Optimism is a growing Ethereum community focused on scaling blockchain technology and funding public goods through initiatives like Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RetroPGF) and the Optimism Superchain. The Optimism Collective aims to maximize stakeholder benefits rather than shareholder profits, fostering collaboration and innovation. Key components include grants programs, community engagement through forums and calls, and a commitment to sustainable development. The community encourages participation and collaboration, offering opportunities for individuals to earn funding by contributing to impactful projects.
Welcome
This article provides an introduction to Optimism. Please note that this article is an early work in progress and will be updated soon. Enjoy!
Table of Contents
- Welcome
- Intro to Optimism
- Eden Fractal Collaborations with Optimism
- EF 66: Permission Possible
- EF 67: Growing with Optimism
- EF 68: Planting Optimism Fractal
- Retroactive Public Goods Funding
- Intro to retroactive public goods funding
- Ways to find out more
- Fractal Synergies
- RetroPGF
- Introduction to Retro PGF
- RetroPGF Round 3 Info
- Resources
- The Concept of Impact=Profit
- Ether’s Phoenix
- OP Stack
- Resources
- Thought Leader Reviews
- Vitalik Buterin
- Kevin Owocki
- Eden Fractal coverage
- EF 67: Growing with Optimism
- EF 66: Permission Possible
- Growing with Optimism
- Resources
- More Videos
- Related Posts
- EF 68: Planting Optimism Fractal
- EF 67: Growing with Optimism
- EF 66: Permission Possible
Intro to Optimism
Optimism is one of the most popular Ethereum Layer 2 blockchains, focused on sustainably scaling Ethereum to better serve society over the long term. The Optimism Collective aims to incentivize the creation of public goods that benefit all people through novel incentives and revenue sharing models.
One of the most exciting aspects of Optimism is their dedication to funding public goods in innovative ways. They have an inspiring vision with concepts like Esther’s Pheonix and ‘Impact=Profit’ that aim to reorient traditional incentive mechanisms and reward people for doing work that benefits everyone.
Please see below resources to help you navigate and learn more about Optimism:
The Optimism Collective outlines their vision for a new model to fund public goods. Optimism.io is the main website explaining how they are scaling Ethereum sustainably. The Optimistic Vision dives deeper into their goals for the future. Retroactive Public Goods Funding (Retro PGF) and Announcing RetroPGF Round 3 explain their grants for rewarding prosocial projects.
Optimism Superchain introduces their vision for interoperability between chains. Optimism Collective Grants and Optimism Grants Council cover their various funding initiatives. The Optimism Collective Blog shares the latest developments. Discuss with the community on the Optimism Collective Forum or in the Optimism Community Calls. Watch shows and exciting podcast videos on their Optimism Collective Youtube Channel.
Eden Fractal Collaborations with Optimism
Since our 66th meeting, Eden Fractal has focused on Optimism in each episode. You can watch full episodes and explore detailed show notes featuring Eden Fractal’s collaborations with Optimisms in the following episodes:
EF 66: Permission Possible
Hip hip hooray! Our mythical heroes approved three proposals to update the eden.fractal permissions and explored an introduction to the Optimism Collective, a new type of community designed to reward public goods and build a sustainable future for all 🌞
EF 67: Growing with Optimism
What are the synergies between Eden Fractal and Optimism? In the next stage of our epic journey we explore opportunities to help humanity flourish and summon Ether’s Phoenix with innovations in retroactive public goods funding 🌱 🌞
EF 68: Planting Optimism Fractal
What are the best ways to grow communities that create public goods? We explore the new Optimism Fractal proposal, RetroPGF, and other exciting opportunities for public goods creators in the Optimism ecosystem 🌱 🌻
Retroactive Public Goods Funding
Intro to retroactive public goods funding
Retroactive public goods funding is Optimism's clever solution for properly valuing contributions that are hard to measure in real-time. Like the invisible roots of a tree, some projects take time for their full impact to be revealed. Instead of attempting to predict the future, retroactive funding looks backwards at evidence of what provided the most widespread benefit. This empowers purpose-driven builders today, knowing their fruits will someday be fairly measured and rewarded.
Ways to find out more
As written in this page, “Karl Floersch is an inspiration for this mechanism, as they are implementing it at Optimism. It is a way of doing public goods funding retroactively. At Optimism, they are creating a committee of experts, and they’re channeling revenue from the Optimism network and asking that committee of experts which things in the past have delivered value to the ecosystem. The idea is that more talent will be directed toward developing public goods funding in the present based on the assurance that they will be rewarded for it in the future.”
This topic is also explored in the Green Pill Podcast episode with Griff Green, which is a community focused community network. You can check out this page for details on their content and a guide on ways to participate and engage. You can also watch Vitalik presenting retroactive public goods funding at 28:45 during EthCC [4] press conference. Also check out Vitalik’s tweet referring to a medium article on Retroactive Public Goods Funding gives information on how to sustainably fund public goods and more.
Fractal Synergies
Retroactive fundings are well-known to Eden Fractal and Fractally communities, being at the core of their public goods funding strategies. You can see some examples of this below:
-Dan Singjoy sends retroactive public goods funding for Eden Fractal builders in this tweet
-Distributing Respect tokens in each Eden Fractal episode as part of a Respect Game where participants go into break-out room and rank each others’ contributions for Eden Fractal
RetroPGF
Introduction to Retro PGF
RetroPGF is Optimism's groundbreaking system for fairly rewarding contributions to public goods, even long after they were created. Imagine society regularly looked back to survey all the projects and ideas that proved most useful, then rewarded the creators proportionally. RetroPGF makes this possible, so builders can fund their work by provably benefitting the world. The Optimism Collective has a fascinating bicameral governance system focused on public goods and they’re now preparing to launch the third round of RetroPGF, which as far as we are aware is the largest retroactive public goods funding mechanism in the world. They gave
Optimism is pioneering retroactive public goods funding with an initiative called RetroPGF, where hundreds of esteemed Optimism community members vote to allocate funding to people who create public goods. The third round of RetroPGF is starting in the coming weeks and as far as I’m aware it is the largest retroactive public goods funding in the world. The Optimism Collective is planning to distribute 30 million OP in this round of RetroPGF, which is currently about 250x more funding than the next season of Pomelo.
You can learn more about RetroPGF in this introductory article, blog post announcing round 3, and video playlist (also covers Retroactive Public Goods Funding). To learn more about the bi-cameral governance system, we recommend to check out this video presented by Justine at the EthCC[6].
RetroPGF Round 3 Info
RetroPGF Round 3 project applications is open! Round 3 will allocate 30 million OP to builders, artists, creators, and educators who have demonstrated their impact in building the Optimism Collective. Find the latest in this article, and you can apply here through October 23rd.
In the article, it is mentioned that every type of contributor to the Optimism ecosystem is eligible for RetroPGF. Whether you’re a developer working on an Ethereum execution client or an educator creating Optimism-inspired video content, if you’re providing impact, you’re eligible! RetroPGF is open to all Optimism artists, creators, writers, builders, and evangelists.
You can check out the recipients of RetroPGF 2 to get a sense of what’s been rewarded in the past. If your work has made an impact in any of the four categories below, the Optimism Collective team highly encourages to submit an application for RetroPGF:
RetroPGF rewards are ultimately determined by the badgeholders of RetroPGF 3 (of the Citizens’ House). You can check out the full dates and timeline details of RetroPGF Round 3 here, and review here for instructions on how to fill out your application. Good luck! 🌞
Resources
-A resource at Ecosystem Contributions board, which helps builders to find a project to get started with
-A tweet from Optimism with an intro video explaining the concept behind RetroPGF: reward those who have created a positive impact in the Optimism Collective
-A tweet from Optimism with a short video series exploring recipients of RetroPGF 2
-Kevin Owocki’s tweet on Retro Public Goods Funding containing quick intro videos
-The Blockchain Guy’s RetroPGF Podcast providing many Optimism concepts explained, as well as a RetroPGF focused podcast episodes sharing news and updates
-Round 2 details can be found in this article
-A Green Pill episode on Retroactive Public Goods Funding Round 2 with Bobby Dresser of Optimism
-Introducing the Citizens’ House: 10m OP to Public Goods article, which announces its second round of Retroactive Public Goods Funding with 10m OP tokens to fund public goods. It shows growth on Optimism’s vision such as two years from OP mainnet launch, last spring the first branch of the Optimism Collective governance was born when the Token House came online.
-An article on badgeholder distribution criteria for RetroPGF 3 has been updated following the learnings from Round 2
-An article on Retro PGF Expriment with $1 Million Dollars for Public Goods
The Concept of Impact=Profit
Impact = Profit is the guiding ethos of Optimism's vision - creating a world where every person profits in proportion to the measurable positive impact they bring to society. This engenders natural incentives to create public goods that benefit communities and humanity, since that is the path to sustainable success. The Impact=Profit model fosters harmony, in the same way flowers living in balance with bees bring mutual prosperity through fair value exchange.
Ether’s Phoenix
Ether's Phoenix is the eternal spirit of human progress that Optimism seeks to summon, rewarding those who contribute to this vision of universal flourishing. Like a mythical phoenix rising triumphantly from ashes, Ether's Phoenix represents the dawning of new era of sustainable prosperity brought by aligning profit with purpose. This poetic metaphor symbolizes how Optimism aims to reshape society's incentive structures to encourage behaviors which benefit humankind as a whole. With our help co-creating aligned systems, Ether's Phoenix can take flight!
Optimism shares an inspiring vision for the future, as you can see in the webpages about The Optimistic Vision and Retroactive Public Goods Funding. One of the key concepts in the vision is Esther’s Pheonix, which you can hear Optimism co-founder Karl Floersch discuss in the videos below.
You can also learn more about Ether’s Phoenix in this blog post, and tweet where Kevin Owocki explains it in a short video. You can find out more in this Green Pill podcast episode about Summoning Ether's Phoenix with Karl Floersch. The conversation touches upon the current state of affairs of Ether's Phoenix, what a world looks like with many different 'competing' public good services available, and discussing the future of AI alignment and Karl's take.
Also here is a Green Pill episode from last year with Kevin Owocki and Karl Floerch, cofounder of Optimism and visionary leader. In this video they explore the concept of ‘Ether’s Phoenix,’ a hypothetical being that rewards you for manifesting it—directly contrasting the concept of Roko’s Basilisk (research at your own risk).
OP Stack
Optimism is building a Superchain with the OP Stack, which is the most popular open source software stack for Layer 2 Ethereum blockchains. Many highly successful companies are now building a superchain with the OP stack, including Base from Coinbase and Worldcoin from OpenAI. You can learn about the Superchain and OP Stack in the videos below and the draft articles about several blockchains using the OP Stack.
You can learn more and find informative videos about the superchain and OP Stack in our draft article about the OP Stack. You can also watch Optimism co-founder Karl Floersch introduce it in the following video.
Resources
-The OP Stack explained video, touching on Coinbase’s recently announced launch of Base, their own layer-2 network built on top of Ethereum. Also details how it relates to Optimism and the OP stack
Thought Leader Reviews
Optimism is highly reviewed by many Ethereum thought leaders who are focused on improving human coordination, including Vitalik Buterin and Kevin Owocki. The following sections show some of the ways that Vitalik and Kevin have supported Optimism.
Vitalik Buterin
Vitalik has praised Optimism and provided many insights to help guide the development of retroactive public goods funding. You can see some of this in the articles and video below. You can also find more in our drafts articles about Vitalik and Vitalik on Optimism.
You can watch Vitalik presenting retroactive public goods funding at 28:45 during EthCC [4] press conference. Also check out Vitalik’s tweet referring to an article that he co-wrote on Retroactive Public Goods Funding gives information on how to sustainably fund public goods and more.
Vitalik Buterin and badge holders reflect on Optimism's first retroactive public goods experiment. They discuss what worked, what didn't, and propose potential areas for improvement in this video at the Optimism’s Collective Channel.
Kevin Owocki
Kevin Owocki, co-founder of Gitcoin and founder of GreenPill.Network, has praised Optimism and hosted several innovative podcasts with optimistic leaders. We encourage to watch the Green Pill episodes in his channel and look out for ways to participate in the Green Pill Network. You can see some videos and tweets including Kevin below:
Kevin Owocki explains Ether’s Phoenix it in a short video shared in a tweet. You can find out more in this Green Pill podcast episode about Summoning Ether's Phoenix with Karl Floersch. The conversation touches upon the current state of affairs of Ether's Phoenix, what a world looks like with many different 'competing' public good services available, and discussing the future of AI alignment and Karl's take.
Also here is a Green Pill episode from last year with Kevin Owocki and Karl Floerch, cofounder of Optimism and visionary leader. In this video they explore the concept of ‘Ether’s Phoenix,’ a hypothetical being that rewards you for manifesting it—directly contrasting the concept of Roko’s Basilisk.
A Green Pill episode on Retroactive Public Goods Funding Round 2 with Bobby Dresser of Optimism. Bobby Dresser is the general manager at the Optimism Foundation, sharing an exciting announcement. Round 2 is The Optimism Collective’s second round of Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RetroPGF). In this episode, they explore on Optimism’s vision to build a global system where positive impact to the collective is rewarded by profit to the individual. RetroPGF is an experimental mechanism to realize this goal of “impact = profit”. By funding public goods sustainably, the Collective can create a rich ecosystem and a better economy.
Eden Fractal coverage
The below Eden Fractal meetings at EF 66 and EF 67 covered Optimism’s chain, grant opportunities, RetroPGF and more! The videos below are still set as unlisted as we’re working on final touches before release, however show notes are ready for review:
EF 67: Growing with Optimism
What are the synergies between Eden Fractal and Optimism? In the next stage of our epic journey we explore opportunities to help humanity flourish and summon Ether’s Phoenix with innovations in retroactive public goods funding 🌱 🌞
During this episode, the Eden Fractal community got introduced to the immense opportunities with Optimism and RetroPGF Grants. Details on the Optimism Fractal Grant were discussed, while delving into synergies and benefits between Eden Fractal, Optimism Fractal and RetroPGF during 1:54:16.
EF 66: Permission Possible
Hip hip hooray! Our mystical heroes approved three proposals to update the eden.fractal permissions and explored an introduction to the Optimism Collective, a new type of community designed to reward public goods and build a sustainable future for all 🌞
Growing with Optimism
After the delegates approved proposals to update the msig account, Dan Singjoy shared an exciting presentation introducing Optimism to the Eden Fractal community. The Optimism Collective is a new type of community designed to reward public goods and build a sustainable future for the open internet. Optimism is a pioneering Ethereum L2 community that is highly aligned with Eden Fractal’s values for creating public goods and improving human coordination for everyone’s benefit!
We encourage you to watch Dan’s introductory presentation about Optimism at 1:50:20 and a presentation about a grant proposal to start a new community called Optimism Fractal at 2:03:55. The introductory presentation provides an overview of brilliant innovations from The Optimism Collective, including RetroPGF, Superchain, and the Optimistic Vision. The Optimism Fractal proposal aims to empower the Optimism ecosystem with the next generation of collaborative games, tools, and shows pioneered by Eden Fractal and ƒractally. In addition to helping Optimism, the proposal aims to empower all communities with tools for fractal consensus games and independent cooperation on the Ethereum Virtual Machine (or EVM) and OP Stack, which are the world’s leading software infrastructures for decentralized computing. These presentations set the stage for many fascinating community discussions about the synergies between Eden Fractal and the Optimism ecosystem.
We’re excited to share more educational resources about Optimism to help grow abundant communities, improve humanity’s mechanisms for funding public goods, and create profound benefits for all. You can watch our videos, explore our show notes, and join our meetings in future weeks to take part in our epic journey as Eden Fractal starts growing with Optimism. You can learn more exciting details about Optimism in this draft article from Eden Creators, this artful announcement, and Optimism.io! 🔴
Resources
More Videos
This video presents Binji from OPlabs to talk about the Optimism Collective. They talk about how artists can get involved in the grants program, retroactive public goods funding, and what it looks like for music to come to an L2. Also discuss how Optimism is bringing faster and cheaper transactions for on-chain music through its partnership with Sound and the future of music.
A quick video tutorial explaining Optimism’s Superchain, focusing on Optimism and Coinbase which have joined forces to be the first two L2 networks to make up the SUPERCHAIN. Powered by Optimism's OP stack, the Superchain is a horizontally-scaled collection of L2 networks built on top of Ethereum. If successful, it could offer unlimited blockchain-based scaling which in turn would enable novel applications that could never have never been built with blockchain previously.
Related Posts
EF 68: Planting Optimism Fractal
What are the best ways to grow communities that create public goods? We explore the new Optimism Fractal proposal, RetroPGF, and other exciting opportunities for public goods creators in the Optimism ecosystem 🌱 🌻
EF 67: Growing with Optimism
What are the synergies between Eden Fractal and Optimism? In the next stage of our epic journey we explore opportunities to help humanity flourish and summon Ether’s Phoenix with innovations in retroactive public goods funding 🌱 🌞
EF 66: Permission Possible
Hip hip hooray! Our mythical heroes approved three proposals to update the eden.fractal permissions and explored an introduction to the Optimism Collective, a new type of community designed to reward public goods and build a sustainable future for all 🌞 🔴