July 2023 GMC Call for Retrospective Award Applications - Deadline is July 15th

Grants / Bounties
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This thread is for applications for retrospective awards (award for work completed prior to July 1, 2023) as part of Rocket Pool’s July 2023 (Round 3) retrospective awards. Please only post retrospective award applications in this thread. If you would like to discuss and/or ask questions about any applications you see in this thread, we ask that you do so in this separate forum thread (link) which has been established for all community discussions related to this round of applications. Only those retrospective award applications that are posted in this thread and timestamped by July 15, 2023 at 23:59 (11:59 PM) UTC will be considered.

To guide you in your application, the GMC has established the following goals and the following scoring rubric:

GMC Goals

Grants, bounties, and retrospective awards should make it easier and/or more attractive to do one or more of the following:

become a node operator

operate a node, mint rETH

hold or use rETH

improve the quality of life for the protocol and its community.

Retrospective Award Rubric

The Retrospective Award rubric involves scoring the following question on a 1 to 5 scale:

To what extent did the proposed and completed project further the GMC goals?

Note: if the project is ongoing, the retrospective award is given for work completed prior to the current award period, with any future awards for the same project expected to compete in the Grants category and as a separate application.

Retrospective Award Application

Please copy paste the template below into a reply. Answer the questions there, entering N/A where appropriate:

## Retrospective Award Application
## Retrospective Award: Name of Retrospective Award

### Who is the proposed retrospective award recipient?

### 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.

### Are the subjects of this award entirely open source ([MIT](https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT), [GPL](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.en.html), [Apache](https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0), [CC BY](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) license or similar)? If not, which parts will not be, why, and under what license will they be published?

## 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?

### How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help rETH holders?

### 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?

### How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help people already running a Rocket Pool node?

### How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given how does this help the Rocket Pool community?

### How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given how does this help RPL holders?

## Payment

### How much USD $ is the applicant requesting be awarded to the recipient?

## 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).
2

Retrospective Award: Rocket Sweep

Who is the proposed retrospective award recipient?

@dmccartney

What specific project or work is the retrospective award in recognition of?

Rocket Sweep.

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?

MIT licensed at https://github.com/dmccartney/rocketsweep/blob/main/LICENSE.md

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?

None.

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help rETH holders?

None.

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?

Likely none?

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help people already running a Rocket Pool node?

This project serves a few purposes:

  • Easy place to look at all unclaimed rewards for a node
  • Easy way to distribute all rewards with a front end
  • Gas savings when distributing CL rewards from multiple minipools if the withdrawal address is a Safe

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help the Rocket Pool community?

None beyond the NO benefits above.

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given how does this help RPL holders?

None.

Payment

How much RPL is the applicant requesting be awarded to the recipient?

$1000? The author should be consulted a little. I thought the Allnodes component of rocketarb might be a similar impact for the protocol as a reference point.

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).

No.

3

Retrospective Award: rETH Slippage for IMC

Who is the proposed retrospective award recipient?

@ramana

What specific project or work is the retrospective award in recognition of?

The 1% price impact tracker for the IMC. While ramana is on the IMC, generating this tool was beyond the usual call of duty.

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?

MIT licensed at https://github.com/dmccartney/rocketsweep/blob/main/LICENSE.md
GPL3 at https://github.com/xrchz/rETH-slippage/blob/main/LICENSE

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?

Potential rETH holders can get a particular metric on rETH liquidity over time to better understand the asset

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help rETH holders?

rETH holders can get a particular metric on rETH liquidity over time to better understand the asset

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?

N/A

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help people already running a Rocket Pool node?

N/A

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help the Rocket Pool community?

The IMC is better able to do its job with this data.
Previously Val was getting this data by hand very roughly once a week and it took ~30 minutes or so for the 3 chains. This is saving Val significant time he can use on other RP stuff.

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given how does this help RPL holders?

None.

Payment

How much RPL is the applicant requesting be awarded to the recipient?

$1000? The direct impact is very focused which makes me think low, but it made for more Val time and slightly happier-at-RP Val. 2 hours of Val time a month for a year would be a good buy at this price I think. Worth a quick chat with ramana to see if this feels reasonable.

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).

Val is a significant user of this tool.

1 Like
4

Retrospective Award: Governance Facilitation Part 2

Who is the proposed retrospective award recipient?

Valdorff

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 is a follow-up to Calurduran’s previous Governance Facilitation application in Round 2 of the grant process. The original grant was awarded $4,700 out of the requested $7,000. After discussions between the GMC and the recipient, the GMC has made the decision to fully fund the original requested amount. This revision reflects the GMC’s commitment to supporting governance work.

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?

N/A

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?

This answer is going to be the same for many of these questions. Valdorff’s work in this area has helped ensure that the RPIP process is a meaningful and successful one, and that the creation of our Management Committees has gone from idea to practice. Both of those factors have been important in the success of the protocol and of RP’s staking product.

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help rETH holders?

See above.

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?

N/A

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help people already running a Rocket Pool node?

This is the area where Valdorff’s work has had the most direct impact, as node operators are the voters of the pDAO. His efforts have assisted NOs in having their voice heard in snapshot votes.

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given how does this help the Rocket Pool community?

See above.

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given how does this help RPL holders?

See above.

Payment

How much RPL is the applicant requesting be awarded to the recipient?

$2,300 - By disbursing this amount, we will bridge the gap between the funds already allocated and the requested amount.

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 am a non-voting administrator of the GMC.

1 Like
5

Retrospective Award: Incentives Management Committee (IMC) Work Part 2

Who is the proposed retrospective award recipient?

Valdorff

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 is a follow-up to Calurduran’s previous IMC Work application in Round 2 of the grant process. The original grant was awarded $4,900 out of the requested $10,000. After discussions between the GMC and the recipient, the GMC has made the decision to fully fund the original requested amount. This revision reflects the GMC’s commitment to supporting governance work.

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?

N/A

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?

N/A

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help rETH holders?

The IMC’s work has helped drive the integration of rETH within DeFi protocols as well as the adoption of rETH more broadly. This has created more opportunities (as well as possible financial profits) for those who hold rETH or who might want to hold it in the future.

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?

The work of the IMC helped provide deep liquidity and thus confidence in rETH. Secondarily, the incentives helped drive demand for rETH, filling up the deposit pool at a time when we were rETH-constrained.

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help people already running a Rocket Pool node?

N/A

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given how does this help the Rocket Pool community?

N/A

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given how does this help RPL holders?

RPL holders benefit by greater adoption of rETH, as part of the value of RPL in most models is tied directly to the amount of rETH minted by the protocol.

Payment

How much RPL is the applicant requesting be awarded to the recipient?

$5,100 - By disbursing this amount, we will bridge the gap between the funds already allocated and the requested amount.

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 am a non-voting administrator of the GMC.

1 Like
6

Retrospective Award: Karma Delegate Dashboard

Who is the proposed retrospective award recipient?

Karma

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.

We have built a Delegate Dashboard for Governance participants of Rocketpool which can be accessed here: https://rocketpool.karmahq.xyz/.

The proposal details can be found here: April 2023 GMC Call for Grant Applications - Deadline is April 15th - #10 by mmurthy

We started working on the dashboard in May and the first version was launched at the end of the month, see the announcement here: Karma delegation dashboard

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?

The entire frontend, scoring logic and subgraphs are all open source. The only part that is not open source is the integrations with all the offchain systems. We plan to open source even this piece of backend infrastructure in the futre.

Benefits

The delegation dashboard can be used to onboard new delegates to the DAO, they can submit their delegation statement, link all their social handles. The token holders who do not have the time to be involved in governance can discover candidates and delegate their tokens right in the dashboard. The dashboard also has a number of features to easily track your delegate activity, lookup their performance, redelegate and so on.

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help people looking to stake ETH for rETH?

N/A

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help rETH holders?

N/A

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?

N/A

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help people already running a Rocket Pool node?

N/A

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given how does this help the Rocket Pool community?

Karma can provide deeper insights into community member activity as described above. Apart from that, DAO can use this dashboard to identify active contributors and use that as criteria for GMC elections.

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given how does this help RPL holders?

It is in the best interest of RPL holders to assign their voting power to the most effective delegates. Our dashboard provides everything they need to do that which results in strengthening the DAO.

Payment

How much RPL is the applicant requesting be awarded to the recipient?

We are requesting 300 RPL which will be used to cover the following:

  1. Already completed work of setting up the dashboard
  2. Maintain the dashboard for a year with bug fixes, feature enhancements requested by the community.

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).

None

7

Retrospective Award Application

Retrospective Award

Who is the proposed retrospective award recipient?

@Invis

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.

rocketwatch, part 2.

N.B. this is a supplemental RA to augment the April 2023 RA, which was RA022307 (awarded $40,000). I believe the original RA underpaid for Rocket Watch, and will focus this RA application on expressing why.

The earliest commits for the project are from September 2021, over two and a half years ago. The latest commits (as of this writing) are from yesterday (2023-07-01). In this time span there are exactly 1,500 commits on the main branch of the repo with just over 1,300 of them from the author (invis). Don’t get caught up in the absolute values here, as they all vary in scope (34 of them have the commit message “ye”, for instance, and I don’t know what that means in the context of changes)- I am just establishing that the project, while it has several contributors, has been developed almost entirely by invis. Of the 200 remaining, most are authored by bots that invis configured to help him keep the code up to date.

Wakatime reports almost 550 hours of work, which is itself a flawed measurement, as it only tracks time invis spent actively coding in his IDE (not, say, reading documentation or testing or other important development tasks), so we can use this as a lower bound.

The bot is quite sophisticated, has several integrations such as Etherscan, TheGraph, Discord (obviously), Discourse (the dao forum), Snapshot, 1inch, yearn and maker, and has quite a few components (mongodb for persistence/caching, for instance), and by my rough count (git grep @.*command\( | grep -v debug | wc -l), has 73 available commands.

My sense of scope, reading the commit history, looking at the features, reading the code, puts the level of effort on a similar scale to the protocol’s other largest project, rocketscan. I believe these two projects are in a category of their own.

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?

They are GPLv3

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?

Potential stakers researching Rocket Pool routinely use bot commands to learn about the protocol and help guide their decisions, including but not limited to:

  • /current_reth_apr
  • /deposit_pool
  • /tvl
  • /reth_extra_collateral

Indirectly, it provides the community the tools it needs educate newcomers and convert them to active members of the ecosystem.

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help rETH holders?

rETH holders benefit from many of the same commands as prospective stakers. Additionally, a few more commands spring to mind

  • /dai_stats
  • /maker_vaults
  • /yearn

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?

Similar to with prospective rETH stakers, the community is empowered by the bot to educate prospective node operators through the use of the following commands (again, including but not limited to):

  • /rpl_apr
  • /client_distribution
  • /collateral_distribution
  • /current_no_apr
  • /delegate_stats
  • /deposit_pool
  • /effective_rpl_staked
  • /leaderboard
  • /minipool_balance_stats
  • /minipool_distribution
  • /minipool_withdrawal_stats
  • /node_fee_distribution
  • /queue
  • /rewards
  • /smoothing_pool
  • /tvl
  • /withdrawable_rpl

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help people already running a Rocket Pool node?

Existing node operators benefit from many of the same commands as prospective node operators, and these additional commands

  • /get_upcoming_rewards
  • /latest_releases
  • /lottery
  • /version_chart
  • /votes

Slightly off-topic, but the members of the community who provide support on discord routinely use the support template features as well as many other of these commands to educate and assist others.

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given how does this help the Rocket Pool community?

Looking at the bot’s usage metrics, it’s clear that it’s immensely useful to the community, with thousands of commands executed monthly, and very consistent use:

image
image1000×1000 26.3 KB

(N.B. July just started so the right-most bars are partial data)

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given how does this help RPL holders?

RPL holders benefit from value added to the protocol, which indirectly improves the price of RPL. Several of the above commands are also very useful to RPL holders, as are /wall and /depth

Payment

How much RPL is the applicant requesting be awarded to the recipient?

Denominating in USD I am requesting $40,000 in supplemental rewards to bring the total RA for rocket watch to $80,000. At this value, rocket watch be compensated at around $2.3k per month (going off github dates), which is on the low end for part time software engineer work, and make no mistake, invis is a talented software engineer.

Earlier I said that rocket watch is on par with Rocketscan, and I believe this to be true. Rocketscan was compensated with an RA for $70k, and Rocket Watch’s compensation should exceed that, as it has been about 6 months since rocketscan’s RA application was submitted, though both projects manifested in late 2021.

Conflict of Interest

No conflicts for invis that I know of.

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).

No direct conflicts for me, though for full disclosure, I have contributed 1-2 small changes to rocket watch’s codebase in the past. I do not stand to benefit from this RA.

5 Likes
9

Retrospective Award Application

Retrospective Award: Name of Retrospective Award

The Weekly Orbit

Who is the proposed retrospective award recipient?

Pat and Waq.

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.

The restrospective work is the production of the video and audio podcast, The Weekly Orbit.

The show, which is about 30 minutes long, was published on a weekly basis and provided viewers and listeners with a summary of Rocket Pool news. It’s tailored to those with a basic to moderate understanding of Rocket Pool (although those with advanced knowledge may also find it interesting).

The 12 episodes were produced from 29 April 2023 through 15 July 2023.

Are the subjects of this award entirely open source? If not, which parts will not be, why, and under what license will they be published?

Yes. All shows are uploaded to YouTube and an RSS feed which streams the audio podcast to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Stitcher.

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?

The Weekly Orbit is a show that provides viewers and listeners with news about Rocket Pool staking and new DeFi integrations for rETH (and soon RPL).

One of the regular segments covered in the show was “Stats,” which breaks down the analytics of the protocol. Pat and Waq report and discussed the Deposit Pool, RPL/ETH ratio, number of node operators and minipools, RPL distribution, the Smoothing Pool, and other statistics using great community-developed sites like rocketscan and Dr Worm’s Dune analytics page.

We also regularly talked about new DeFi protocols integrating rETH. For example, we covered the launch of Gravita, Eigenlayer, and Aave emode. We’ve also reported on the rETH HOP bridge and rETH on zksync.

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help rETH holders?

The Weekly Orbit keeps rETH holders updated with the latest rETH integrations. In addition, Valdorff’s Rocket Pool DeFi Opportunities document has been featured.

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?

The show updated viewers and listeners on the latest Rocket Pool staking news. It extensively covers Atlas and the new LEB8’s. We also featured an “unboxing” of the Proteus machine.

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help people already running a Rocket Pool node?

The Weekly Orbit aims to showcase some of the great work contributed by community members to the protocol.

The show has provided node operators with news about client diversity. We have covered the Rocket Pool client diversity challenge, which was initiated by ShfRyn, several times. The show has also reported on Hodja’s excellent heat map for the best times to convert LEB16’s to LEB8’s.

The show will continue highlighting news and research that will benefit node operators.

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given how does this help the Rocket Pool community?

Effective communication and marketing is crucial, especially in a fast-moving market like the crypto industry. To fill this space with new and fresh content, Twitter Spaces, Rocket Fuel, and The Weekly Orbit regularly post and retweet updates, raising awareness about Rocket Pool and providing its community with the latest news and updates.

How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given how does this help RPL holders?

The show has regularly covered the RPL/ETH ratio and will soon cover RPL integrations now that RPL has a Chainlink oracle.

Payment

How much USD $ is the applicant requesting be awarded to the recipient?

The compensation for Jasper and Ken for the Rocket Pool Twitter Spaces and Community Calls provides some comparables. Jasper calculated that on average, they each received $270 per episode (9 RPL at an average of $30) (refer to Jasper’s grant application above).

It takes an average of four hours per episode, which includes preparation, production, editing, uploading, and posting to social media. This amounts to $67.5 per hour, split 80/20 between Pat and Waq.

Specific out of pocket costs included:

  • 2nd monitor $89
  • Microphone $180
  • Microphone swing bar $20
  • Riverside.fm subscription $20/mth

We are requesting 108 RPL (9 RPL x 12 episodes), split 80/20 between Pat (86.4) and Waq (21.6).

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).

Pat: No.
Waq: Member of GMC.

1 Like
10

This message marks the closing of the third round of RP retrospective awards. Any applications submitted after this will not be considered for this round, but those individuals who are still interested in applying are encouraged to check back on the forums. We are currently working on implementing a new awards process which will let people apply whenever they want, you can view that here. The GMC will announce the award recipients in a new thread here on the forums on or before July 31 (likely on, not before). The community will then have two weeks to issue any challenges before funds are disbursed. Thank you to all who applied and thank you to everyone who has followed along. Anyone who would like to comment on existing applications is encouraged to do so in this thread.