Foundation Mission Request: Measuring the Concentration of Power in the Collective

[opjulian]

Foundation Mission Request - Measuring the Concentration of Power in the Collective

To take on this project, submit a proposal to this thread by June 3. Read more about Missions here.

• Foundation Mission Request Summary: Develop a metric for concentration of power in the Optimism Collective
• S5 Intent: Governance Accessibility
• Proposal Tier: Ember
• Baseline grant amount: 9,000 OP
• Should this Foundation Mission Request be fulfilled by one or multiple Alliances: Multiple
• Optimism Foundation point-of-contact: @elizarileyoak until Jun 10, @C-Emily-Furlong after Jun 10
• Submit by: June 3
• Selection by: July 3

---

How will this Foundation Mission Request help accomplish the above Intent?:

In order to reach our goal of governance accessibility, we need to understand how to reduce the concentration of power in the Collective. To recap, we refer to governance accessibility as follows:

“Accessibility” includes enabling a diversity of perspectives to participate in governance, facilitating better knowledge sharing to develop more informed voters, and lowering barriers to participation for more culturally diverse involvement in the governance process. Increasing the votable supply and reducing the concentration of voting power are important byproducts of improved accessibility.”

To understand how to reduce the concentration of power in the Collective, we need clear metrics that we can observe. The objective of this Mission Request is to have one or more measures of the concentration of power in the Collective. These measures will enable us to document the impact of various governance initiatives on concentration of power, including initiatives under the ‘Improving Governance Accessibility’ Intent.

What is required to execute this Foundation Mission Request?

Various approaches have already been proposed to measure the concentration of power or level of centralization of a decentralized governance system. Common approaches include the Nakamoto Coefficient, Voting Bloc Entropy, Minimum Quorum, or Shannon Entropy. We aim to build on these prior approaches to define a metric tailored to the specific design of the Optimism Collective.

In the Collective, there there are multiple parameters for consideration beyond token holdings, voting behavior, or correlation of votes, for instance taking into account that a voter might hold power in multiple governing bodies and councils across the Collective. There are also different voting mechanisms employed across the Collective, for example one-token-one-vote in the Token House but a version of one-person-one vote in the Citizens House.

The desired outcome of this mission is:

• A metric that captures the concentration of power in the Collective and allows Collective participants to continually track performance on this metric (i.e. is accessible in a public location like a Dune dashboard)
• This metric could take into consideration:
  • Voting power distribution in the Token House + Citizen’s House (including the fact that some individuals are active in both Houses)
  • Positions of influence across Councils (Grants Council, Developer Advisory Board, Security Council, Code of Conduct Council, Anticapture Commission)
  • The social graph of voters (e.g., via Farcaster)
  • How voting power distributions may be obfuscated via voting blocks, spreading voting power over multiple wallets, informal coalitions, etc.
• A metric that captures the contribution of the Token House to the overall concentration of power.
• A metric that captures the contribution of the Citizen’s House to the overall concentration of power.

The code running these metrics should be open sourced so teams can fork and measure the impact of their own initiatives on this important outcome.

What milestones will help the Collective track progress towards completion of this Foundation Mission Request?

1. Research and planning a. At the end of this milestone share your proposed approach with the Mission Request authors for feedback, listing explicit assumptions that your approach relies on and noting how this improves upon prior approaches for measuring centralization. b. The approach should include a suggestion for how to measure the performance of the metric.

2. Prototype development and testing a. Applicants will test the performance of the metric with real and dummy data, that can be provided by the Foundation team. b. At the end of this milestone share your prototype with the Mission Request authors for feedback

3. Production development a. At the end of this milestone the metric(s) should be trackable and accessible to the public

How should badgeholders measure impact upon completion of this Foundation Mission Request?

• If this Mission Request is successful, Collective stakeholders will be able to track the concentration of power in the Collective and measure the impact of initiatives against this important measure.
• The quality of the metric itself should be measured by its performance on existing and dummy data. Changes to the real and dummy data should result in the expected effects on the metrics.
• If the metric is implemented by the Collective, grantees are encouraged to apply for additional rewards in the August 2024 governance-themed Retro Funding Round 6.

Application instructions

To apply for this Foundation Mission Request, please complete the form in the expandable section below and leave your response as a comment on this issue thread. Submissions will be open until June 3, at which time the Foundation will review all submissions and select at least one individual/team to complete the work defined here.

Submission form

_Copy the entire application below and leave a comment on this issue with your answers completed. A representative from the Optimism Foundation may reach out using the contact info provided to request more information as necessary._ ## Foundation Mission (RFP) Application **Please verify that you meet the qualifications for submitting at the above [Tier](https://gov.optimism.io/t/collective-trust-tiers/5877/2)** * **Alliance Lead:** Please specify the best point of contact for your team * **Contact info:** * **L2 recipient address:** * **Please list the members of your Alliance and link to any previous work:** Read more about Alliances [here](https://gov.optimism.io/t/season-4-alliance-guide/5873) --- **What makes your Alliance best-suited to execute this Mission?** - [...] - [...] **Please describe your proposed solution based on the above Solution Criteria (if applicable):** - [...] - [...] **Please outline your step-by-step plan to execute this Mission, including expected deadlines to complete each peice of work:** - [...] - [...] **Please define the [critical milestone(s)](https://gov.optimism.io/t/grant-policies/5833) that should be used to determine whether you’ve executed on this proposal:** - [...] - [...] **Please list any additional support your team would require to execute this mission (financial, technical, etc.):** - [...] - [...] **Grants are awarded in OP, locked for one year. Please let us know if access to upfront capital is a barrier to completing your Mission and you would like to be considered for a small upfront cash grant:** _(Note: there is no guarantee that approved Missions will receive up-front cash grants.)_ - [...] --- Please check the following to make sure you understand the terms of the Optimism Foundation RFP program: - [ ] I understand my grant for completing this RFP will be locked for one year from the date of proposal acceptance. - [ ] I understand that I will be required to provide additional KYC information to the Optimism Foundation to receive this grant - [ ] I understand my locked grant may be clawed back for failure to execute on critical milestones, as outlined in the [Operating Manual](https://github.com/ethereum-optimism/OPerating-manual/blob/main/manual.md#valid-proposal-types) - [ ] I confirm that I have read and understand the [grant policies](https://gov.optimism.io/t/token-house-grant-policies/5833) - [ ] I understand that I will be expected to following the public grant reporting requirements outlined [here](https://gov.optimism.io/t/suggested-public-reporting-requirements-for-grantees/4176) -- end of application --

[diterra-code]

Hi @opjulian ,

Quick question.

I was wondering if due to this proposal allowing multiple alliances, will the work also be delegated between them?

Hope to hear from you soon!

Bless

[opjulian]

Hi @diterra-code -- best to direct this question to @elizarileyoak :)

[elizarileyoak]

Hi @diterra-code, thanks for the question. We may select multiple (eg, 2) alliances to compare different complete solutions. If you plan to collaborate with another team, we recommend submitting one application together.

[diterra-code]

Hi @elizarileyoak thank you for the clarity. I have a few more questions:

• When is the expected completion date? I read August 2024 (coinciding with the retro funding rounds) does this indicate a set expectation or a preference?
• If I have been approved for a builder grant under the Ember tier would it be possible to apply as a Fledgling tier with our Alliance?
• When the foundation selects multiple alliances will the rewards be split or will the budget requests of each alliance get compensated individually?

Hope to hear from you soon,

[xannyxs]

Gm, I am a bit late to the game. I wanted to share that in the last RetroPGF round, I developed a visualiser for all badge holders. I am currently working on a Dashboard to show more information about each badge holders (not just their ENS & Wallet address)

In theory, this could easily be implemented for the Collective as well.

https://visual.retropgf.app/ https://github.com/xannyxs/attestation-visualizer

[ajuels]

Foundation Mission (RFP) Application

• Alliance Lead: Ari Juels in his role as Professor, Cornell Tech / University, Co-Director of IC3

• Contact info: Contact info at www.arijuels.com

• L2 recipient address: 0xe89bc14DD5C83f1bd7Bd978aF035d74Fc300ca09

• Please list the members of your Alliance and link to any previous work:  Sarah Allen, James Austgen, Kushal Babel, Andrés Fábrega, Mahimna Kelkar, Jay Yu, and Ari Juels; most previous work listed here 

What makes your Alliance best-suited to execute this Mission?

• Our Alliance proposed the concept of Voting-Bloc Entropy (VBE), one of the key concepts outlined in the RFP and we believe the most suitable metric for its objectives.

• We have made extensive contributions to the literature on electronic voting, including one of its most highly cited papers. That 2005 paper (“Coercion-resistant electronic elections”) proposed what is now the standard definition of collusion / vote-buying in e-voting, namely coercion-resistance. 

• We have extensive practical governance experience as an active Uniswap delegate representing Stanford Blockchain Club, and will become an active delegate for Optimism Token House starting in Season 6

Please describe your proposed solution based on the above Solution Criteria (if applicable):

• We propose to tailor VBE to the unusual structure of Citizen’s House through an exploration of applicable clustering algorithms.

• We will explore how VBE may be applied across Token House and Citizen’s House and how it may be employed in a combined and comparative study of the two.

• We plan to create a public-facing dashboard that presents VBE statistics across a swath of the DAO ecosystem.

Please outline your step-by-step plan to execute this Mission, including expected deadlines to complete each piece of work:

• We will first explore new clustering algorithms for voting-bloc identification in Citizen’s House.

• We will publish a dashboard with an ecosystem-wide view of VBE across DAOs. 

• Using findings from the dashboard, we will explore ways of comparing DAOs and combining VBE measures, including across Token House and Citizen’s House.

Please define the critical milestone(s) that should be used to determine whether you’ve executed on this proposal:

• July 2024: Proposed new clustering algorithm for voting-bloc identification in Citizen’s House based on ballot contents.

• July-August 2024: Published dashboard with an ecosystem-wide view of VBE across DAOs. 

• August 2024: Preliminary proposal for VBE measurement across Token House and Citizen’s House.

• Future work: Enriching VBE with side information, including social graphs, LLM-based analysis of voter discussions, etc.

Please list any additional support your team would require to execute this mission (financial, technical, etc.):

• Ongoing collaboration with the Optimism Governance team will be essential to successful completion of our work.

Please check the following to make sure you understand the terms of the Optimism Foundation RFP program:

• ☑ I understand my grant for completing this RFP will be locked for one year from the date of proposal acceptance.

•  ☑ I understand that I will be required to provide additional KYC information to the Optimism Foundation to receive this grant

• ☑  I understand my locked grant may be clawed back for failure to execute on critical milestones, as outlined in the Operating Manual

•  ☑ I confirm that I have read and understand the grant policies

• ☑  I understand that I will be expected to following the public grant reporting requirements outlined here

[diterra-code]

hi @elizarileyoak I hope all is well,

A friendly reminder for the unanswered questions posted above. And two additional questions:

Is the 9.000 OP amount the maximum or the minimum amount the OP foundation is willing to give?

And, what is the expected completion date?

Hope to hear from you soon.

Tagging @opjulian as there has not been a response from Eliza in a week.

[elizarileyoak]

Hi @diterra-code thanks for your questions and apologies I missed this. Appreciate you following up! I'm currently checking on your question about applying as a Fledgling tier if you've already been approved for a builder grant under the Ember tier. To respond to your other questions in the meantime:

• 9,000 OP is the baseline amount of this grant. If the metric ends up being implemented long-term by the Collective, grantees are encouraged to apply for additional rewards in the August 2024 governance-themed Retro Funding Round 6.

• A completion date of Aug 2024 is a preference rather than a set expectation -- we will align with the selected team(s) on a timeline that makes sense.

• If we select multiple alliances (eg, two separate teams), the teams would each receive 9,000 OP for completing this mission request.

[kylefox1]

Foundation Mission (RFP) Application

Please verify that you meet the qualifications for submitting at the above Tier

• Alliance Lead: Charles Adjovu
• Contact info: Twitter: https://x.com/CAdjovu, Email: charles.adjovu@protonmail.com
• L2 recipient address: 0xc7978F8Cb4d826E209911237676d1eeAF17942F4
• Please list the members of your Alliance and link to any previous work: Charles Adjovu, Xule Lin, Valerie Spina; you can find links to our previous work in the following list: 1) https://joan816.softr.app/, 2) https://explorer.gitcoin.co/#/round/42161/0xa7608d95a93cc684f2719323d40cbd0f59afe7d4/0xa7608d95a93cc684f2719323d40cbd0f59afe7d4-26, 3) https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Tg0421j_ktrorTFGYNdhaVx_wzZ0Fow359DI1uiAdR4/edit?usp=sharing, 4) https://ledgerback.pubpub.org/pub/3zn9f6v6, 5) https://ledgerback.pubpub.org/pub/cdh8nbdp, and 6) https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/AMBPP.2021.16429abstract

Read more about Alliances here

---

What makes your Alliance best-suited to execute this Mission?

• Our alliance proposed the DAO Index, a set of standardized principles and questionnaire to assess an organization's alignment with decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO)
• We have published academic articles on DAOs
• We have practical experience working in DAOs

Please describe your proposed solution based on the above Solution Criteria (if applicable):

• Determine concentration metrics relevant to DAOs,
• Analyze the Token House and Citizen’s House for each concentration metric,
• Share our results publicly via dashboards, publications, and data repository

Please outline your step-by-step plan to execute this Mission, including expected deadlines to complete each peice of work:

• June - July 2024: Determine appropriate concentration metrics, in multiple contexts (e.g., governance, discussion forums), to apply to the Token House and Citizen’s House
• July - August 2024: Apply concentration metrics to the Token House and Citizen’s House
• August - September 2024: Share results of our analyses via dashboards and publications
• September - October 2024: Compare our analyses of Optimism with other DAOs to determine standards for concentration metrics and incorporate them into the DAO Index

Please define the critical milestone(s) that should be used to determine whether you’ve executed on this proposal:

• We shared publications on our analyses by September 2024
• We shared publications on comparisons of Optimism with other DAOs by October 2024
• We shared dashboards on our analyses by September 2024

Please list any additional support your team would require to execute this mission (financial, technical, etc.):

• Assistance recruiting new team members skilled in data science and political science
• Assistance from the Optimism Governance team

Grants are awarded in OP, locked for one year. Please let us know if access to upfront capital is a barrier to completing your Mission and you would like to be considered for a small upfront cash grant: (Note: there is no guarantee that approved Missions will receive up-front cash grants.)

• N/A

---

Please check the following to make sure you understand the terms of the Optimism Foundation RFP program:

• [x]  I understand my grant for completing this RFP will be locked for one year from the date of proposal acceptance.
• [x]  I understand that I will be required to provide additional KYC information to the Optimism Foundation to receive this grant
• [x]  I understand my locked grant may be clawed back for failure to execute on critical milestones, as outlined in the Operating Manual
• [x]  I confirm that I have read and understand the grant policies
• [x]  I understand that I will be expected to following the public grant reporting requirements outlined here

[katerinabc]

Foundation Mission (RFP) Application

Please verify that you meet the qualifications for submitting at the above Tier

• Alliance Lead: katerinabc
• Contact info: k_bc (telegram), katerina@togethercrew.com
• L2 recipient address: 0x51092a250891637d036E4617a1E38A70309FEDcb
• Please list the members of your Alliance and link to any previous work:

This alliance has received grants and completed work for [Aave](https://aavegrants.org/check-out-our-grantees-wip/untitled/community-health-analytics), [Aragon](https://forum.aragon.org/t/real-time-community-health-analytics/3472), [Celo](https://mirror.xyz/prezenti.eth/lQi3cg5CwTXVFeOGODSB3JYUPNAxRzNufPo20D-khfw), [MetaCartel](https://forum.metacartel.org/t/grant-request-community-health-a-project-by-rndao/2354) and Optimism. The following proposal builds on top of this previous work.

This Mission is led by the following alliance members:

Katerina (contact person) - Co-lead TogetherCrew. Ph.D. using social network analysis. Since 2016 she is co-instructing a graduate course on data analytics for HR at Northwestern University. She has also co-organized the Learning in Networks sessions at the International Conference of Social Network Analysis (2018 - 2020), and previously advised a people analytics company on social network metrics. Twitter: [twitter.com/katerinabohlec](http://twitter.com/katerinabohlec) Linkedin: [linkedin.com/in/katerinab](http://linkedin.com/in/katerinab) Github: https://github.com/katerinabc/

Danielo - Instigator at RnDAO and CoLead at TogetherCrew. Previously, Head of Governance at Aragon, 8 years experience in Organization Design consulting (clients include Google, BCG, Daymler, The UN, and multiple startups), and visiting lecturer at Oxford University. Twitter: https://twitter.com/_Daniel_Ospina LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/conductal/

Tjitse van der Molen - Contributor at TogetherCrew. MSc degree in systems biology, focussed on large scale biological data analysis. Currently, he is obtaining his PhD in dynamical neuroscience where he is using graph theory and advanced statistical methods to study how neurons self organize into interaction networks. He is applying the same techniques to study community member interaction networks. recent project: analyses for this paper https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32115-4 Code and data are openly available in this github: https://github.com/KosikOrganoid/Intrinsic-activity-code Github: https://github.com/TjitsevdM

Cyrille Derché - Contributor at TogetherCrew. Bsc. Computer Science. Ex-Accenture, Co-founder and CTO of SaaS company helping medical device manufacturers deliver product data + documentation to healthcare professionals (handling of sensitive data). Builder of products, processes, and teams.

Read more about Alliances here

What makes your Alliance best-suited to execute this Mission?

• With TogetherCrew, we are measuring social concentration of power in web3 communities using the most common social network influence measure (Freeman degree). This measure of concentration is based on who is talking to whom. We are measuring communication patterns as it’s through interactions and conversations that people learn and form opinions.

  • We are already in the process of providing individual community reputation scores, which measure a person’s involvement and history with a community. This is a stepping stone towards measuring how much power a specific individual holds.
  • Since our inception, we have been championing community health by giving communities metrics to understand where they are on their journey towards decentralization. We have learned on the way that a metric is only useful if people understand what is being measured. Only then do they trust the metric and are willing to change their behavior.
  • Our team includes two PhDs with deep expertise in social network science, behavioral and team analysis.
  • We’ve already built data pipelines for Discord, Discourse, Github, etc. which allow us to analyse this data for Optimism (see off-chain activities reference below).

  Please describe your proposed solution based on the above Solution Criteria (if applicable): We propose that concentration of power consists of two facets: Concentration of on-chain activities (e.g., voting coalitions), and concentration of off-chain activities (e.g., social influence, lobbying, coalitions of like-minded people). We propose a simple decentralization metric that takes both facets into account for the collective, while also allowing users to dig deeper into the metric, and see how much power subgroups and individual accounts hold. This approach understands that hard voting power is but one component, and the ability to influence those with hard power can be even more important.

This metric will be based on:

• How far someone’s influence in the collective reaches (concentration of power)
• The number of subgroups needed to sway a vote in a direction (coalitions within the collective)
• The number of bridge-builders/gatekeepers in the collective (network weavers and gatekeepers within the collective)

We propose a dashboard which will highlight decentralization scores for the collective, and let users drill down on specific subgroups and token holders within the collective (i.e. filter the data by ‘tags’ for accounts of token house, citizen house, committees, etc). This gives users the ability to understand where power is most concentrated by showing scores for subgroups and for individuals as well as being able to see the impact on power concentration of different memberships.

Please outline your step-by-step plan to execute this Mission, including expected deadlines to complete each peice of work:

Developing and testing the metric [8 weeks]

• We will use our expertise in behavioral analysis, team dynamics, and social network science to research a mechanism that reliably measures the three aspects of our metric. This step will go beyond scientific literature and involves interviews with users to test their perception and trust in the metric.
• Develop and test a performant clustering algorithm using social graph data (Farcaster) and voting data [8 weeks]

Developing the dashboard. [12 weeks]

• The metric will be included in our existing dashboard. This allows us to make use of existing data pipelines and analytics, such as permission management, log-in and merging of identifiers of users, and merging of activity across platforms. Integrate log-in with Farcaster for the dashboard
• Design a Governance Accessibility page with three layers of information: (1) The overall score, (2) information about the subgroups and their power, (3) information about delegates and their power.

• User testing of dashboard internally and with delegates

  Please define the critical milestone(s) that should be used to determine whether you’ve executed on this proposal:

Milestone 1.1: Research and planning [6 weeks]

• Research and propose a series of metrics that will be presented to Collective participants. We will balance reliability of the metric with ease of understanding it and sensibility to changes in the input variables. The end result will be a metric that is reliable and actionable
• We will conduct user interviews with Collective participants to ensure that our metric is easy to understand and will be trusted by users (user acceptance testing).

Milestone 1.2: Prototype development and testing [2 weeks]

• Sensitivity analysis: We will develop different scenarios to understand how sensitive the metric is to changes in the communication, voting behaviour, and token distribution. This will provide insights into the feedback-cycle of the metric by demonstrating the impact specific individuals and groups can have on the metric

Milestone 2: Dashboard development [12 weeks]

• Develop a data pipeline for Farcaster and integrate it into our existing analytics script

• Design and test a Governance Accessibility page

  Please list any additional support your team would require to execute this mission (financial, technical, etc.):

• A contact person at Optimism governance to help promote the user testing of the metric

• Information about who is holding what badge, and insights into the result of the RFP badge holder analysis

  Grants are awarded in OP, locked for one year. Please let us know if access to upfront capital is a barrier to completing your Mission and you would like to be considered for a small upfront cash grant: (Note: there is no guarantee that approved Missions will receive up-front cash grants.)

  Please check the following to make sure you understand the terms of the Optimism Foundation RFP program:

  • [x] I understand my grant for completing this RFP will be locked for one year from the date of proposal acceptance.
  • [x] I understand that I will be required to provide additional KYC information to the Optimism Foundation to receive this grant
  • [x] I understand my locked grant may be clawed back for failure to execute on critical milestones, as outlined in the Operating Manual
  • [x] I confirm that I have read and understand the grant policies
  • [x] I understand that I will be expected to following the public grant reporting requirements outlined here

[curialabxyz]

Hi @katerinabc @kylefox1 @ajuels, it's exciting to see so many teams interested in this Foundation Mission Request. If any of you need OP governance data for your work, I’d be happy to help. We’ve already built the data pipeline this functionality into our voting power dashboard and delegate dashboard which include also partial delegations. We can provide the necessary data to support your work.

Feel free to reach out to me on TG: @v3dao - if you need any assistance or access to our data/API.

[helloblip]

Foundation Mission (RFP) Application

Please verify that you meet the qualifications for submitting at the above Tier

Alliance Lead: Blip Contact info: gm@helloblip.xyz or X L2 recipient address: 0x9821fD7fA0A8eaCE37fF9d59c3CF8Afc7d0BDA95 Please list the members of your Alliance and link to any previous work: Anon members Read more about Alliances here

What makes your Alliance best-suited to execute this Mission?

• We want to develop a tool to empower DAOs with actionable data insights, enhancing their decision-making and governance processes.
• Our team of four brings extensive expertise in Marketing, Growth, Engineering, Economy, Data and Product Management across various industries, ensuring success in driving data-driven improvements for DAOs.

Please describe your proposed solution based on the above Solution Criteria (if applicable):

• Introduction of the Concentration of Power Coefficient (CPC), inspired by the Gini Coefficient, to measure and analyze power distribution within the Collective. This metric will provide insights into the levels of inequality and centralization within the organization.
• The CPC will evaluate data from the Token House and the Citizen House, incorporating metrics such as Delegate participation, Badgeholder engagement, and outcomes from previous initiatives like Mission Grants and RetroFunding. This comprehensive analysis will guide the Collective towards more balanced and equitable governance.
• CPC (Concentration of Power Coefficient) will come in three types:
  • General CPC: This coefficient, ranging from 0 to 1, will compare the power distribution between the Token House and the Citizen House. A value of 0 indicates minimal concentration of power, while a value of 1 signifies maximum concentration.
  • TH CPC: the CPC exclusive to the Token House.
  • CH CPC: the CPC exclusive to the Citizen House.

Please outline your step-by-step plan to execute this Mission, including expected deadlines to complete each peice of work:

• August 2024: Create the first version of the General CPC (Concentration of Power Coefficient)
• September 2024: Iterated version of the General CPC, adding the specific CPC of each House with dashboards and data sets.
• October 2024: Publish a comprehensive report on our findings in blog format, including detailed analysis and actionable suggestions to help the Collective and the Houses to optimize the governance and their decision-making processes.
• Future work: Extend the CPC to the OP Stack that are participating in the Collective

Please define the critical milestone(s) that should be used to determine whether you’ve executed on this proposal:

• August and September steps in the execution plan

Please list any additional support your team would require to execute this mission (financial, technical, etc.):

• After each Milestone, we will need to meet with Key people from the Collective to help us validate and confirm we are on the right track.

Grants are awarded in OP, locked for one year. Please let us know if access to upfront capital is a barrier to completing your Mission and you would like to be considered for a small upfront cash grant: (Note: there is no guarantee that approved Missions will receive up-front cash grants.) A maximum of 10% of OP will be ideal for us to cover costs (mostly technical)

Please check the following to make sure you understand the terms of the Optimism Foundation RFP program:

• [x] I understand my grant for completing this RFP will be locked for one year from the date of proposal acceptance.
• [x] I understand that I will be required to provide additional KYC information to the Optimism Foundation to receive this grant
• [x] I understand my locked grant may be clawed back for failure to execute on critical milestones, as outlined in the [Operating Manual](https://github.com/ethereum-optimism/OPerating-manual/blob/main/manual.md#valid-proposal-types
• [x] I confirm that I have read and understand the grant policies
• [x] I understand that I will be expected to following the public grant reporting requirements outlined here -- end of application --

[BilalBAI]

Foundation Mission (RFP) Application

Please verify that you meet the qualifications for submitting at the above Tier

Alliance Lead: Bilal Contact info: bilal.yue.bai@gmail.com L2 recipient address: 0x04681fDADd6e8D561B998c7e37E7451057561091 Please list the members of your Alliance and link to any previous work: Yujie Yang, Bilal Bai, Yibo Ma Portfolio Stress Test Generalizable Training Algorithms

What makes your Alliance best-suited to execute this Mission?

Our Alliance is exceptionally well-suited to execute this Mission due to the diverse and complementary expertise of its members. Yang, a PhD candidate in statistics at the University of Hong Kong, brings deep knowledge in the theory and application of complex networks and statistical modeling, providing a strong foundation for data analysis and network-based insights. Ma, also a PhD candidate at the University of Hong Kong's faculty of Engineering, contributes his expertise in system analysis from an engineering perspective, ensuring robust and efficient system designs and solutions. Bai, a skilled quantitative analyst with five years of experience in quantitative research and data science, adds his proficiency in Python, R, SQL, and blockchain technologies. His professional background in developing quantitative models, risk metrics, and stress testing, combined with active participation in Ethereum collaborative research initiatives, strengthens our capacity for sophisticated financial and technological analysis. Together, our team’s blend of theoretical knowledge, practical experience, and interdisciplinary skills make us uniquely equipped to tackle the complexities of this Mission.

Please describe your proposed solution based on the above Solution Criteria (if applicable):

The Voting Influence and Concentration Analysis (VICA) is a systematic approach to estimating the voting bloc's marginal influence on voting outcomes and measuring the degree of concentration in the voting system. This method, specifically tailored for the Optimism Collective, leverages logistic regression, counterfactual analysis, and data augmentation to deliver a robust and comprehensive understanding of each voting bloc's explicit and implicit influence on the voting process. The method includes two parts:

Part 1: Estimate Each Voting Bloc's Explicit and Implicit Influence on Voting Outcomes: Voters are grouped into voting blocs by network analysis of on-chain activities and off-chain social media graphs. A voting bloc may include members from both houses and Councils. Logistic regression is employed to analyze each Voting Bloc's explicit marginal effect on voting outcomes. Next, the data is reversed by assuming each voting bloc's vote is the opposite of their actual vote, and logistic regression is performed again. We can estimate each voting bloc's implicit (counterfactual) marginal effect by comparing the regression results before and after reversing. Additionally, separate logistic regressions are conducted for the Token House and Citizen’s House to estimate each voting bloc's effect in different houses. The data from both houses is then merged to build a combined regression model, allowing us to estimate each voting bloc's overall effect on the entire voting system.

Part 2: Construct the Concentration Metric Based on Estimated Effects: Based on the estimated effects, the voting power distribution in both houses and the overall system can be observed. Statistical properties of the distribution including standard deviation and variance, kurtosis, and skewness will be calculated. Considering the statistical properties, we will compare various concentration metrics, including the Gini Coefficient, Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, and Entropy, to select the most appropriate one.

Please outline your step-by-step plan to execute this Mission, including expected deadlines to complete each peice of work:

Week 1-4: Data Collection/Preprocessing, Network Analysis and Clustering Week 4-6: Voting Bloc's Explicit and Implicit Influence Estimation Week 6-8: Concentration Metric Construction and Validation Week 8-12: Dashboard Development and Release

Please define the critical milestone(s) that should be used to determine whether you’ve executed on this proposal:

1. Research and planning The result of network analysis/clustering, voting bloc's explicit/implicit Influence distribution and selected concentration metric will be presented to the Mission Request authors for feedback.

2. Prototype development and testing A Python implemented prototype will be delivered for testing with real and dummy data.

3. Production development A Python or Dune dashboard will be delivered for public use.

Please list any additional support your team would require to execute this mission (financial, technical, etc.):

Ongoing communication with the Optimism team is needed to better understand the community social graph, Citizen House functionality and selection rules, and future governance planning.

Grants are awarded in OP, locked for one year. Please let us know if access to upfront capital is a barrier to completing your Mission and you would like to be considered for a small upfront cash grant: (Note: there is no guarantee that approved Missions will receive up-front cash grants.)

N/A

Please check the following to make sure you understand the terms of the Optimism Foundation RFP program:

• [x] I understand my grant for completing this RFP will be locked for one year from the date of proposal acceptance.
• [x] I understand that I will be required to provide additional KYC information to the Optimism Foundation to receive this grant
• [x] I understand my locked grant may be clawed back for failure to execute on critical milestones, as outlined in the Operating Manual
• [x] I confirm that I have read and understand the grant policies
• [x] I understand that I will be expected to following the public grant reporting requirements outlined here -- end of application --

[diterra-code]

Please verify that you meet the qualifications for submitting at the above Tier

Alliance Lead: Ruben Contact info: @OxRussel (telegram) L2 recipient address: 0x651693971879f441fee47857b922464469E5F1f4 Please list the members of your Alliance and link to any previous work: Read more about Alliances here

A few members of this alliance have received RPGF3 for their important work contributing to web3, DAOs, governance, data analytics, and socio-political philosophy.

The members of this Alliance are:

Ruben (Alliance lead) MSc in Sociology, focusing on social inequalities predominantly wealth inequalities. Participatory and Research experience with DAOs and decentralized on-chain governance. User interface, and Experience designer with extensive experience within the DAO, Web3 governance, and collective governance research. Worked on projects such as PrimeDAO, Kolektivo, and Breadchain.

LinkedIn X profile Prev work (video)

DeepDAO, Main contact person: Eyal (founder&CEO) Viewed as the #1 source of truth for data about DAOs, serving the DAO ecosystem, crypto, and mainstream media, investors, researchers, and academics. DeepDAO has been tracking the DAO ecosystem since early 2020 and is providing targeted insights, recommendations, and reports on voter participation and DAO power structure. Quoted for DAO data in thousands of media outlets, and over 100 published academic papers

Website X profile

Nick Houde Researcher and writer. Formerly Anthropocene and Technosphere projects at HKW in Berlin. Recent work research such as the “Networked Cooperative Ecosystems” project led by V6A Labs (2024), with Other Internet (2023) on a project called “Web3 Workers'' concerned with labor conditions and social security mechanisms in the web3 ecosystem, particularly DAOs, and with Trust concerning DAO tooling for unions.

Nick's Website Linkedin

Joshua Davila Writer and podcaster of The Blockchain Socialist and author of the book “Blockchain Radicals”, receiving acclaim from Vitalik Buterin, Amir Taki, Nathan Schneider, and more. He is also a co-founder and product manager of Breadchain Cooperative.

Website Book X profile LinkedIn

What makes your Alliance best-suited to execute this Mission?

• Our alliance has ~8 years of experience in Researching, Designing, and Developing solutions for DAOs or Decentralized on-chain communities.

• Our alliance has Academic researchers with expertise in social and technical sciences either focusing on Social Power distribution or decentralized governance and the complex power dynamics that rise within social organizations.

• Alliance member DeepDAO adds 4 years of experience aggregating DAO data, access to this data including on the Optimism Collective, and practical experience generating DAO power groups (coalitions), voter interest segmentation, and delegate and voter discovery. Also presenting and analyzing a voter's immediate network of friends and antagonists, which are the people who vote most times with, or against each other.

• We have access to blockchain data analysts and front-end engineers who can help with developing or integrating the chosen power concentration metrics into a publicly accessible dashboard. e.g. Expanding the DeepDAO dashboard to include/expand the Optimism Collective power concentration page.

• We value consistent communication with the Grant issuer to provide the highest quality of work.

Please describe your proposed solution based on the above Solution Criteria (if applicable):

Given the hybrid governance structure of the Optimism Collective, which blends one-token-one-vote and one-person-one-vote mechanisms, our approach to measuring power concentration is multifaceted. We propose a comprehensive analysis by decomposing the governance system to map power concentrations in each subsystem and correlate them to the overall system. This will be achieved through the OP Power Concentration Index (PCI), which integrates existing metrics such as the Gini coefficient, Nakamoto coefficient, and Voting Bloc Entropy (VBE), reflecting the structure of all sub-governance systems. This demonstrates how power concentrations are influenced by the bicameral governance structure of the Optimism Collective.

To measure the general power distribution, voting coalitions between members, the threshold for proposals to pass, overlapping positions of power (within both houses), and the general social influence of members of each house, our PCI metric will consist of the following components:

• Gini Coefficient: A general Gini coefficient for the top 500-1000 delegates (token house).
• Nakamoto Coefficient: For both houses, considering the veto capabilities of the citizen house.
• Voting Bloc Entropy Score: Using Shannon Entropy to map voting coalitions and patterns, enriched by including a social influence dimension within the OP collective (Token <> Citizen house).
• Social Influence: Mapping social influence within members of both houses, e.g., degree centrality, Activity, Content popularity.
• Overlap Analysis: Calculating a score, Venn diagram, or heatmap to map overlap between token-house delegates and citizen house members.
• Diversity Score: Per delegate, providing insight into how many delegators support each delegate.

These components will be individually calculated and grouped to create the PCI score, which will be displayed through a user-friendly dashboard consolidating these key indicators. The dashboard will feature the Power Concentration Index as the primary indicator of power concentration within the collective. This metric will help the OP Collective navigate its current state of power concentration and serve as a key measure of progress for initiatives aimed at power distribution. Clarifying how the governance structure impacts these power concentrations, will also enable detailed analytics for addressing asymmetries within the system.

Note: We will be expanding the already existing Optimism dashboard developed and maintained by DeepDAO. But are also open to developing a minimum viable dashboard if this is desired.

Limitations:

Single Point of Failure As the OP governance is a rather complex system. Relying on a single composite score may lead to over-simplification, where users might focus only on the composite score and ignore individual metrics that might signal issues or areas of concern. Planned Mitigation: Use the composite score as one of several tools in a broader toolkit for assessing power concentration. Encourage users to consider individual metrics and their specific implications alongside the composite score.

Please outline your step-by-step plan to execute this Mission, including expected deadlines to complete each peice of work:

Step 1: Research & Planning

We will first outline the distribution of decision-making rights within the Optimism Collective governance design and analyze the frequency of decision-making events (e.g., OP Stack upgrades, Grants, RF rounds, Airdrops, and council members). This analysis, conducted by decentralized governance researchers, will identify the relevant data for displaying power concentration.

Timeline: 4 weeks from start.

Step 2: Design & Development

Next, we will develop the data analytical layer to gather and compute raw blockchain data for our initial metrics. This will be integrated into the existing DeepDAO dashboard, expanding it to include:

• The calculated PCI score with an explanation.
• A summary of sub-metrics such as the Gini coefficient, VBE, social influence graph, and a venn diagram.

Timeline: 2-3 weeks after Step 1.

Step 3: Testing and Launching

Finally, we will launch the MVP version of the Power Concentration dashboard for the Optimism Collective, showcasing key metrics to provide an overview of power concentration. All metrics and methods will be described and tested for scalability and limitations using dummy data provided by the Optimism Foundation.

Timeline: 3 weeks after Step 2.

Please define the critical milestone(s) that should be used to determine whether you’ve executed on this proposal:

1. Critical Milestone: Map Key Governance and Power Indicators

Benchmarks:

1. Review the Optimism Collective governance system and subsystems, including qualitative interviews with some governance members.
2. Research key data sources such as existing governance data aggregators and the Optimism/Ethereum blockchain.
3. Make a final selection of main power distribution models to use for the PCI score

Deadline: 4 weeks (July-August)
Source of Truth: Gitbook/Github or Docs

2. Critical Milestone: Develop and test the Power Concentration Index Formula

Benchmarks:

1. Review existing literature on metrics measuring power decentralization within DAOs.
2. Calculate each component of the proposed Optimism CPI metric.
3. Test with dummy data provided by the OP Foundation. Deadline: 3 weeks (August)
   Source of Truth: Gitbook/Github or Docs

3. Critical Milestone: Design and Develop MVP Dashboard

Benchmarks:

1. Provide high-fidelity wireframes and design a mock dashboard.
2. Develop both back-end and front-end components.
3. Prototype the dashboard with the OP Foundation.

Deadline: 3 weeks (September)
Source of Truth: Github/Figma

### Please list any additional support your team would require to execute this mission (financial, technical, etc.):

We would require assistance from technical experts within the Optimism Foundation to optimize the data collection process efficiently. This technical & organizational expertise would be beneficial to streamline data collection from the Optimism blockchain.

Moreover, it would be helpful to have a consistent stream of communication to ask any specific questions regarding the current on-chain and off-chain governance and decision-making power within the Optimism Collective.

Grants are awarded in OP, locked for one year. Please let us know if access to upfront capital is a barrier to completing your Mission and if you would like to be considered for a small upfront cash grant: (Note: there is no guarantee that approved Missions will receive up-front cash grants.)

N/A

Please check the following to make sure you understand the terms of the Optimism Foundation RFP program:

• [x] I understand my grant for completing this RFP will be locked for one year from the date of proposal acceptance.
• [x] I understand that I will be required to provide additional KYC information to the Optimism Foundation to receive this grant
• [x] I understand my locked grant may be clawed back for failure to execute on critical milestones, as outlined in the Operating Manual
• [x] I confirm that I have read and understand the grant policies
• [x] I understand that I will be expected to following the public grant reporting requirements outlined here

[LuukDAO]

Foundation Mission (RFP) Application Please verify that you meet the qualifications for submitting at the above Tier

Alliance Lead: Luuk Weber Contact info: TG: LuukDAO / email: luuk@kolektivo.co L2 recipient address: 0xfAD384709D78fDd8B3Cb557a9943bfaab0a31391 Please list the members of your Alliance and link to any previous work:

• LuukDAO: Lead of CeloPG, Guardian at SafeDAO, and BD Superchain Eco, 5+ years experience designing and operating onchain organizations and programs for SafeDAO, BalancerDAO, Celo, and others.
• Lavi: Prev Lead Analyst at Llamarisk, PrimeDAO, and IndexCoop, 5+ years experience conducting qualitative and quantitative analysis on Web3 projects.
• Jashdotfi: Lead of Superchain Eco, 3+ years experience as Web3 / Finance analyst. Holds an MSc degree in Financial Economics.

What makes your Alliance best-suited to execute this Mission?

• Our Alliance has years of practical experience participating in and shaping onchain governance systems, allowing us to identify and measure centralization patterns in an actionable way.
• Our previous roles as DeFi Fund managers and Risk analysts for large DAOs grant us relevant research models and experience creating data-driven reports and memos. We developed and maintain Superchain Eco, which grants us deep-rooted connections in the Superchain and prior research into the individuals, organizations, and chains that encompass the Collective, allowing us to speed up and improve our research.

Please describe your proposed solution based on the above Solution Criteria (if applicable): We will produce the Superchain Power Score, a tailor-made score that measures the concentration of power between individuals, projects, and chains in the Collective.

Our unique approach optimizes for real-world utility by including as much real data and context as possible.

“In short, Superchain Power = Voting Power + Organization Influence + Social Graph”

Our solution will include the following:

• We'll produce the Superchain Power Score that can express different levels of power concentration in the Optimism Collective and produce a report showcasing insights gained during the research and tips on using the Superchain Power Score to increase governance accessibility and reduce Power centralization.

• We’ll produce a simple, permissionless tool anyone can use to produce a Superchain Power Score for members of the Token House and Citizen's House.

• We’ll add a Superchain Power dashboard to Superchain Eco that shows the overall progress on the individual, project, and chain levels. The dashboard will also showcase a visualization of the power balance between the Token House and Citizen’s House.

• We’ll add the Superchain Power score to the Citizens, Project and Chains pages of the Superchain.eco platform.

Please outline your step-by-step plan to execute this Mission, including expected deadlines to complete each piece of work: Based on our past experience with comparable research programs, we estimate that it will take 7-8 weeks to complete the research, document and open-source our findings, and integrate the Superchain Score into the Superchain Eco platform.

Phase 1 | Research and Planning | Week 1-2: The team will analyze existing sources to expand our proposed approach, with clear assumptions and anticipated outcomes, to be shared and iterated with Mission Request reviewers.

Phase 2 | Prototype development and testing | Week 3-5 The team will run different tests with the Superchain Power score based on real and dummy data.

Phase 3 | Production development and publication | Week 6-7 The findings from the Superchain Power score will be consolidated, and the Superchain Power dashboard and score will be added to the Superchain Eco platform.

Please define the critical milestone(s) that should be used to determine whether you’ve executed on this proposal:

Critical Milestone 1: Approximately two weeks after starting the FMR, deliver a document describing the research approach, assumptions, and desired outcomes in detail. Critical Milestone 2: At the end of Phase 2, approximately five weeks after starting the FMR, deliver a document and a preview of our scoring tools for feedback and validation. Critical Milestone 3: Publish and open-source a report with our tool and findings approximately seven weeks after starting the FMR. Critical Milestone 4: Integrate the Superchain Score into the Superchain.Eco platform approximately eight weeks after starting the FMR.

Please list any additional support your team would require to execute this mission (financial, technical, etc.):

• Not required, but nice to have if available: Additional demographic information about Citizens and Delegates, as there are still some Citizens we couldn't match to any onchain identity.

Grants are awarded in OP, locked for one year. Please let us know if access to upfront capital is a barrier to completing your Mission and you would like to be considered for a small upfront cash grant: (Note: there is no guarantee that approved Missions will receive up-front cash grants.)

• No upfront capital is needed; we'll use our RetroPGF3 funding to prepay the team.

Please check the following to make sure you understand the terms of the Optimism Foundation RFP program:

• [x] I understand my grant for completing this RFP will be locked for one year from the date of proposal acceptance.
• [x] I understand that I will be required to provide additional KYC information to the Optimism Foundation to receive this grant
• [x] I understand my locked grant may be clawed back for failure to execute on critical milestones, as outlined in the Operating Manual
• [x] I confirm that I have read and understand the grant policies
• [x] I understand that I will be expected to following the public grant reporting requirements outlined here

[chain-l]

Foundation Mission (RFP) Application

• Alliance Lead: Chain_L
  • Contact info: Telegram(Chain_L)
  • L2 recipient address: 0xA2D590FEe197C0b614Fe7c3E10303327F38C0dc3
  • Please list the members of your Alliance and link to any previous work: The members of our Alliance are -

@Chain-L - has 4 years of experience in the blockchain industry, Chain-L has developed and built various projects across multiple ecosystems. He deeply understands the underlying technologies and has worked extensively with Layer 2 solutions. He is proficient in evaluating and modifying economic metrics to assess complex blockchain governance structures. He enjoys contributing to the Collective in various capacities building experimental projects on applications layers or identifying the need and developing a dashboard for Season 5 Missions.

• Twitter Profile
• Dework Profile(20 tasks - numbaNERDs)

@ARDev097 - is skilled in data warehousing, ETL processes, and database management systems like MySQL and PostgreSQL. He is proficient in using blockchain data analysis tools like Dune Analytics, and creating interactive Dune Dashboards. He is proficient in quantitative analysis and integrating advanced metrics into data dashboards. He also has a strong background in analyzing the efficiency of governance mechanisms and economic models within blockchain networks.

• Twitter Profile
• Dework Profile(18 tasks - numbaNERDs)

Dhruvi - Gold medalist in Bachelor of Science in Information Technology and Master of Science in Data Science, Dhruvi specializes in data visualization and reporting. She is an expert in creating visualizations using tools like Tableau, Power BI, and Matplotlib. She excels in translating complex data into easy-to-understand dashboards and reports. She has strong skills in storytelling with data to drive business decisions and is knowledgeable in front-end development for creating custom visual analytics solutions. She is proficient in developing temporal visualizations to track changes and trends.

• LinkedIn Profile

Here is the link to our Previous Work for the collective.

---

What makes your Alliance best-suited to execute this Mission?

• Chain_L and ARDev have actively contributed via the Open Contributions Path of numbaNERDs, leading the leaderboard. This extensive hands-on experience demonstrates our commitment and capability to handle complex tasks successfully.

• Chain_L's blockchain ecosystem experience, including active governance participation, provides crucial insights into decentralized organizations like the Optimism Collective. His understanding & commitment to Optimism Collective can also be understood by Forum stats(visited 261 days & read ~5k posts)

• ARDev's data warehousing and quantitative analysis expertise enables the collection, processing, and analysis of data required for calculating the mHHI across Optimism Collective entities.

• Dhruvi's data science master's background and data visualization skills ensure a clear and accessible presentation of mHHI findings through the proposed public dashboard.

  • We have also spent the past 2 weeks identifying the best approach to create this metric, thoroughly reading the common approaches mentioned in the requirements Nakamoto Coefficient, Voting Bloc Entropy, Minimum Quorum, & Shannon Entropy.

Our research document link, this work led to our proposed solution.

Please describe your proposed solution based on the above Solution Criteria (if applicable):

• We propose to create a modified Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (mHHI) to measure the concentration of power within the Optimism Collective, specifically across the Token House, Citizen House, Councils, and Committees.

  • Our approach involves using the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), a commonly accepted economic measure of market concentration, with slight modifications. These modifications will enable us to determine the share of power held by individuals within each entity of the Optimism Collective: the Token House, Citizen House, Councils, and Committees.

  • Additionally, we plan to develop a public dashboard featuring a temporal graph that illustrates the evolution of power concentration over time. This dashboard will display changes in the mHHI values and include annotations highlighting significant events (Airdrops, Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RPGFs), etc.) from the genesis of the Optimism Collective to the present day.]

Please outline your step-by-step plan to execute this Mission, including expected deadlines to complete each piece of work:

Step 1: Data Collection

• Gather data on all delegates within the Optimism Collective.
• Determine the share or voting power of each delegate in the following entities:
  • Token House
  • Citizen House
  • Grants Council
  • Security Council
  • Code of Conduct Council
  • Developer Advisory Board
  • Anticapture Commission

Step 2: Calculating Concentration of Power Using Modified HHI

• For each delegate, calculate the concentration of power using the modified Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (mHHI).
• The mHHI calculation will be based on the membership (elected/nominated) or voting power of each delegate within that specific entity.
• This analysis will reveal how the concentration of power for each delegate varies across different entities.

Step 3: Identifying Share and Influence of Delegates

• Analyze the mHHI results to determine the share and influence of each delegate within the Optimism Collective.
• Delegates with higher mHHI values will have more concentrated power, indicating greater influence within the community.

Step 4: Developing a Public Dashboard

• Create a public dashboard featuring a temporal graph that illustrates the changes in the concentration of power over time.
• The graph will display the mHHI values, starting from the genesis of the Optimism Collective until the present date.
• Annotate the graph with significant events, such as Airdrops, Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RPGFs), and other relevant occurrences that may have impacted the power distribution.

Step 5: Analysing the Evolution of Power Concentration

• Utilise the temporal graph to analyse how the overall concentration of power within the Optimism Collective has evolved over time.
• Identify periods of increased or decreased concentration of power and examine the potential causes or events that may have contributed to these changes.
• Assess the influence of specific events (e.g., Airdrops, RPGFs) on the distribution of power within the Collective.

Step 6: Reporting and Dissemination

• Compile the findings from the mHHI calculations, the analysis of Councils and Committees' influence, and the temporal graph's insights.
• Present the results in a comprehensive report or proposal, highlighting the key observations and recommendations.
• Make the public dashboard accessible to the Optimism Collective and other interested parties, promoting transparency and facilitating further discussions or actions based on the analysis.

Please define the critical milestone(s) that should be used to determine whether you’ve executed on this proposal:

1. Data Collection Milestone:

   Deadline: July 3, 2024 to July 17, 2024

   • Gather data on all delegates and their respective shares/voting power in the Token House, Citizen House, and various Councils and Committees.
   • Verify and validate the collected data.

2. mHHI Calculation Milestone:

   Deadline: July 18, 2024 to July 27, 2024

   • Implement the modified Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (mHHI) calculation methodology.
   • Calculate mHHI values for each entity based on delegates' shares/voting power.
   • Verify the calculated mHHI values

3. Analysis and Reporting Milestone:

   Deadline: July 28, 2024 to August 7, 2024

   • Analyze the mHHI results to determine the share and influence of each Delegate.
   • Identify delegates with concentrated power distribution and their potential impact.
   • Prepare a detailed report presenting findings, insights, and recommendations.

4. Public Dashboard Development Milestone:

   Deadline: August 8, 2024 to August 20, 2024

   • Develop and deploy the public dashboard featuring a temporal graph illustrating changes in power concentration over time.
   • Integrate mHHI values and annotations for significant events (e.g., Airdrops, RPGFs) into the temporal graph.
   • Test and validate the public dashboard's functionality and accuracy.

5. Dissemination and Feedback Milestone:

   Deadline: August 21, 2024 to August 31, 2024

   • Publicly release the dashboard and ensure accessibility for the Optimism Collective and interested parties.
   • Gather feedback and address any concerns or issues raised by the community.
   • Implement ongoing maintenance and updates to the dashboard based on feedback and emerging developments.

We have created a sample of how we would modify HHI, please refer to this doc

Please list any additional support your team would require to execute this mission (financial, technical, etc.):

• We would appreciate any feedback on the methods we decide about the influence & power of different Councils & Commissions.

Grants are awarded in OP, locked for one year. Please let us know if access to upfront capital is a barrier to completing your Mission and you would like to be considered for a small upfront cash grant: (Note: there is no guarantee that approved Missions will receive up-front cash grants.)

• We are committed to Optimism Collective and agree to a one-year lock-up.

---

Please check the following to make sure you understand the terms of the Optimism Foundation RFP program:

• [x] I understand my grant for completing this RFP will be locked for one year from the date of proposal acceptance.

• [x] I understand that I will be required to provide additional KYC information to the Optimism Foundation to receive this grant

• [x] I understand my locked grant may be clawed back for failure to execute on critical milestones, as outlined in the Operating Manual

• [x] I confirm that I have read and understand the grant policies

• [x] I understand that I will be expected to following the public grant reporting requirements outlined here

[thelastjosh]

• Alliance Lead: Joshua Tan and Raymond Cheng
• Contact info: josh@metagov.org and ray@karibalabs.co
• L2 recipient address: 0xa12f6928972B3B3C72259C7631BC1C37aA813C2e
• Please list the members of your Alliance and link to any previous work: From Metagov: Joshua Tan, Seth Frey, Tara Merk, Primavera De Filippi. From Open Source Observer: Raymond Cheng, Carl Cervone, Reuven Gonzales.

What makes your Alliance best-suited to execute this Mission?

• We have made extensive contributions to the research literature on DAOs, including the main survey of the field, work on DAO constitutions, data sets and analysis of their smart contracts, measures of voting power, and data-backed studies of blockchain governance more generally. We have also studied similar transitions in open source and within the context of exit to community. Our work has been supported by Optimism, EF, Filecoin, the NSF, Ford, Sloan, and many others.
• We have extensive experience with the Optimism ecosystem, its infrastructure, and its data. Open Source Observer’s data pipelines power retrofunding voting. We collaborate closely across the collective to refine impact metrics, and generally do public data science by providing public data and infrastructure to the community. Apart from the Collective itself, we have also worked with many of the DAOs deployed in the Optimism ecosystem.

Please describe your proposed solution based on the above Solution Criteria (if applicable):

• We propose to a calculator for progressive decentralization that models and costs the transition from centralized to decentralized across a number of editable, community-generated milestones or stages. Our “metric” emphasizes history and example, rather than an abstract theoretical motivation.
• The milestone system will be pre-populated with a number of predefined events / readiness checks sourced from examples in other DAOs as well as Optimism’s own history.
• Abstract metrics, while sometimes useful, generally do not inform DAOs how they should decentralize. They are not directly actionable. For example, it may be that a key way to decentralize is to draw in more capable developers into the ecosystem and award them more tokens. But very few metrics will not tell you this. To understand how Optimism (or any DAO) should decentralize, we need to understand why they decentralize.
• Milestones will be matched in our system with various abstract metrics, to reinforce accountability without forcing a DAO to “play to the metric”. We will develop a minimal dashboard that can organize multiple metrics into each stage, so that the calculator becomes a living instrument of governance.

Please outline your step-by-step plan to execute this Mission, including expected deadlines to complete each piece of work:

• We will first connect Optimism governance data into the Open Source Observer (OSO) data pipeline as a first class data source. This will enable us to both
  • Leverage live voting data in our continuous data pipeline, regularly producing metrics that can be exposed via the OSO API.
  • Release regularly updated data exports for general-purpose data science in the public.
• We will also implement well-known clustering algorithms, which may include Nakamoto Coefficient, Voting Bloc Entropy, Minimum Quorum, or Shannon Entropy algorithms.
• We will generate milestones and events, sourced from DAO and Optimism history, and package this with the live data to produce a blog post, as well as a reproducible Jupyter notebook that does a historical analysis of Optimism governance.
• Once we’ve gathered feedback from the community, we’ll implement tracking for specific milestones and events with the most favorable community feedback into the OSO data pipeline for continuous indexing.
• This will power a public API, which anyone should be able to query. We'll also implement a few well-known metrics such as Nakamoto or VBE (or partner with another alliance that is investing in a specific metric) and package them into some of the milestones.
• We will then publish a minimal dashboard with an ecosystem-wide view of decentralization. Because data sets, milestones, and metrics will be made public, both as public data sets and through an API, anyone in the community (e.g. growthepie, Charmverse, Agora) should be able to produce dashboard variations that present the data in different ways.

Please define the critical milestone(s) that should be used to determine whether you’ve executed on this proposal:

• July-September 2024: Index voting data and produce an initial blog post and Jupyter notebook for feedback with the community.
• July-October 2024: Create a continuous data pipeline that powers a minimal dashboard with an ecosystem-wide view of decentralization.
• Future work: Evolve metrics, milestones, and events with feedback from the community, potentially involving new data sources, such as Farcaster, retrofunding impact metrics, or other OSO data.

Please list any additional support your team would require to execute this mission (financial, technical, etc.):

• Ongoing collaboration with the Optimism Governance team will be essential, both to complete an initial dashboard, as well as evolve the metrics with the community over time.
• Working closely with the Agora team to tap into both historical and live voting data to power live dashboards.

Please check the following to make sure you understand the terms of the Optimism Foundation RFP program: ☑ I understand my grant for completing this RFP will be locked for one year from the date of proposal acceptance. ☑ I understand that I will be required to provide additional KYC information to the Optimism Foundation to receive this grant ☑ I understand my locked grant may be clawed back for failure to execute on critical milestones, as outlined in the Operating Manual ☑ I confirm that I have read and understand the grant policies ☑ I understand that I will be expected to following the public grant reporting requirements outlined here

[mendesfabio]

@opjulian is the selection date (July 3) correct? I'm used to selection taking 1-2 weeks in other Foundation Missions

[yvesfracari]

Foundation Mission (RFP) Application

• Alliance Lead: Pedro
• Contact info: pedro@bleu.studio | yvezera (Discord)
• L2 recipient address: 0xa41214012d4462ecBB0724673897Ee0dCc0fDF49

Alliance Members

• @mendesfabio
• @ribeirojose
• @yvesfracari
• @luizakp
• @devjoaov

About us

bleu collaborates with companies and DAOs as a technology and user experience partner. We've developed several projects in partnership with CoW and Balancer. In the last Optimism Season, we have been selected for working on two mission grants: AI assistant for governance and Layerwide new project support.

What makes your Alliance best-suited to execute this Mission?

• Our team includes specialists in data analysis who will collaborate in the project development, bringing together vast crypto experience and data expertise to deliver a successful project.
  • Fábio manages the data operations at Balancer and has been deeply involved in the crypto space for the past four years, building Dune spells and dashboards, and developing Subgraphs.
  • Pedro has a strong background in AI, with valuable experience in building predictive maintenance models at the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology and WEG Industries.
• We have actively sought opportunities to contribute to the Optimism ecosystem, including applying for previous RFPs and being approved to execute two missions - one related to artificial intelligence.
• We have developed various projects for blue-chip protocols like CoW and Balancer, including dashboards, simulators, and dApps. All the projects we developed are open-source and can be found here.

Please describe your proposed solution based on the above Solution Criteria (if applicable):

• We propose developing a metric to measure the concentration of power in the Optimism Collective. This metric will account for multiple parameters, such as voting power distribution, voters engagement and participation, and social graph analysis. We will employ existing approaches like Gini and Nakamoto coefficients.
• Our solution includes creating a public dashboard for the community to track this metric's performance. We're also developing pages to track each component (e.g., voting distribution in the Citizen and Token Houses, and the social graph of voters) to help users understand how much each contribute to overall metric.
• We will ensure the code is available for teams to fork and measure the impact of their initiatives. It should be easy for other components to be added in the future and considered for the overall metric calculation.
• The project will span for about 8 weeks, starting on July 3, 2024, with milestones every two weeks to ensure steady progress and delivery during the Governance Retro Funding (end of August). In addition, we also will maintaing the dashboard after the launch.

Please outline your step-by-step plan to execute this Mission, including expected deadlines to complete each piece of work:

• Week 1-2 (July 3 - July 16)

  • Theoretical Review: Conduct an in-depth review of existing approaches to measure power concentration in complex systems.
  • Data Setup: Review data sources, acquire and transform an initial batch of data, and document the process. Develop scripts for continuous data integration.

• Week 3-4 (July 17 - July 30)

  • Token and Citizen Houses Dashboards: Develop dashboards for the Citizen and Token House, each featuring detailed charts and metrics. Each dashboard page will include:
    • Gini and Nakamoto Coefficients to measure inequality in voting power.
    • Distribution of voting power across participants to highlight concentration.
    • Analysis of voting participation rates to gauge engagement.
    • Visualization of the delegation network, showing how voting power is delegated.
    • Social graph metrics, such as connected components and closeness centrality, to understand the structure and influence of voter relationships.

• Week 5-6 (July 31 - August 13)

  • Collective Dashboard: Develop the main dashboard for Collective metrics, including the following visualizations. This will lay the groundwork for creating the Collective Concentration Index.
    • Overlap index of agents between the houses, measuring the extent to which the same participants are involved.
    • Social graph metrics, such as connected components (to identify clusters of closely connected voters) and closeness centrality (to measure how central each voter is).
    • Distribution of voting participation, showing how voting activity is spread across different participants.
    • Overlap index across Councils to understand power concentration across these groups;

• Week 7-8 (August 14 - August 27)

  • Collective power concentration index: Insights of Collective dashboard analysis will be merged in a unique indicator that summarizes the power centralization in the Collective.
  • Token and Citizien House power concentration index: Similar to the other, insights of the dashboard will be used to create a single metric for each house.
  • Final Review and Testing: Conduct a thorough review and testing of the metric and dashboard. Ensure all components are functioning as expected and the data is accurately represented.

Please define the critical milestone(s) that should be used to determine whether you’ve executed on this proposal:

1. Data Setup (July 16, 2024): Complete the collection of relevant data, including voting power, social data, proposals, etc.
2. Individual Components (July 30, 2024) : Add detailed tracking pages for individual components like the Citizen and Token Houses.
3. Collective Dashboard (August 13, 2024): Develop the initial public dashboard to visualize overall power concentration in the Collective.
4. Collective Concentration Index (August 27, 2024): Finalize and integrate the Collective Concentration Index into the dashboard.

Please list any additional support your team would require to execute this mission (financial, technical, etc.):

• We expect review and feedback from the Optimism team and the broader community.

Grants are awarded in OP, locked for one year. Please let us know if access to upfront capital is a barrier to completing your Mission and you would like to be considered for a small upfront cash grant: (Note: there is no guarantee that approved Missions will receive up-front cash grants.)

• We don't need access to upfront capital.

Please check the following to make sure you understand the terms of the Optimism Foundation RFP program:

• [x] I understand my grant for completing this RFP will be locked for one year from the date of proposal acceptance.
• [x] I understand that I will be required to provide additional KYC information to the Optimism Foundation to receive this grant
• [x] I understand my locked grant may be clawed back for failure to execute on critical milestones, as outlined in the Operating Manual
• [x] I confirm that I have read and understand the grant policies
• [x] I understand that I will be expected to following the public grant reporting requirements outlined here

[TanusreeSharma]

Foundation Mission (RFP) Application

• Alliance Lead: Tanusree Sharma. Her role as Incoming Assistant Professor, at Penn State University (Fall, 2024)

• Contact Info: https://tanusreesharma.github.io/

• L2 Recipient Address: 0xC58ccdD0146CAecAa79a0Fa0c498018384b4269a

• Please list the members of your Alliance and link to any previous work: Kanye Ye Wang (University of Macao), Yang Wang (University of Illinois), Roger Wattenhofer (ETH Zürich)

What makes your Alliance best-suited to execute this Mission?

• Our Alliance empirically highlights the core issues of concentration of power with several metrics, including Nakamoto Coefficient [paper1][[paper2]and Gini. We demonstrated this metrics' reliability in a case study, as well as large-scale empirical analysis of over 100 DAOs in practice.

• Improving governance accessibility is one of our main goals. Our research is the first to systematically apply various governance combinations (voting methods and power) to address socially complex concepts to govern AI outputs with AI users' values on sensitive topics, such as stereotypes and politically charged issues where voter add their preference as a form of voting. This is a first step forward in training a language model by collecting preferences from diverse demographic groups towards the application for different [social welfare functions.]

• We have extensive experimental governance experience to design and evaluate tools (featured in the OpenAI Blog) with culturally diverse voters, who might be completely new to the concept of voting. Our experimental work involves assessing power concentration patterns in mainstream applications, such as governing LLM model decisions. The voters (LLM users) from the global south (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Kenya, Nigeria), and the US use varying types of voting power (equal voting power, differential voting power, Pareto distribution, etc) to identify optimal voting power design in LLM governance context.

• Our work involves the theoretical underpinning of political science, e.g., a variety of democracies (V-dem) to measure the actual and perceived effectiveness of governance based on varying voting power and voting method.

Please describe your proposed solution based on the above Solution Criteria (if applicable):

• We propose to tailor the Nakamoto Coefficient, gini to the Token House and Citizen’s House using network graphs and to build a social graph of the voters

• We propose accessible and self-explanatory voting power describer tools based on these underlying metrics (Nakamoto Coefficient, gini) for participants to track power concentration. This tool will also gather input from voters periodically to evaluate “performance”.

• We will aggregate both on-chain metrics and off-chain discussions to evaluate the actual and perceived effectiveness of governance within the collective.

Please outline your step-by-step plan to execute this Mission, including expected deadlines to complete each piece of work:

• First, we will start exploring new clustering and network algorithms for Nakamoto Coefficient, gini in Citizen’s House.

• We will build a public-facing dashboard view of the Nakamoto Coefficient, gini across DAOs.

• We will develop a test environment and evaluate the dashboard with people who are culturally diverse to measure the efficacy of the dashboard.

Please define the critical milestone(s) that should be used to determine whether you’ve executed on this proposal:

• July 2024: Develop new clustering algorithm for Nakamoto Coefficient, gini in context of Citizen’s House

• August 2024: Build a prototypical dashboard view of Nakamoto Coefficient, gini across DAOs.

• August 2024: Preliminary proposal of Nakamoto Coefficient, gini across Token House and Citizen’s House.

• Future work: Iterating the dashboard based on culturally diverse voters’ experience with information tracked related to voting concentration, and social graphs.

Please list any additional support your team would require to execute this mission (financial, technical, etc.):

• Collaboration from the Optimism Governance team throughout the process to better understand the ecosystem and mission from expert’s viewpoint. This is essential for a bottom-up approach for successful completion of this governance work.

Please check the following to make sure you understand the terms of the Optimism Foundation RFP program: ☑ I understand my grant for completing this RFP will be locked for one year from the date of proposal acceptance. ☑ I understand that I will be required to provide additional KYC information to the Optimism Foundation to receive this grant ☑ I understand my locked grant may be clawed back for failure to execute on critical milestones, as outlined in the Operating Manual ☑ I confirm that I have read and understand the grant policies ☑ I understand that I will be expected to following the public grant reporting requirements outlined here

[elizarileyoak]

Hi all – thanks for the excellent submissions and discussion for this Foundation Mission Request! :red_circle::sparkles:

The Optimism Foundation has selected two proposals to move forward with the work described in this Foundation Mission:

• Bilal and team
• Chain_L and team

Congratulations!

That said, we're very excited about the amount of interest from everyone here and to all other teams that applied. We'd love to help you find the right way to contribute to the Optimism Collective! There are lots of open Delegate Mission requests and you can expect more research-focused Foundation Missions to follow soon.

In addition, please feel free to attend Foundation Office Hours to discuss possible research ideas or collaborations -- we'd love to be in touch! (Office hours will be bi-weekly on Wednesdays from 12:30pm-1:15pm EST / 6:30- 7:15 PM CET at this meeting link: https://meet.google.com/pop-kkus-bvf)