Foundation Mission Request: govNERDs S8/S9 [COMMUNITY OPERATIONS] #282
Description
Proposed Foundation Mission Request: The Foundation has previously issued Mission Requests to experiment with govNERDs, who help shepherd proposals through the feedback, approval, and voting process. The govNERDs have been effective at reducing the role of the Foundation to date. In Seasons 8 and 9, the govNERDs' role supporting the Collective will continue to evolve. Based on the success of the structure in Season 7 — the govNERDs will continue to operate with a distinct ‘Lead’ and ‘Core’ govNERDs in Seasons 8 and 9.
Intent: A set of interoperable Stage 1 chains doing $250M in cross-chain asset transfers
Total grant amount: Lead: 20k OP Per Season, Core: 15k OP Per Season
Should this Foundation Mission be fulfilled by one or multiple teams: 3 govNERDs and 1 Lead.
OP Labs or Optimism Unlimited Sponsor: opjulian
Opt In by: July 2
Selection by: July 3
Start date: July 4
Completion date: End of Season 9 Reflection Period
How will this Mission help accomplish this Season’s Intent?
An important part of the Season 8 Intent is that it requires a decentralized governance system to achieve it. The govNERD program supports the Season 8 Intent by ensuring the ecosystem has the robust, decentralized governance infrastructure and support needed to coordinate and execute at scale. The continuation of the govNERDs program in Seasons 8 and 9 builds on their proven success reducing the Foundation’s role in executing core governance operations.
What is required to execute this Mission?
Lead (1)
The Lead's role is procedural, communicative, and managerial. Key responsibilities include:
-
Strategic Leadership
- Design and implement program improvements
- Suggesting updates to the govNERDs charter
- Experiment with automation as a way to scale operations
- Maintain strong communication channels with the Foundation and community
-
Operational Management
- Coordinate and oversee the work of core govNERDs
- Ensure timely and high-quality completion of tasks
- Develop and document best practices and processes
- Maintain and iterate on the govNERDs hub
-
Community Engagement
- Gather and incorporate feedback from delegates and community members for continuous program improvement
- Foster collaboration between govNERDs and ecosystem participants
- Maintain transparency in program operations and decision-making
- Establish infrastructure to experiment with Season 10 algorithmic selection criteria to replace current contribution path based opportunities
Core (3)
-
Voting Cycle Support
- Make timely voting announcements for Season and reflection periods
- Monitor and report on forum and Discord activities
- Create token house vote copy and citizens house vote copy with minimal edits needed by the Foundation
-
Grants Council Support
- Perform proactive outreach to possible candidates
- Engage with applicants and guide them through the process
- Attend Internal Grants Council meetings
-
Security and Multisig Operations
- Serve as signers along with elected leads on a community-owned multisig to distribute Season 8/9 operating budgets
- Verify and sign transactions prepared by the respective Leads
- Maintain and update the Community Budget Tracker
This list is not static and the Foundation or Lead may request additional support (within reason) over the course of the Season.
Please note: All of the contributor roles and associated rewards described here are intended for independent and engaged community members who volunteer to provide their knowledge and expertise to the Collective and receive an honorarium in the form of OP. These volunteers are not employees of the Collective, the Foundation, or any of its affiliates for any purpose.
How should the Foundation measure progress towards this Mission Request?
Token House milestones are mostly about accountability, so they should measure progress towards completion.
- Grant Council Lead satisfaction score (target: >7/10)
- 0 security incidents on the Operating Budget Multi
How should progress towards completion be measured?
- N/A
Application Instructions
In Season 8, we will experiment with a non-political process to select members of the govNERDs program. You can read more about this approach here. While selection criteria will be imperfect initially, we are running additional experiments and collecting feedback to understand which criteria are useful signals in determining qualified applicants and will refine criteria over time.
govNERD Season 8-9 Eligibility and Selection Process and Eligibility Requirements
To qualify as a govNERD member in Season 8-9, candidates must hold one of the following attestations:
- Governance Contributor (previously held a role in Optimism Governance): rough approximation of knowledge and context of Optimism governance, as this is critical to the role of a govNERD
- govNERD (previously served as a govNERD): indicates proven experience with governance operations and stakeholder communication.
In the future, we hope to be able to use criteria such as:
- Experience working with another grants program
- Proven experience with safe and multisigs
…but we still need to establish reliable indicators/attestations for these criteria.
Selection Process
- Qualification Review: The Foundation will generate and publish a list of qualified addresses based on eligible attestations
- Ranking: Addresses will be ranked by the number of eligible attestations received
- Opt-In: An opt-in form will be provided to qualified candidates
- Final Selection: The top four candidates who opt in will be invited to join the program. In the event of ties (where more than four candidates share the same highest number of attestations and opt in), selection among tied candidates will be determined by random sampling. The randomization methodology will be published as a public comment to this GitHub post prior to selection.
Leadership Selection
During the opt-in process, candidates may indicate interest in serving as govNERD lead. The Foundation will select the lead from among eligible candidates.
Eligible Addresses
Please note: If you believe that you should be eligible for this list, or your attestation count is incorrect, please reach out to opjulian on Telegram.