultaneously is to prevent a single software failure or code vulnerability from causing the entire spaceship to crash. Moreover, different node software is suitable for different devices, such as Nimbus being lightweight and more appropriate for installation on mobile devices. However, although I understand the importance of node software, I have not delved deeply into these programs, so I chose to skip these proposals and leave the voting to more technically savvy committee members.
The most popular proposals in the infrastructure category are those focusing on the needs of smart contract developers, such as the smart contract languages Solidity and Vyper, APIs that make it easy for developers to access on-chain data, or toolkits that allow developers to write and deploy smart contracts, lowering the technical barrier to creating Web3 applications. However, since I'm not a developer myself, I also skipped these proposals.
In the end, I selected three proposals. The first is EIP-4844 Contributors Collection, a technical solution that makes fees on Ethereum's Layer 2 networks cheaper, and this proposal aims to subsidize the technical contributors researching and implementing EIP-4844.
The second is Infinitism, the organization behind the technical standard ERC4337, also known as account abstraction.
The third is Flexible Voting, a DAO governance voting mechanism that allows people to participate in on-chain voting on Ethereum or delegate proxy voting on Optimism.
Education
There are a total of 70 proposals in the education category, which are divided into news media, learning communities, and information dashboards. Blocktrend belongs to the news media category, along with many other content creators producing text or multimedia content. In addition to Blocktrend, there is another Simplified Chinese personal media project, Optimism FM; we are the only two Chinese representatives and also Asian representatives. Japan, South Korea, and Singapore did not participate in the RetroPGF education category proposals.
Learning communities are primarily online. If the learning content is basic knowledge, it is generally accompanied by some gamified interaction to lower the entry barrier. If the content is advanced knowledge, it is mostly courses to help engineers get started with smart contract development.
Information dashboards are a unique category. Almost everyone uses the Dune Analytics platform. These proposals focus on the information dashboards they have created on Dune, helping many people grasp crucial on-chain information.
I selected a total of five proposals. In the news media category, in addition to Blocktrend being my top choice, I would pick Week in Ethereum News and Polynya. Week in Ethereum News provides a weekly roundup of Ethereum technology and application news, and it is a reliable source of information that I regularly read. Polynya, on the other hand, is an individual creator who produces in-depth Layer 2 technology articles with apparent dedication.
In the learning community category, I chose Kernel, which focuses on peer-to-peer learning. Through an 8-week learning course, Kernel helps participants understand the basics of blockchain technology.
For the information dashboard, I chose L2BEAT, which is a website I regularly use to check Layer2 information. Its influence is undeniable.
Applications and Tools
Among the three categories, the most enthusiastic one is the applications and tools category, with a total of 82 proposals. Although there are many, I think it's relatively easy to choose. As long as you have used it yourself, it must be a project with considerable influence.
In this category, I selected 5 proposals: DeFiLlama, Gitcoin, ChainList, Revoke.Cash, and Snapshot.
DeFiLlama is the proposal I would cast the most votes for, as its on-chain information has been widely used by the community. Although I often use their products, I have never paid this team. Therefore, I hope to make up for it through RetroPGF.
Gitcoin is a platform that uses quadratic funding, and it has been continuously matching donors and Web3 projects in the past few years. Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin also donated to blockchain projects through Gitcoin.
ChainList helps users replace a bunch of technical parameters with clicks, greatly improving the user experience of the blockchain. Revoke.Cash is like the Web3 version of Whoscall, it pops up warning notifications when people browse scam websites and use malicious smart contracts, reducing the risk of phishing. Snapshot provides a voting interface that allows users to complete voting on proposals without having to pay on-chain fees.
These are the 13 proposals I have carefully selected. If I were a judge, I would exclude voting for Blockchain projects based on conflict of interest avoidance. Therefore, on average, I would cast 8 votes per proposal. The extra 4 votes will be added to DeFiLlama, giving it a total of 12 votes. The other 182 proposals that did not make the cut can be found in these three forms (1, 2, 3), along with my brief descriptions of them.
Judging Experience
Going through 195 projects at once is probably the most labor-intensive content in the history of Blockchain projects. Next, I will announce my judging criteria.
The biggest difference between RetroPGF and traditional investment is that it adopts a "post-recognition of effectiveness" model. That is to say, the selected projects should not have great potential in the future but should have already made contributions in the past and have actually affected many people.
Therefore, as long as I see the words "plan" or "future" in the proposal, explaining what to do with the funds obtained from RetroPGF, I will delete them first. RetroPGF's money is not for investing in potential stocks but for rewarding projects that have made concrete contributions but have not received corresponding rewards. In other words, it is easier for those "pitiful" projects that have done a lot but seem to be struggling financially or without stable income to stand out in RetroPGF.
Secondly, RetroPGF rewards public goods, not private goods. I will look at whether the project has ever received venture capital funding. After all, venture capital is not a charity, and its pursuit is investment returns. If a project has already received venture capital support, it not only means that the project is relatively not short of funds, but it may also be inconsistent with the original intention of RetroPGF to reward public goods.
Recently, a judge raised the same question on Discord, and another serious judge compiled a table based on public information, indicating which projects have already received venture capital funding or issued tokens. This table can help judges allocate resources more effectively, rewarding public goods that have been "successful" but have not yet received financial support.
Finally, I have to admit that subjective feelings will greatly affect the voting results, especially for products that I have heard of or used before, which will score extra points. This indirectly rewards proposals that are mainly in English, as most judges are currently native English speakers. Each judge has 195 proposals to worry about, and it is difficult to expect judges to have Google Translate installed on their computers, translating content originally in Chinese, Spanish, or Russian back to English.
In the past, I would say that this can only be expected in the future, with more diverse backgrounds for judges, so that non-English projects can also have more equal opportunities. However, the recent rapid development of AI, with a significant improvement in translation quality, has been quite impressive. Understanding the difficult situation for judges, I will also create a "Blocktrend International Edition" in the future, translating past articles into English using AI, bringing Blocktrend content to the international readership.
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