This thread is for applications for Rocket Pool’s September 7, 2024 - October 7, 2024 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 which has been established for all community discussions related to this round of applications. Only those retrospective applications that are posted in this thread and timestamped by October 7, 2024 at 23:59 (11:59 PM) UTC will be considered. Any retrospective award applications posted after that deadline will be carried over to the next award period.
This is the expected schedule for round 17:
Application Period (September 7 - October 7)
Scoring Deadline (October 22)
Final Voting Amendments, Discussion and Finalization (October 23 - October 26)
Award Announcement (October 29)
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
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 Template
Please copy paste the template below into a reply. Answer the questions there, feel free to remove or add sections based on relevance.
## 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?
## Benefit
<please enter N/A where appropriate>
| Group | Benefits |
|---|---|
| Potential rETH holders | How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help people looking to stake ETH for rETH? |
| rETH holders | How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help rETH holders? |
| Potential NOs | 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? |
| NOs | How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given help people already running a Rocket Pool node? |
| Community | How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given how does this help the Rocket Pool community? |
| RPL holders | How did the project or work for which the retrospective award would be given how does this help RPL holders? |
## Costs
### How much USD $ is the applicant requesting be awarded to the recipient?
### Is the applicant requesting RPL or LUSD?
## 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).
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 continuation of RA032302. The original work was for the creation and assumed some unspecified maintenance period. It talked about it being a worthy spend at $1k running for a year or so. The GMC chose to reward $1250.
It has been running since 5/2023 and the previous retro was granted 7/2023. I would suggest paying out a retro with the goal of covering through 9/2025. It would also be hoped that other chains could be added if they supported the same interface (ie, no new creative 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?
The main direct beneficiaries are IMC members, who use this info to make decisions. This indirectly creates an impact for rETH holders via liquidity and RPL holders via a healthier protocol.
Costs
How much USD $ is the applicant requesting be awarded to the recipient?
$1k.
If we assume the first covered a year (which was not explicitly said at all ofc), then this is lower than the last grant b/c it doesn’t include creation (and note that it does cover slightly more time).
Is the applicant requesting RPL or LUSD?
RPL
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).
Who is the proposed retrospective award recipient?
sckuzzle
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 project started with the question of how Node Operators were changing their behavior over time, and whether we could correlate that change in behavior with market conditions. After drawing these inferences we could hopefully answer questions like whether the rewards cliff was encouraging nodes to top up or whether nodes completely gave up.
This kind of understanding of node operator behavior is particularly useful when designing new tokenomics systems such as eth-only LEB8s.
Work occurred around mid-August and took approximately one week. The time involved was largely impacted by the research being open-ended without an agenda, and only useful data or findings being reported on.
Note: haloooloolo offered to wrap this work into the eth-only retro, and I declined as this work was not done only for eth-only and also because the value of this work is highly subjective (and I wanted the GMC to be able to choose the payout).
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 released under GPL3.
Benefit
This work did not benefit specific groups looking to use RP but rather is a useful aid in designing new tokenomics. By using data-driven approaches we are more likely to make correct design decisions that makes Rocket Pool an effective and successful protocol. All benefits would be confined to researchers making new designs as well as voters looking to make informed decisions.
Costs
How much USD $ is the applicant requesting be awarded to the recipient?
Evaluating value that comes from such work is highly subjective. It is important that we use data-driven approaches when reworking tokenomics, and also how much impact this work had and the resulting value to the protocol is unclear.
I am picking a value of $4000 as an initial point, but explicitly expecting the GMC to determine value however it deems fit.
Is the applicant requesting RPL or LUSD?
RPL
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
Acknowledgements
Thank you to people who took a look at the analysis and suggested additional things to look into. A few from the thread: @Valdorff, @ramana, @NeverAnIsland, @LenOfTawa
Who is the proposed retrospective award recipient?
sckuzzle
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 project created historical staking snapshots for Rocket Pool. It required several components:
An archive node to be queried. This was generously provided by peteris without expectation of compensation
A script to query the historical blockchain state and compile it into a staking snapshot
Running the script to create the historical staking snapshots and compiling it in a way that it can be used in the future
This work was made slightly more complicated because the contracts that need to be queried for this information have changed over time. The script needed to look up what contracts were in use at the time as well as the abi for those contracts before they could be queried.
This work includes both the open-source tool needed to generate the staking snapshots as well as a selection of historical snapshots already created (at each block demarkating a change in rewards interval from 9 to 27 (current)). The bulk of the work took place from early to mid August.
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 script is released under GPL3.
Benefit
This project provides information which research in RP can build off of. It was a necessary prerequisite for looking at NO behavior trends over time and will similarly be useful whenever a project needs historical staking data. The impact or benefit to each group of stakeholders will greatly vary depending on the project that builds off it.
Costs
How much USD $ is the applicant requesting be awarded to the recipient?
sckuzzle: $500
Is the applicant requesting RPL or LUSD?
RPL
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 conflicts with GMC members.
Acknowledgements
This worked used an archive node provided freely by peteris and paid for by the oDAO.
Valdorff created a staking snapshot script, components of which made it into the version used here.
both peteris and Valdorff declined to be included in this retro, stating that RP had already paid for their contribution in various ways.
Notice: This message marks the closing of the seventeenth (17) round of Rocket Pool retrospective award applications. Any applications submitted after this will not be considered for this round. The GMC will announce the award recipients in a new thread here on the forums around October 27th. 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.