It's easy to poke holes in Retro Funding, it's hard to make it better
AI summary of the linked articleThe author argues that criticism of Retro Funding, Optimism's retroactive public goods funding program, has become intellectually lazy, and that critics should propose better designs and show evidence rather than rely on anecdotes or outrage. The piece notes that every Retro round publishes its full scoring equation and raw datasets on GitHub, so critics can open issues or fork the coefficients. It says that departures of delegates or contributors are normal and should be met with support for new contributors, not rage-quitting, and that questions about dropping "PGF" from the name or changing voting should be answered with budget data before and after the change. It also argues that Optimism's continued funding during a down market is a harder path that deserves respect. |
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2 comments I once heard that "Ethereum needs better critics", and I guess the same is true for Retro Funding. I criticized it a few times, but never went deep enough to open an issue on GitHub :) Wondering how realistic this ask is, though. Would people really stop working on their projects to spend 5-10 hours doing analysis of Retro Funding to have maybe 10% chance of impacting the process? Maybe it makes sense for bigger projects, where a lot of money is at stake? Last time one badgeholder asked me for my take, and I did write a mini-essay for them, But it was mostly to wrap up the 'Retro funding chapter' in my head - I didn't expect it to have any impact.  cerv1.ethSubmitter I think it depends on what their motivations are. If their motivation is to get more money for their project, then yeah, that's probably not a good idea. My post was directed at the broader community who have strong opinions about what should / should not be funded. I want those people to bring sharp criticism and ideas, not lazy takes! I'm paraphrasing heavily, but there was a specific exchange that happened yesterday where someone I respect said: "Chains should stop paying the Superchain tax" And someone from OP said "But we use it to fund public goods" And they said "But you gave X to a VC-backed project a year ago" And the OP person said "But we also gave 10X that amount to dev tooling just last month" And they said "But you used to fund XYZ and now you don't anymore" And the OP person said "Here was the discussion and the analysis about why we made the change" And they said "But a person who I trust and was involved in governance was unhappy with that decision" --- What I will say is that people who put in the effort to analyze things that are wrong and submit a practical idea for how to fix it get a lot of airtime. So yeah, if you have a good idea, like how to get project attribution from call data or logs, share it! If you think the status quo of whale projects competing with small bootstrapped projects is demotivating, propose a new mechanism! |