Optimism Docs

Overview

The Citizens' House is a large-scale experiment in non-plutocratic governance (opens new window) and retroactive funding of public goods. The Citizens’ House will work alongside the Token House to govern the Optimism Collective.

In its first stage, the Citizens’ House is solely responsible for voting on the allocation of Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RetroPGF). During this bootstrapping phase, the Optimism Foundation will determine the scope and amount of each funding round, as well as administer the voting process. Holding a voting badge in this initial stage does not guarantee permanent participation in the Citizens’ House and future iterations of RetroPGF.

Funding for RetroPGF can come from:

In future stages, the Citizens’ House role will expand beyond RetroPGF. For example, in addition to voting on RetroPGF, the Citizens’ House will work alongside the Token House to govern allocation of surplus protocol revenue, collaborate on criteria for participation in the Citizens’ House, and engage in a system of checks and balances to enforce the Collective’s Codes of Conduct. You can read more about this transition here (opens new window)

# How RetroPGF Works

Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RetroPGF) is based on the idea that it’s easier to agree on what was useful in the past than what might be useful in the future. This is a series of experiments where members of the Citizens’ House allocate surplus protocol revenue or portions of the RetroPGF token allocation to projects they deem have provided positive impact to the Optimism Collective. This is core to Optimism’s value of impact = profit: the idea that that positive impact to the collective should be rewarded proportionally with profit to the individual.

These rewards create strong incentives for people to build public goods that benefit the Optimism Collective. The aggregate effect is an ecosystem that is easier to build on, learn about, and connect to, in turn driving application usage and generating more demand for blockspace. By funding public goods sustainably, the Collective can create a rich ecosystem and a better economy.

RetroPGF also provides possible exit liquidity for public goods projects, which opens up a market for early investment in those projects. This means builders can:

  • Be rewarded for their positive contributions without generating direct revenue
  • Raise capital to bootstrap based on the early potential and promise of their project

# A Commitment to Experimentation

RetroPGF is a longterm bet to build the future Optimists want to see. The Collective will conduct regular rounds of RetroPGF, each different from the last. This is an emergent process that will take community participation to grow and prune.

  1. RetroPGF round 1 took place at the end of 2021 and allocated $1 million across 58 projects.
  2. RetroPGF round 2 took place in Q1 2023 and allocated 10m OP token across 195 projects.
  3. RetroPGF round 3 will take place in Q3/Q4 2023 and will allocate 30m OP to contributions that have supported the development and adoption of Optimism.

# Experimentation Framework

RetroPGF has three core components, each with substantial surface area for experimentation.

  1. Impact scoping: what should the Collective fund? How is it defined and decided on?
  2. Impact scoring: how does the Citizens’ House evaluate impact? What units, process, or tools do we use?
  3. Impact settlement: how does voting work?

For the first several rounds of RetroPGF, the Optimism Foundation will decide on scope and voting mechanics with input from the community. Eventually the set of variables around what to fund, how much to fund, and how to vote will be up to the Citizens’ House, with checks and balances from the Token House.

Over time, the Collective aims to expand the scope of RetroPGF to support the production of public goods beyond the immediate Optimism ecosystem. To get there, we must refine the tools and processes used for RetroPGF based on regular experimentation.

Citizenship