Does the community support matched $RPL incentives for the $OP proposal?

Context:
I recently wrote up a draft grant proposal requesting an allocation of $OP tokens to support liquidity mining for rETH on Optimism, which @langers has shared on the Optimism governance forum. It is currently seeking feedback in the draft phase. Once this process has been completed, we will then be able to incorporate this feedback and submit the final proposal.

As part of the Optimism grant process, we need to consider and provide a rationale for whether or not we will be offering matched $RPL incentives, in the event that we are successful in our grant request for $OP tokens.

  • You can view the Optimism proposal here.

  • You can view some existing discussions regarding the proposal on the RP DAO forum post here, and in the “rETH Liquidity Incentives” discord thread under “Governance” here.

We are currently considering whether to simplify the proposal to focus solely on rETH/ETH liquidity, and also whether Curve or the Balancer x Beethoven pool, among other options, would be the optimal solution for this liquidity. However, this discussion is a separate matter, so we will keep the focus here on whether the community does or does not support matched $RPL incentives, if the $OP grant is successful.

Reasons for supporting matched $RPL incentives:

  • Delegates such as Polynya (one of the largest in Optimism governance) have indicated their support of the proposal, and expressed they would like to see matched $RPL incentives, as Lido is offering this in their own Optimism grant proposal. The proposal would likely have a higher chance of success, if Rocket Pool offers some degree of matched $RPL incentives.

  • It will further help bootstrap growth and liquidity of rETH on Optimism, which is beneficial for integrations, adoption, etc.

Reasons against supporting matched $RPL incentives:

  • pDAO has a limited budget, and may not be able to afford matched incentives given other expenses such as the Bankless sponsorship and the grants program

  • If the pDAO were to consider funding of incentives, it would also need to consider its priorities for liquidity on L1 and other ecosystems too, and whether the funding of matched incentives on Optimism is feasible with these goals and the current treasury budget.

  • There is ongoing discussion regarding the pDAO budget here, and it may not be possible to allocate matched incentives at this stage, given there is no formalised budget to utilise at present, and it is unclear whether there will be a budget allocation for incentives.

Additional note:

  • It is important to formalise existing discussions and give the community an opportunity to share their feedback on this matter, so we can provide a clear rationale regarding our position on matched incentives, and proceed forward in either direction with the Optimism proposal.

  • I have already been making the case to Polynya and other delegates to support the proposal regardless of matched incentives, on the basis of rETH being a public good, and the value of promoting a decentralised LSD which also acts as a counterbalance to Lido dominance. I will continue to do so if the community does not support matched incentives.

  • I have left this as an open discussion at present, however can include a community poll if that is the viewed as the best way to gauge community sentiment on a matter like this.

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I think it will be hard to have a strong opinion on this until snapshot voting is up and a formal pDAO budget has been decided.

On one hand, the pDAO has a much more limited treasury compared to Lido and we will have to be careful in choosing where to spend incentives. This makes me resistant to pDAO matching and I would much rather reduce the amount of OP requested to a 250k-500k range.

However, if matching truly moves the needle for getting approval of the OP incentive at the end, then I would be in favor of some spending some amount in accordance to the budget since that would make the spending more efficient.

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Thanks @DaserDog. I agree.

  1. Lack of snapshot voting and undefined pDAO budget are practical barriers to funding initiatives with the pDAO treasury at present.

  2. If the practical barriers can be overcome, I am also hesitant to support matched RPL incentives for rETH liquidity on Optimism, simply due to the limited size of our pDAO budget, and the need to balance other priorities, both in areas outside of liquidity incentives, and also within this category (in consideration of other priorities, such as L1 liquidity). If we had a greater budget, I would certainly be in favour, however it does not seem feasible at present.

I would also support a small allocation of matched incentives if it was deemed necessary to push the proposal through, however I think we have a strong case regardless - on the grounds of public good/decentralisation/counteracting Lido dominance, and would also lean towards slightly lowering the requested amount of $OP as a suitable compromise to make the proposal more appealing instead.

I have seen similar sentiments shared in the discord, however thought it would still be useful to formally seek feedback before proceeding with the proposal.

[I already posted a variant of this to the optimism forum thread with our proposal]

My 2 cents: We don’t have a budget to match a relevant amount of incentives. I’d be open to a symbolic match to put skin in the game, but I think that’s all we can realistically afford.

LDO incentives budget (per a comment in [DRAFT][GF: Phase 1 Proposal] Lido - #10 by rustboot.eth - Governance Fund: Phase 1 - Optimism Collective)

The Lido DAO’s budgets for incentives and rewards programs have been upwards of 4.5M LDO monthly (e.g.: april, june), with overwhelming majority geared towards stETH.
Depending on markets and price, this amounts to between $3M and $22M in incentives monthly.

RPL pDAO budget
~11k RPL/month = $100k-$500k/month depending on markets.
This is not our budget for incentives, this is the total pDAO budget.
At current market, matching 1M OP would cost more than 4 months of total pDAO budget.

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