Retrospective Award Application
Retrospective Award
Who is the proposed retrospective award recipient?
jasperthefriendlyghost.eth
What specific project or work is the retrospective award in recognition of? Please detail what the project or work entailed and the duration over which it took place.
This reward is in recognition of the business development, marketing, and community education work I did for Rocket Pool. My focus will be my efforts in launching rETH’s largest integrations – namely Curve (convex/yearn), MakerDAO, and Ribbon Finance. Further, I have played a key role in enabling conversations around the Chainlink Oracle, Aave, and Eigenlayer.
Putting a time-value on all this is difficult as I have been doing this on-and-off starting Nov 2021 by helping AmethystWizard create a new Maker Improvement Proposal that included information MakerDAO Collateral Engineering wanted. The MakerDAO process required substantial backchannel communication so that rETH would be prioritized. With the help of industry leaders, I began a group to push for rETH’s adoption.
Launching the Curve pool for rETH/wstETH was far quicker, but required more detailed work. The original idea belongs to Marceau, however, I helped flesh it out. I figured out what contract calls needed to be made in order for our pool to be live and for the full stack to work (Curve/convex/yearn). I worked with Knoshua and others to determine what the ideal parameters of the pool ought to be. Further, I acted as the intermediary when discussing bribes with Tetranode. In addition, I was instrumental in popularizing the tweet with my very popular article One Pool to Rule Them All. I followed this article up with a Safe Aping guide so that users would not get rekt by slippage or arbitrage bots.
For Ribbon Finance, I was the first point of contact and helped convince the Ribbon team that it was worthwhile to integrate rETH. To accompany the rETH covered call vault’s launch, I hosted educational Twitter Spaces and posted threads on how options work so that users could make informed decisions with their rETH.
For Chainlink, I have organized substantial back-channel communications including reaching out to protocols to see if they would benefit from the integration. Beyond what’s written here, I have connected the core RP team with numerous other teams who have reached out to me or I to them, including minor projects like xToken or Vendor Finance, and at least one major protocol that has not been fully explored yet.
In terms of marketing, I was a driving force behind starting the weekly Twitter spaces. In total, I have 6 Rocket Pool tweets that have >400 likes with the most popular having >800, Several of my tweets and threads during the Curve pool launch amassed >500 likes and >150k views each. The impact at the time on the DeFi ecosystem was clear as rETH was featured in memes posted by popular accounts like DegenSpartan as well as featured in numerous podcasts. When the incentive committee began its rollout, my thread announcing the program received 416 likes and just under 100k views. The list continues but these are the largest early posts. My Twitter presence has been crucial for each integration Rocket Pool has onboarded for education and for market penetration.
In 2022 I posted approximately 2000 times. My average monthly impressions from Feb-Dec were 391k, peaking at 973k views and 55.2k profile visits in April of 2022.
For reference, since mainnet launch, the official Rocket Pool Twitter has only had 2 tweets just barely crossed 400 likes. The RP_intern account, though wonderful, also only has 3 posts >100 likes. Only Superphiz and Marceau were other major presences. I believe this will quickly change, however, I include this metric to show that my Twitter presence was filling a large void through most of 2022.
This was approximately 10-20 hrs/week throughout 2022.
Are the subjects of this award entirely open source (MIT, GPL, Apache, CC BY license or similar)? If not, which parts will not be, why, and under what license will they be published?
Everything is public except for some privileged communications.
Benefits - enter N/A where appropriate
How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help people looking to stake ETH for rETH?
For most of Rocket Pool’s mainnet history, the most liquid place to buy rETH was the Curve pool. It accounted for >50% of trade volume until August of 2022. Volumes during the launch of the pool were the highest rETH has ever experienced, in ETH or USD terms. The launch began a new parabolic growth era for Rocket Pool, going from 57.3k rETH on 3/09 to 81.7k rETH just one month later. Even now, with no incentives, the pool accounts for 5% of trade volume. The Curve pool allowed many more people to safely enter and exit rETH positions than otherwise would have been possible. It would not be many months until the pDAO began its own incentive campaign.
My marketing material has brought rETH to an audience that may otherwise not have known about it.
How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help rETH holders?
The Curve pool quickly gained dense liquidity. Dense liquidity is the key requirement for many types of DeFi integrations. In an early MakerDAO assessment, liquidity was cited as a chief concern. Many integrations that happened were thus accelerated by the Curve pool.
The MakerDAO and Ribbon vaults are the largest sinks for rETH in DeFi currently. MakerDAO allows people who want to maintain their rETH position take loans and pay bills. This is a huge piece of user experience. The Ribbon vault allows deposits in ETH and so it creates natural demand.
How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help people looking to run a Rocket Pool node for the first time?
My writings have brought Rocket Pool to people who may have never heard of it.
How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help people already running a Rocket Pool node?
During protocol votes and governance changes, I have used my Twitter account to spread the message and boost voter engagement. This is also true of regular updates such as Rocketarb. At first, only those in Discord close to Ramana used it, however, I popularized it on Twitter and helped bring attention to the opportunity.
Further, the Ping Server keeps node operators aware of breaking news in Rocket Pool ecosystem. I have sent >800 pings to the server, which used to be the best aggregator of Rocket Pool news prior to Rocket Fuel.
How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help the Rocket Pool community?
By expanding the natural drivers for rETH, the community has been able to grow faster and onboard more users. Further, each integration connects our community with another protocol’s community. The above answer also applies.
How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help RPL holders?
-N/A-
Payment
How much RPL is the applicant requesting be awarded to the recipient?
I am requesting 50 wks @ $100/hr @ 10hrs/wk for $50k, or 2k RPL for each of Marketing, Biz Dev, and Education, for 6k RPL in total. I would be happy to have the rewards vest over a year.
Although large in size, I believe I have contributed far more in value in each distinct category. I essentially launched our Twitter presence, worked on every major DeFi integration, and have written several major educational essays.
Conflict of Interest
Does the person or persons requesting the retrospective award have any conflicts of interest to disclose? (Please disclose here if you are a member of the GMC or if you have nominated a member of the GMC for this retrospective award).
I receive a 9 RPL/week stipend and am going to be on the upcoming oDAO RS node. I have received several gifts from Superphiz/Patricio/others.