Optimism, the Ethereum layer-2 scaling network, has set aside $3.3 billion worth of its Optimism (OP) token to grant to important contributors in the blockchain ecosystem. The Optimism Collective, the chain’s governance and community arm, announced that 850 million OP tokens will be distributed over four rounds starting in May and continuing until 2024.
Bobby Dresser, the Chief Operating Officer of the Optimism Foundation, stated that 20% of the initial OP token supply, which is 850 million OP, is allocated for funding. In the previous three rounds, 40 million OP tokens, equivalent to around $158 million, were distributed. The fourth round will focus on retroactive public goods funding (RPGF), where community members vote on projects deserving of tokens based on their value.
Rounds five through seven will reward infrastructure, governance, and development tooling contributors, making anyone who contributes to improving Optimism eligible for funding. The final round will conclude in mid-November.
Retro funding is a way to support service projects or individuals who contribute to the blockchain or crypto community without expecting profit. It serves as an alternative funding source for these contributors who may not have access to venture capital. In the previous funding round in January, data aggregators DefiLlama and L2Beat, token approval revoking tool Revoke.cash, and blockchain investigator ZachXBT were among the recipients of the 30 million OP tokens.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin praised Optimism’s commitment to public goods funding, expressing his hope to see more projects implementing quadratic funding (QF) and retroactive public goods funding (RPGF) rounds in the future.
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