Optimism Allocates $3B for Blockchain Builder Grants

The Optimism network for Ethereum’s layer-2 scaling has allocated $3.3 billion worth of its OP tokens for community grants.

The scaling network for Ethereum’s layer-2 Optimism has set aside $3.3 billion worth of its Optimism (OP) token for its community to use as grants to projects or individuals seen as significant contributors to the blockchain ecosystem.

Optimism Collective, the network’s governance and community arm, announced on March 26 that it will distribute a portion of the 850 million OP in four distinct rounds starting in May and continuing through the entirety of 2024.

Bobby Dresser, the chief operating officer of the Optimism Foundation, has set aside 850 million OP tokens, or twenty percent of the initial supply, for funding. Three previous rounds have distributed 40 million OP tokens, valued at approximately one hundred fifty-eight million dollars.

The fourth round of Optimism’s retroactive public goods funding (RPGF), also known as retro funding, will begin with the on-chain builders. Members of the community vote in this process to award tokens to projects based on their demonstrated value.

Contributors to infrastructure, governance and development tooling will be rewarded during rounds five through seven and “everyone, anywhere, putting the work in to improve optimism” will be eligible for the cash.

Mid-November marks the conclusion of the final round. One definition of public goods in the cryptocurrency space is “service projects” or “people giving to a blockchain or crypto community for free.” Retro-finance is an attempt to reward these individuals for their already-proven services.

Retrofunding has emerged as a potential source of financing for contributors who, in most cases, cannot raise funds through other means, such as venture capital, because their contributions are not anticipated to generate a return.

As part of the final round of investment, which took place in January, a portion of the thirty million OP tokens that were available was distributed to several different entities, including data aggregators DefiLlama and L2Beat, a token approval revoking tool called Revoke.

Cash and a blockchain sleuth named ZachXBT. Vitalik Buterin, one of the co-founders of Ethereum, expressed his “really impressed” sentiments regarding Optimism’s dedication to providing funds for public goods in a post that he made on X after the deal.

I hope that in the future, there will be more projects that participate in the QF and RPGF rounds! He went on to say