Why I decided to share my frustrations on Optimism Onchain Builders program

I am frustrated that Optimism went from supporting builders, shouting loudly that “Impact = Profit”, and turned that into an onchain cashback program. Long time ago, when Mainnet was congested, “Impact = Profit” campaign was the reason why we deployed our contracts on OP Mainnet, and not Base. Back then we felt like shipping on Base would be supporting a chain ran by a publicly listed company vs. OP Mainnet which was an OG network that supports meaningful independent projects even if they haven’t figured out monetization yet. This promise has been broken, and the amount of likes this tweet got is a proof that I’m not alone with this frustration. (You’d be suprised how many people from the Superchain ecosystem liked this tweet btw) And yes, I understand why Optimism decided to turn this program into what it is today. They need to make it sustainable, so they reward people for filling the blockspace. They do algorithms - one of my friends even worked on them - because they want to add some objectivity and so on. I get it. And because I get it, is also why I didn’t have much hope that Kiwi would get something in this round. But that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t criticize when the algorithms produce bad results. What’s more, my criticism should be even welcomed, because Optimism tries to improve their programs with each edition. Can’t do that without feedback, and after this tweet I got DMs from some people who work on the program, so apparently it was useful. And it makes sense why they want to improve. Optimism resources are finite - if they give 14k OP to one project, they don’t give it to another. So my question is - didn’t the whole Superchain ecosystem have better projects than onchain gm? And I think it had. And I can say it firmly, because I used the onchain gm app to form an informed opinion. The way it works is you click a button that calls a contract named ‘On Chain GM’. It just sends your 5 cents to another address (0x7500a83df2af99b2755c47b6b321a8217d876a85) where all the money is stored and from time to time withdrawn by emirtimur.base.eth, mahmut.base.eth, and 0x6b58350dA3f8b0AD288943b6a05609CdBf37335f. And then the UI of the app says that you can send a new GM in 24 hours. You don’t even send this money to your friends. You don’t even send a gm there. It’s just the name of the contract. I think you’ve been working in consumer crypto long enough to understand that if people are using it, then it’s probably not addressing their pressing need or satisfying their deepest desires. Which makes you wonder why people do it, given how this whole industry works. So I think that incentivizing this kind of onchain activity at the expense of supporting other projects is not good for Optimism and the wider ecosystem, and this is why I decided to speak out.