Delegate Mission Request: Layerwide new project support

Delegate Mission Request Summary: This mission aims to provide new business support for projects within the Optimism ecosystem, including projects with approved grants in previous governance seasons. This program will focus on delivering support for major back-office and dev concerns faced by new startups, things such as RPC access, audits, legal counseling, dev agency work, business formation, tax prep, and so on.

S5 Intent Please list the Intent your Request aligns with here: Intent 2 - Grow the Superchain

Proposing Delegate: Jack Anorak

Proposal Tier 1: Ember

Baseline grant amount: 300k OP

Completion date: Aug 1, 2024

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Specification

The idea that Optimism has an opportunity to leverage the size of its ecosystem to support new project development was a major impetus behind the RFG program 1, which is in a sense a predecessor of this one. This program would formalize this thesis and would allow the Collective to:

Provide a point of contact for projects in the ecosystem looking for new business support
Partner with service providers to offer much-needed in-kind support for new projects
Solidify itself once again as the premiere launchpad for new projects, pushing the envelope of what ecosystems can provide to promising projects.
The structure would work similar to how RFGs did previously; service providers will apply for Mission Grants, and then the Grant Council will determine which service providers receive the grants and which projects ultimately get those grants.

This might be an additional lift for the Grant Council, so this budget could include some small addition to compensation, or RPGF could cover it. I’d want to see the Grant Council vote to accept responsibility here.

How will this Delegate Mission Request help accomplish the above Intent?

Simply put, you don’t have the Superchain without committed builders. The best way to get committed builders is to offer them users, a good dev experience, and a wealth of community and support. This Mission Request focuses on the last piece.

What is required to execute this Delegate Mission Request?

A broad range of selected service providers that commit to some high-quality service level in exchange for granted OP. These will include but are not limited to: – Smart contract audits – Free RPC coverage – Back office help, e.g., taxes, business formation, legal – Short-term agency development work Distribution of these subsidized services to selected project grantees All service providers must be understood to be at the top of their respective fields. It is essential that we offer through them the kind of professional support that is time efficient and longitudinally beneficial for us as an ecosystem.

Please list responsibilities and/or expected deliverables

Commitment and delivery of services
Rubric for selection of grantees and administration of service distribution
How should the Token House measure progress towards this Mission?
The only way here is to track the selection of vendors and project grantees. It would be good to get ongoing feedback on what sorts of services would be desired. This is a relatively small amount asked for such an ambitious project - the hope is that we could see some minimal successes and parlay them into something broader in the second half of the year.

How should badgeholders measure impact upon completion of this Mission?

Growth in users, transactions, or sequencer revenues directly attributable to granted projects
Growth in new deployments generally
Copying of this program by other ecosystems
% decrease in overall deployment costs for builders
of onboarded builders for whom support would have been a make-or-break obstacle
% audit coverage of Superchain

ethereum-optimism / ecosystem-contributions

Delegate Mission Request: Layerwide new project support #133

Delegate Mission Request: Layerwide new project support

Specification