Profile of cobie in Optimism

Posts by cobie

• Users who sold the initial OP airdrop should become ineligible for all future airdrops by cobie - No Role
  Posted on: June 2, 2022, 12:38 p.m.
  Content: MinimalGravitas: Your argument seems to boil down to the idea that despite the claim that the primary reason for the token is governance, you just know that it’s primary purpose is really to stimulate growth. If that were the case then why would so much of the allocation of Airdrop One have gone to activities that don’t in any way relate to the use of Optimism. Out of the 6 categories you could get 4 of them without having touched the rollup… how does participating in the BanklessDAO’s governance or donating to The Daily Gwei’s Gitcoin funding round affect growth of Optimism? Doesn’t is seem plausible that these criteria were chosen specifically because they are likely to correlate to users more likely than average to participate in Optimism’s vision? Lets look at the reality of the distribution: image 1392 × 608 87 . 8 KB 92 k eligible users received a total of ~ 71 . 3 m OP 19 k eligible repeat users received a total of ~ 32 . 3 m OP 74 k eligible users priced out of ETH received a total of ~ 30 . 2 m OP 84 k eligible governance participants received a total of ~ 22 . 7 m OP 19 k eligible multisig signers received a total of ~ 23 . 4 m OP 24 k eligible gitcoin donors received a total of ~ 13 . 3 m OP So users received ~ 130 m and the other categories received ~ 59 m in total. So, non-users received 30 % and users received 70 %. Of the other categories, you can probably infer them all as governance participants. Gitcoin donors are probably seen as ecosystem supporters, and it’s good marketing/growth to align yourself with other public goods. Multisig signers are likely developers, builders, or active community members. They’re probably governance-biased, but attracting developers and builders seems the most important motive here. DAO voters are of course directly governance participants. In total, they received the smallest amount of any of the groups.
  Likes: 6 Replies: 0
  Likers: prometheus, abraxas, adams, butterbum, 0xweston, yolo
  No replies yet.
• Users who sold the initial OP airdrop should become ineligible for all future airdrops by cobie - No Role
  Posted on: June 2, 2022, 11:18 a.m.
  Content: MinimalGravitas: I’m not really convinced that he addressed the key point from your Twitter thread, notably that: I think confusion stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what the airdrop is supposed to achieve. This really is the key issue. Lots of the arguments from those thinking sellers shouldn’t miss out on the next airdrop seem to not be considering it in terms of the primary reason for the drop. It’s not to egalitarianly give people money but rather the purpose is surely to get voting power into the hands of those likely to use it. This should be the main consideration. All of the reasons for selling that he lists are perfectly reasonable (I made the point about tax above), but they are things that the Optimism Collective shouldn’t be caring about in my opinion. I think this largely ignores market forces and the speculative mechanics of an airdrop. Airdrops effectively act as a paid cost for growth that is spent in equity instead of in cash. Perhaps in 2020 it was reasonable to say that they were not, since the idea of retrospective airdrops were quite novel, and users did not have reasonable expectation of a future airdrop in exchange for usage. But in 2022 , users are aware they will become owners of a protocol by using the protocol. An impending airdrop juices metrics (such as DAUs) which in turn increases the adoption and the valuation of Optimism. And there are good market examples of a bad, exclusionary airdrop killing user metrics (since speculo-users are now dissuaded, and any excluded real users are also dissuaded). It’s similar to a paid referral program – sign up to this product and get $ 100 free usage. Except it is paid in equity instead of cash or discounts. Now, if you believe that it is really a distribution of governance responsibilities and in no way a paid growth mechanic, then the path forward is very simple. If you want to only airdrop governance responsibilities to those that might want it, then you can issue a non-transferrable token with governance rights. Those that do not want to use it can simply ignore it, and those that do can vote with the governance rights they have earned. But that is not the choice Optimism made, because they know that such a decision would cause many users to stop using Optimism. So, I do not buy the argument that the purpose of the airdrop was solely to deliver governance responsibility, when the execution (a transferable token given primarily based on usage and repeated usage) is far from the ideal option if that were the case. Anyway, even if it were the case that this was solely intended as a governance (non-financial) distribution… then selling is still not even bad. Sellers are also helping transfer voting power into the hands of those likely to use it, too. The coins that would be ignored end up in the hands of people who actually want them. Don’t see how that is a bad thing. Plus, just because you sold in the past, does not mean you will sell in the future. People’s situations change a lot and Optimism can change a lot. Being excluded from all future governance rights because you sold in 2022 seems silly very quickly as Optimism changes and time passes.
  Likes: 7 Replies: 2
  Likers: prometheus, stoic, marklar, cryptotrade, adams, butterbum, 0xweston
  Replies:

  • MinimalGravitas: Firstly, just for clarity, I do completely agree with this: cobie: Being excluded from all future governance rights because you sold in 2022 seems silly very quickly as Optimism changes and time passes. I would vote against the proposal to backlist users from future airdrops if it ever came up. However… Your argument seems to boil down to the idea that despite the claim that the primary reason for the token is governance, you just know that it’s primary purpose is really to stimulate growth. If that were the case then why would so much of the allocation of Airdrop One have gone to activities that don’t in any way relate to the use of Optimism. Out of the 6 categories you could get 4 of them without having touched the rollup… how does participating in the BanklessDAO’s governance or donating to The Daily Gwei’s Gitcoin funding round affect growth of Optimism? Doesn’t is seem plausible that these criteria were chosen specifically because they are likely to correlate to users more likely than average to participate in Optimism’s vision? If they wanted to optimimze for attracting growth then surely it would have made a lot more sense to airdrop to users of mainnet dApps like UniSwap and Synthetix that are also available on Optimism, these are users who would very easily be convinced to start using optimism and are likely to stay due to the much cheaper fees than they are used to. I think you’re so used to the cynical behavior of many projects in crypto that you’re making a category error and assuming that all token airdrops must fit into the same simple motivation. cobie: Plus, just because you sold in the past, does not mean you will sell in the future. People’s situations change a lot and Optimism can change a lot. Points like this I think should be irrelevant from the perspective of OP issuance. The issue isn’t a value judgement on why people sell or whether it’s ‘bad’ to do so. It’s just about the practical question of how to get more voting power into the hands of those who will use it than those who won’t. Of course you can give it to people who will just sell it and then those more interested in governance can just buy it… but that seems like an inefficient extra step. [Edit - spelling]
  • marklar: Agree with these takes. The arguments presented by OP are self-defeating and counter-productive. The OP ignores the massive awareness campaign this brought not only to Optimism but to bridges and governance participation and so forth. And with it a tail of educational and usage network effects. For example, the ‘alpha’ channel discussions amongst NFT natives was quite telling: “is this Optimism thing legit?”, “what is Optimism, is it on ETH?”, “how do i bridge and what bridge should i use”, “how do i swap? …what is uniswap”, “wait, you got more because you [participated in governance]”, “are there NFTs there?”, “gas is how much?!”, and so forth. Little by little people start to figure it out: knowledge and participation pays. And little by little awareness and usage grows and network effects start to take hold. So when that easy-sauce Coinbase bridge appears, they’ll already know what Optimism is. And, heck, they might even come back and tell their frens to buy your bags. Disclosure: I am an airdrop seller. Almost every time. But the non-vampires come from early participation in networks or projects that I continue to use. Pre and post-drop I’m engaging NFT degens and others, answering their questions and of course giving them my opinion. But, according to OP, I am a zero contribution account. Begs the question: is this post real or a figment of your imagination?
• Users who sold the initial OP airdrop should become ineligible for all future airdrops by cobie - No Role
  Posted on: June 2, 2022, 8:38 a.m.
  Content: MinimalGravitas: Your argument seems to boil down to the idea that despite the claim that the primary reason for the token is governance, you just know that it’s primary purpose is really to stimulate growth. If that were the case then why would so much of the allocation of Airdrop One have gone to activities that don’t in any way relate to the use of Optimism. Out of the 6 categories you could get 4 of them without having touched the rollup… how does participating in the BanklessDAO’s governance or donating to The Daily Gwei’s Gitcoin funding round affect growth of Optimism? Doesn’t is seem plausible that these criteria were chosen specifically because they are likely to correlate to users more likely than average to participate in Optimism’s vision? Lets look at the reality of the distribution: image 1392 × 608 87 . 8 KB 92 k eligible users received a total of ~ 71 . 3 m OP 19 k eligible repeat users received a total of ~ 32 . 3 m OP 74 k eligible users priced out of ETH received a total of ~ 30 . 2 m OP 84 k eligible governance participants received a total of ~ 22 . 7 m OP 19 k eligible multisig signers received a total of ~ 23 . 4 m OP 24 k eligible gitcoin donors received a total of ~ 13 . 3 m OP So users received ~ 130 m and the other categories received ~ 59 m in total. So, non-users received 30 % and users received 70 %. Of the other categories, you can probably infer them all as governance participants. Gitcoin donors are probably seen as ecosystem supporters, and it’s good marketing/growth to align yourself with other public goods. Multisig signers are likely developers, builders, or active community members. They’re probably governance-biased, but attracting developers and builders seems the most important motive here. DAO voters are of course directly governance participants. In total, they received the smallest amount of any of the groups.
  Likes: 6 Replies: 0
  Likers: Prometheus, Abraxas, adams, Luckyhooman.eth, 0xWeston, YoLo
  No replies yet.
• Users who sold the initial OP airdrop should become ineligible for all future airdrops by cobie - No Role
  Posted on: June 2, 2022, 7:18 a.m.
  Content: MinimalGravitas: I’m not really convinced that he addressed the key point from your Twitter thread, notably that: I think confusion stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of what the airdrop is supposed to achieve. This really is the key issue. Lots of the arguments from those thinking sellers shouldn’t miss out on the next airdrop seem to not be considering it in terms of the primary reason for the drop. It’s not to egalitarianly give people money but rather the purpose is surely to get voting power into the hands of those likely to use it. This should be the main consideration. All of the reasons for selling that he lists are perfectly reasonable (I made the point about tax above), but they are things that the Optimism Collective shouldn’t be caring about in my opinion. I think this largely ignores market forces and the speculative mechanics of an airdrop. Airdrops effectively act as a paid cost for growth that is spent in equity instead of in cash. Perhaps in 2020 it was reasonable to say that they were not, since the idea of retrospective airdrops were quite novel, and users did not have reasonable expectation of a future airdrop in exchange for usage. But in 2022 , users are aware they will become owners of a protocol by using the protocol. An impending airdrop juices metrics (such as DAUs) which in turn increases the adoption and the valuation of Optimism. And there are good market examples of a bad, exclusionary airdrop killing user metrics (since speculo-users are now dissuaded, and any excluded real users are also dissuaded). It’s similar to a paid referral program – sign up to this product and get $ 100 free usage. Except it is paid in equity instead of cash or discounts. Now, if you believe that it is really a distribution of governance responsibilities and in no way a paid growth mechanic, then the path forward is very simple. If you want to only airdrop governance responsibilities to those that might want it, then you can issue a non-transferrable token with governance rights. Those that do not want to use it can simply ignore it, and those that do can vote with the governance rights they have earned. But that is not the choice Optimism made, because they know that such a decision would cause many users to stop using Optimism. So, I do not buy the argument that the purpose of the airdrop was solely to deliver governance responsibility, when the execution (a transferable token given primarily based on usage and repeated usage) is far from the ideal option if that were the case. Anyway, even if it were the case that this was solely intended as a governance (non-financial) distribution… then selling is still not even bad. Sellers are also helping transfer voting power into the hands of those likely to use it, too. The coins that would be ignored end up in the hands of people who actually want them. Don’t see how that is a bad thing. Plus, just because you sold in the past, does not mean you will sell in the future. People’s situations change a lot and Optimism can change a lot. Being excluded from all future governance rights because you sold in 2022 seems silly very quickly as Optimism changes and time passes.
  Likes: 7 Replies: 2
  Likers: Prometheus, stoic, marklar, cryptotrade, adams, Luckyhooman.eth, 0xWeston
  Replies:

  • MinimalGravitas: Firstly, just for clarity, I do completely agree with this: cobie: Being excluded from all future governance rights because you sold in 2022 seems silly very quickly as Optimism changes and time passes. I would vote against the proposal to backlist users from future airdrops if it ever came up. However… Your argument seems to boil down to the idea that despite the claim that the primary reason for the token is governance, you just know that it’s primary purpose is really to stimulate growth. If that were the case then why would so much of the allocation of Airdrop One have gone to activities that don’t in any way relate to the use of Optimism. Out of the 6 categories you could get 4 of them without having touched the rollup… how does participating in the BanklessDAO’s governance or donating to The Daily Gwei’s Gitcoin funding round affect growth of Optimism? Doesn’t is seem plausible that these criteria were chosen specifically because they are likely to correlate to users more likely than average to participate in Optimism’s vision? If they wanted to optimimze for attracting growth then surely it would have made a lot more sense to airdrop to users of mainnet dApps like UniSwap and Synthetix that are also available on Optimism, these are users who would very easily be convinced to start using optimism and are likely to stay due to the much cheaper fees than they are used to. I think you’re so used to the cynical behavior of many projects in crypto that you’re making a category error and assuming that all token airdrops must fit into the same simple motivation. cobie: Plus, just because you sold in the past, does not mean you will sell in the future. People’s situations change a lot and Optimism can change a lot. Points like this I think should be irrelevant from the perspective of OP issuance. The issue isn’t a value judgement on why people sell or whether it’s ‘bad’ to do so. It’s just about the practical question of how to get more voting power into the hands of those who will use it than those who won’t. Of course you can give it to people who will just sell it and then those more interested in governance can just buy it… but that seems like an inefficient extra step. [Edit - spelling]
  • marklar: Agree with these takes. The arguments presented by OP are self-defeating and counter-productive. The OP ignores the massive awareness campaign this brought not only to Optimism but to bridges and governance participation and so forth. And with it a tail of educational and usage network effects. For example, the ‘alpha’ channel discussions amongst NFT natives was quite telling: “is this Optimism thing legit?”, “what is Optimism, is it on ETH?”, “how do i bridge and what bridge should i use”, “how do i swap? …what is uniswap”, “wait, you got more because you [participated in governance]”, “are there NFTs there?”, “gas is how much?!”, and so forth. Little by little people start to figure it out: knowledge and participation pays. And little by little awareness and usage grows and network effects start to take hold. So when that easy-sauce Coinbase bridge appears, they’ll already know what Optimism is. And, heck, they might even come back and tell their frens to buy your bags. Disclosure: I am an airdrop seller. Almost every time. But the non-vampires come from early participation in networks or projects that I continue to use. Pre and post-drop I’m engaging NFT degens and others, answering their questions and of course giving them my opinion. But, according to OP, I am a zero contribution account. Begs the question: is this post real or a figment of your imagination?
• Extended ineligibility for future airdrops by cobie - No Role
  Posted on: June 1, 2022, 5:27 p.m.
  Content: norswap: I’d like to hear in your own words why you think it’s a bad proposal. Here is, in my own words, why it might not be a terrible proposal: https://twitter.com/norswap/status/ 1532012865607065600 It is clearly a bad proposal. Selling =/= dissenting Your argument that it is a good proposal lies in the idea that selling indicates people (a) do not believe in Optimism, (b) do not value participating in governance. This is reasonably obviously not true for all sellers. Other reasons someone might sell include: They think the valuation of OP is currently too high and they can wait until it becomes aligned with their expectations in order to participate in governance, and thus have a larger governance share. They think the valuation is okay, but they expect a post-airdrop dump. They want to buy lower and they think they can sell quickly before this “airdrop dump” happens and rebuy more OP. The airdrop is meaningfully large for their net worth, so selling some tokens makes a big difference to them, but they still believe in the future of Optimism. They sold on airdrop addresses and rebought on other addresses to anonymise their on-chain activity. They have tax obligations. They are selling 90 % of their crypto portfolio because they are scared of a bear market, but they will rebuy in a couple of years. They are fucking rekt and this $ income helps them a lot, maybe one day if they are no longer rekt they can afford to participate in governance of the projects they believe in again. Since it is possible to sell and still believe in Optimism and still want to participate in governance, permanently censoring addresses doesn’t seem like a good option. Cost of user acquisition Even if your argument were true, and all sellers did not believe in Optimism and did not value participating in governance, it is still not sufficient reason to censor their ability to participate in the future! The airdrop spend equity (in the form of $OP) for user acquisition and user retention. The focus on user acquisition and retention is clear through the airdrop criteria, where users and repeat users are heavily rewarded. They are even rewarded much more than DAO voters! :slight_smile: image 1392 × 608 88 . 3 KB Their tokens were earned for their Optimism usage. That was the criteria set by OP Labs (or whoever is in charge). Clearly, this was a reward for specifically using Optimism, something that OP Labs found to be an important metric. Plus, since users expect airdrops, users will speculatively use a product in order to gain the future airdrop. $OP spend is a customer acquisition cost for those users. Now, imagine the future airdrop that you are censoring these users from. Will the future airdrop target “usage” as a metric again? If a future airdrop were to target usage once again, that means OP Labs or The Foundation believe rewarding/paying for usage is still important. If you believe paying for usage (as bootstrapping mechanism) is important, how can you justify not including specific users? If you are paying people to use the product, it is expected that some of those people will sell by nature of the incentive! If you don’t believe paying users is important in the future, then you should not define airdrop criteria to reward users. If the future airdrop does not target “usage” as a metric, but instead targets governance-specific activities, and these addresses were eligible based on their behaviour from today until this theoretical airdrop, how can you justify not including governance participants because they once, historically, sold some tokens? They have done other actions that qualify them as good governors or participants. Is that overridden by historical financial activity? If you want to airdrop only to people that will keep the coins, then you should not even make the token transferable! Of course, this would not be an effective customer acquisition tool, which is why nobody does that. Why does the price matter? The proposal is motivated entirely by the short-term price of $OP. The short-term token price action is detached from the performance of governance almost entirely. The only people that care are price-speculators, traders and short-term investors. Governance certainly performs the same whether the price is $ 1 . 50 or $ 2 . Sure, extensive price changes could make governances attacks on Optimism cheaper, but there is not a single mention of that in the initial proposal, and it is not really a concern given the size of the airdrop or the short-term nature of the sell-pressure from “instant dumpers”. The valuation of Optimism will be defined by Optimism’s ability to gain traction, market share, being valuable to users, etc. Airdrop dumpers cannot materially impact that. Does it matter if the price goes down for a day or two? Why does OP Labs care? It is the price you pay for using equity as a behaviour-incentivisation tool. Is a ‘holder’ more valuable? Perhaps you can argue that you can optimise the treasury and $OP equity spent by not including “potential dumpers”, and thus rewarding only holders or “long term believers”. You can argue that you’re giving free money to these evil dumping people for nothing. But for this to be true, you would need to show that a holder-user more valuable to Optimism than a seller-user. Is the number of long-term holders of OP an important metric to the success of Optimism? Imagine two users: User A is a regular, legitimate user of Optimism. They get all their friends to use Optimism. They have a lot of daily on-chain activity. They have no interest in participating in governance, so they sold their initial airdrop. User B delegated their initial airdrop and didn’t participate at all in governance either. They still hold their tokens and their delegate votes every now and then. They have used Optimism once per month. Which user is most valuable to Optimism? Which user should be rewarded in future airdrops? I don’t see how the ‘holder’ criteria is necessarily the thing to optimise for, and don’t see how punishing historic sellers is the right mechanism for rewarding holders anyway. Airdrop and token distribution criteria should match what it is incentivising. The previous airdrop, users were rewarded for being a user. If you want to reward holding, you can design mechanisms for that easily. Ineffective measure Even if you concluded that you wanted to do this, regardless of it being a bad idea, then the measure itself is ineffective. Users will simply change their address. It takes ten seconds. You do a lot of work, raise negative pr, etc for something that is completely ineffective. If Optimism is to be the primary L 2 of Ethereum, it will have millions of users. It will not be expected that every user is also a governor. If you don’t want your airdrop to be sold, make it non-transferable. In fact, if you don’t believe your airdrop is a customer acquisition cost ($) then make it non-transferable and see what happens :slight_smile:
  Likes: 49 Replies: 9
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  Replies:

  • husker.eth: Strongly concur with Cobie
  • nextalphaa: To Optimism: Cobie is giving free consulting, reflect and make something good from the advice he is giving. You want to enable good governance and a living community long term so don’t give in for the paternalistic impulse.
  • norswap: Hey! First of all I really appreciate you writing this. This is really a nice explanation and is super valuable. I feel like my job here is done =) I want to clarify I’m not myself particularly in favour of filtering out people that sell. And I even less judge people who sell. I mean I personally got the ENS airdrop and sold it after a few days. If I wasn’t working for OP Labs and didn’t want to involve myself, I might have sold this one too, who knows. No judgement there. But I also thought the proposal wasn’t stupid, and deserved a proper answer. Which you have now delivered. Nice
  • luke-ethwalker: Thank you for typing this all out so I don’t have to. I sold half of my OP reward because I will have to pay significant taxes for pressing the claim button. Has nothing to do with my opinion on the protocol, in fact I really like Optimism and it has been a pleasure to watch it grow despite its issues.
  • alex: Cobie has the most thought out response to this proposal
  • Lyule67: This is a very well written piece and I thank you for writing it, I also concur. Without reiterating the points youve already made, I’ll try (and fail)* to keep it simple from a narrow/more concentrated perspective. Historically, I am active in both governance and innovation, on and off chain, for any any project I am active in. To name a few: YAM, DARK(segmented release, one of the first polygon native tokens, eventual failure), veDAO, and FRAX. These statements can be (chain-wise) verfied by my synonymous twitter/eth/discord handle “Lyule67(.eth)”. I sold all my $OP simply because at the moment I am financially hurting and over burdened and I was beyond grateful for being included in the airdrop. The same was the case with my $UNI airdrop, and my $ENS/airdrop. My soul genuinely hurt reading that due to temporary circumstances I might suffer lasting consequences, ae being shunned in the very place that I love the most, the place I have dedicated more time to than anywhere else in the last 5 years While I understand the desire to cut “the fat” or burdensome non-contributing (f)actors from the system (and/or future airdrops), I think a rolling blacklist is a terrible idea. I love the narrative of crypto, I love Ethereum’s mission, and I love what I believe we all are working towards. The idea of free and open, distributed, censorless systems ESPECIALLY in regard to public goods is probably the greatest objective, the greatest movement, the greatest narrative, I have ever seen, much less been a part of. The Ethos of Ethereum is what brought me here, and what will keep me here til im dead. The money ive made along the way has been life changing, and I have been forever grateful for that, but it truly was and remains but a great bonus to what really matters, which leads me to my conclusion: (TL;DR) Unless im mistaken, we all share the goals of universal inclusivity, of building not only (a) much more efficient and resilient system(s), but FAIR and incorruptable mechanics, in short, to make the world a better place and to change as many lives for the better as possible. Pushing for a rolling blacklist on the grounds of “deadweight/dumping” does none of these things. Im sure, like many before you, your hardwork and generosity literally changed many lives for the better. Many people in crypto possess 0 traditional crypto-esque skills, yet still strive to and do make a huge difference to the benefit of us all by other means. Maybe they’re a struggling artist who freely dedicated time and work to various unpaid advertisements and sold to support themselves another month. Maybe, like me, it was just horrible (and miraculous) timing and saved me financially. Maybe they live in a less fortunate economy and the immediate benefit was far greater to them than the power to create change in the system later. Almost everything in life is circumstantial, and I implore you (Optimism Coop) and anyone else not to make permanent decisions based on temporary circumstances/actions. At the root of it all, I believe most of us come to crypto to make the world a better place. Regardless of your decision, I want to thank you, truly, for being profound contributors in this space, and for fighting on the frontlines of arguably one of the absolute most important hurdles between us and global adoption. I commend you for your accomplishments and, for the benefit of us all, wish you well on the road ahead! (PS, thank you for proving my 2017 “rollup” hypothesis correct, I KNEW it could be done !!) In finality, I am all too sure the last 72hours have been a rollercoaster of emotions for the Optimism Team, and I know there are plenty of thankless, entitled, arrogant a****les who care about none of the aforementioned, but they, I believe, are the minority, and I for one am nothing less than thankfull for your contribution(s). STAY OPTIMISTIC (= Thank you for your time, I apologize for the length. Lyule67.ETH
  • divers: how about putting the minimum voting power to 271.83 as it stated on the allocated airdrop per address. so, everyone who sold should rebought their tokens
  • Billion: 0 CAP FOUND thanks ser @invesersebrah
  • ArguingOverGovernanc: I agree to some extent with the ideas presented here, but I think the originally referenced proposal was just a poorly relayed idea that you are taking at face value. Obviously it doesn’t make any sense to restrict future airdrops purely based on whether an account sold their allocation, but I think it is very important to use governance participation as a criteria for future airdrops. I definitely disagree with the lazy participant ideology for a number of reasons. Is a holder more valuable? cobie: If Optimism is to be the primary L2 of Ethereum, it will have millions of users. It will not be expected that every user is also a governor. Disagree here, delegation is incredibly easy, and people’s participation in governance is vital to the livelihood of the chain. As is the case in any democratic society, it is a moral imperative for members to contribute to equitable governance, whether this be through delegation or direct voting. None of this experiment works without people contributing to governance, and it has been shown time and time again in crypto and elsewhere that governance is not something that can just be left to a few seemingly benevolent parties. Why does price matter Token price will strongly affect Optimism’s user acquisition efforts, as protocol incentives will be paid out in OP. There needs to be incentive to hold or acquire the token (Prior to actual value accrual being added (pls)), otherwise the token will just be farmed to a point where the incentives are worthless. All of the other incentive programs are done on the backs of holders, and they deserve to be compensated more so than those who sell and immediately realize their profit. You raise all of these valid reasons for people to sell the free tokens they got to lock in profit, but somehow don’t come to the conclusion that holders are taking on all of that risk and should thus be rewarded moreso than those who sold. I have no problem with people selling the airdrop, but doing so is inherently less beneficial to the ecosystem than someone holding/buying and participating in governance. There are plenty of ways for active users to acquire OP going forward, as many different protocols were given an allocation to distribute. These incentives can be “gamed” however you like, as they are there to simply bring activity to the chain. The airdrops on the other hand have no business going to people who will just dump them. Conclusion The point of the airdrop was to equitably distribute OP to as many real users as possible with the limited toolset available in DeFi, not to “reward” people for being here. There is 0 value added by giving tokens to people who don’t plan on staying long term. Temporarily pumping usage numbers is pointless, and we should be focused on distributing OP fairly to those who have an interest in the long term success of the ecosystem. Thank you for listening and please don’t flame me on tweeter
• Extended ineligibility for future airdrops by cobie - No Role
  Posted on: June 1, 2022, 3:07 p.m.
  Content: norswap: The best way to engage with a proposal is not to be snarky about it. If you believe it is a terrible idea, I believe people would like to hear why you think so, not start from the premise that it is stupid and turn it into ridicule. It might seem obvous to you, but it might not be to other people. (Disclaimer: I work at OP Labs, this post reflects my own personal opinion and not that of my employer.) Sometimes the best way to convey a message to a wide group of people is satire. Extending an idea to its extremes can help easily reveal holes in the original idea. Of course you will be upset by the tone: you are paid to take this seriously. But for the majority of people, governance is fucking boring. In contrast, this post is one of the most viewed governance posts of all time on this forum, and it was posted an hour ago. Disclaimer: this post does not reflect my own opinion and in fact represents the opinion of OP Labs.
  Likes: 22 Replies: 2
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  Replies:

  • GovIsFair: Including satire as part of gouvernance has several benefits. First, it provides a safety valve for frustration and anger; instead of resorting to violence or other destructive means of expression, people can use satire to release their pent-up frustrations in a harmless way. Second, satire can serve as an early warning system for problems within society; if satirists are routinely making fun of certain government policies or leaders then it may be indicative of deeper issues that need addressing before they spiral out of control. Chill.
  • BlockMerchant: I thought your post conveyed the message perfectly. I also thought the original proposal was satire, so shows what I know, clearly I have too much faith in people.
• Extended ineligibility for future airdrops by cobie - No Role
  Posted on: June 1, 2022, 2:31 p.m.
  Content: kondomek: tried explaining to my mom how milady is one of the most important projects in history due to the fact that people basically create their own reality online and it will culminate in a real world event that will shock the establishment. needless to say she’s looking forward to it Very important and very relevant! Thank you.
  Likes: 7 Replies: 0
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  No replies yet.
• Extended ineligibility for future airdrops by cobie - No Role
  Posted on: June 1, 2022, 2:30 p.m.
  Content: Thank you for your important contributions.
  Likes: 9 Replies: 1
  Likers: itchydinojake, zec, realwassie, penbercifield, gokhan, ajdarvv, frozon, ping, viter
  Replies:

  • gokhan: all gratitudes have been frozen for airdrop sellers.
• Extended ineligibility for future airdrops by cobie - No Role
  Posted on: June 1, 2022, 2 p.m.
  Content: I recently saw this proposal on the Optimism forum: Users who sold the initial OP airdrop should become ineligible for all future airdrops 675 . Have seen enough wallets collect the OP airdrop, swap it straight to Uniswap. These accounts are not playing a constructive role in Optimism governance. Instead of contributing to governance, they are maximising for profit. Nothing wrong with that, as per the airdrop criteria the coins are theirs and they are free to do as they wish. However, from Optimism governance’s perspective, such accounts are counter-productive for our stated goals. I was extremely pleased to see this proposal. Canceling the future airdrops of those that have sold their initial OP airdrop seems sensible, well-considered and targets the heart of any crypto protocol: the price of its token. However, I am unable to support this proposal in its current form. My lack of support for this proposal is not because I disagree with the sentiment. On the contrary, it is because this proposal does not go far enough. In order to support this proposal, I believe it needs to be significantly extended in scope (who is punished) and severity (what the punishment is). I have included my extended suggestions: Increase the scope of the proposal. In addition to canceling the airdrops of OP sellers, we should also consider a wider net of eligibility for airdrop slashing. I propose that we, Optimism Collective, cancels the future airdrops of anyone that has sold any token in the last 6 months. These people have a pattern of undesirable behaviour, we can consider them “potential future sellers”. I think I speak for everyone when I say: do we really want people that might sell one day in the governance group? No, we don’t. Optimism governance should be a group that you can never leave: until death do us part. I will note that the 6 -month mark may be too short. I have selected this as I believe that people can find the error of their ways and move forwards as a better person. But perhaps we should check if they have sold any tokens ever? Or include non-crypto assets too? Have they sold a used car before? Could be predictive of undesirable “seller” behaviour. Increase the severity of the punishment. Is cancelling a future airdrop good enough? I propose that the punishment for disrespecting Optimism’s governance token price should be significantly harsher in order to dissuade future bad actors. Two ideas I have: a) We issue a debt token to the sellers, and instruct local debt collection agencies to collect the debt money from these people. Bonus: added revenue for optimism. b) We consider physical violence against sellers. Nobody will take us seriously unless we are willing to fight for what we believe in. There is precedent here, most governance groups have an active army eg. US Government. I think this is a good area to get creative, so I would request of my fellow Optimism Collective governance group colleagues to also suggest preferred punishment ideas. Also cancel the airdrops of everyone that bought OP since the airdrop. Everyone that has bought the airdrop has also sinned. Firstly, they have interacted with the sellers. That is bad enough by itself. The OP tokens they hold are tainted ‘sold’ tokens. Yet, additionally, they have purchased OP, potentially with a market buy! This makes OP more expensive and harder to participate in for the common man. By buying OP, and making it more expensive, not only do you encourage people to sell since they are in profit, but you also make OP governance only accessible to a 16 z and other rich whales. In many ways, buyers are just enabling the sellers, while making selling more desirable, and increasing the price to make membership to this group harder to achieve. I believe they should have equal (if not harsher) treatment as the sellers. Cancel the governance power of any token that has been sold. Tokens that have been sold on the market should lose all governance power. The airdrop was gifted to people with the goal of participating in governance, not to be sold! Sellers have effectively stolen money from the Optimism Collective. Therefore, owning sold OP tokens is isomorphically similar to owning stolen property, or accepting money from proceeds of crime. Sold tokens should be considered void and potentially a criminal act. I did consider some additional ideas, including: Cancel the future airdrops of anyone that posted on the forum so far (they clearly do not need additional incentive to govern) Cancel the future airdrops of anyone that commented on the price (since they are focused on the wrong metric, the important metric is number of governance proposals) Instead of mass physical violence against sellers in general, could instead have one large horrific outsized violent event (eg. but more like the crucifixion of Jesus rather than a terrorism-type event) in order to dissuade sellers However, I thought these ideas were impractical because Jesus’ message travelled long beyond his death and making a martyr of a seller might not be a good idea.
  Likes: 106 Replies: 4
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  Replies:

  • zec: cobie: Cancel the future airdrops of anyone that commented on the price (since they are focused on the wrong metric, the important metric is number of governance proposals) Instead of cancelling these airdrops, we should be allocating it to fellow colleagues of the optimism collective governance group that contribute through viable proposals (and commenting on them).
  • norswap: The best way to engage with a proposal is not to be snarky about it. If you believe it is a terrible idea, I believe people would like to hear why you think so, not start from the premise that it is stupid and turn it into ridicule. It might seem obvous to you, but it might not be to other people. (Disclaimer: I work at OP Labs, this post reflects my own personal opinion and not that of my employer.)
  • William: cobie: Increase the severity of the punishment. b) We consider physical violence against sellers. Nobody will take us seriously unless we are willing to fight for what we believe in. There is precedent here, most governance groups have an active army eg. US Government. Not sure if this is a joke or for real? Apparently this post was flagged by someone for as inappropriate or a violation of community guidelines which is hilarious considering it’s not my quote.
  • mteoptimism: cobie: These people have a pattern of undesirable behaviour, we can consider them true but i’m totally against it…
• Extended ineligibility for future airdrops by cobie - No Role
  Posted on: June 1, 2022, 1:27 p.m.
  Content: norswap: I’d like to hear in your own words why you think it’s a bad proposal. Here is, in my own words, why it might not be a terrible proposal: https://twitter.com/norswap/status/ 1532012865607065600 It is clearly a bad proposal. Selling =/= dissenting Your argument that it is a good proposal lies in the idea that selling indicates people (a) do not believe in Optimism, (b) do not value participating in governance. This is reasonably obviously not true for all sellers. Other reasons someone might sell include: They think the valuation of OP is currently too high and they can wait until it becomes aligned with their expectations in order to participate in governance, and thus have a larger governance share. They think the valuation is okay, but they expect a post-airdrop dump. They want to buy lower and they think they can sell quickly before this “airdrop dump” happens and rebuy more OP. The airdrop is meaningfully large for their net worth, so selling some tokens makes a big difference to them, but they still believe in the future of Optimism. They sold on airdrop addresses and rebought on other addresses to anonymise their on-chain activity. They have tax obligations. They are selling 90 % of their crypto portfolio because they are scared of a bear market, but they will rebuy in a couple of years. They are fucking rekt and this $ income helps them a lot, maybe one day if they are no longer rekt they can afford to participate in governance of the projects they believe in again. Since it is possible to sell and still believe in Optimism and still want to participate in governance, permanently censoring addresses doesn’t seem like a good option. Cost of user acquisition Even if your argument were true, and all sellers did not believe in Optimism and did not value participating in governance, it is still not sufficient reason to censor their ability to participate in the future! The airdrop spend equity (in the form of $OP) for user acquisition and user retention. The focus on user acquisition and retention is clear through the airdrop criteria, where users and repeat users are heavily rewarded. They are even rewarded much more than DAO voters! :slight_smile: image 1392 × 608 88 . 3 KB Their tokens were earned for their Optimism usage. That was the criteria set by OP Labs (or whoever is in charge). Clearly, this was a reward for specifically using Optimism, something that OP Labs found to be an important metric. Plus, since users expect airdrops, users will speculatively use a product in order to gain the future airdrop. $OP spend is a customer acquisition cost for those users. Now, imagine the future airdrop that you are censoring these users from. Will the future airdrop target “usage” as a metric again? If a future airdrop were to target usage once again, that means OP Labs or The Foundation believe rewarding/paying for usage is still important. If you believe paying for usage (as bootstrapping mechanism) is important, how can you justify not including specific users? If you are paying people to use the product, it is expected that some of those people will sell by nature of the incentive! If you don’t believe paying users is important in the future, then you should not define airdrop criteria to reward users. If the future airdrop does not target “usage” as a metric, but instead targets governance-specific activities, and these addresses were eligible based on their behaviour from today until this theoretical airdrop, how can you justify not including governance participants because they once, historically, sold some tokens? They have done other actions that qualify them as good governors or participants. Is that overridden by historical financial activity? If you want to airdrop only to people that will keep the coins, then you should not even make the token transferable! Of course, this would not be an effective customer acquisition tool, which is why nobody does that. Why does the price matter? The proposal is motivated entirely by the short-term price of $OP. The short-term token price action is detached from the performance of governance almost entirely. The only people that care are price-speculators, traders and short-term investors. Governance certainly performs the same whether the price is $ 1 . 50 or $ 2 . Sure, extensive price changes could make governances attacks on Optimism cheaper, but there is not a single mention of that in the initial proposal, and it is not really a concern given the size of the airdrop or the short-term nature of the sell-pressure from “instant dumpers”. The valuation of Optimism will be defined by Optimism’s ability to gain traction, market share, being valuable to users, etc. Airdrop dumpers cannot materially impact that. Does it matter if the price goes down for a day or two? Why does OP Labs care? It is the price you pay for using equity as a behaviour-incentivisation tool. Is a ‘holder’ more valuable? Perhaps you can argue that you can optimise the treasury and $OP equity spent by not including “potential dumpers”, and thus rewarding only holders or “long term believers”. You can argue that you’re giving free money to these evil dumping people for nothing. But for this to be true, you would need to show that a holder-user more valuable to Optimism than a seller-user. Is the number of long-term holders of OP an important metric to the success of Optimism? Imagine two users: User A is a regular, legitimate user of Optimism. They get all their friends to use Optimism. They have a lot of daily on-chain activity. They have no interest in participating in governance, so they sold their initial airdrop. User B delegated their initial airdrop and didn’t participate at all in governance either. They still hold their tokens and their delegate votes every now and then. They have used Optimism once per month. Which user is most valuable to Optimism? Which user should be rewarded in future airdrops? I don’t see how the ‘holder’ criteria is necessarily the thing to optimise for, and don’t see how punishing historic sellers is the right mechanism for rewarding holders anyway. Airdrop and token distribution criteria should match what it is incentivising. The previous airdrop, users were rewarded for being a user. If you want to reward holding, you can design mechanisms for that easily. Ineffective measure Even if you concluded that you wanted to do this, regardless of it being a bad idea, then the measure itself is ineffective. Users will simply change their address. It takes ten seconds. You do a lot of work, raise negative pr, etc for something that is completely ineffective. If Optimism is to be the primary L 2 of Ethereum, it will have millions of users. It will not be expected that every user is also a governor. If you don’t want your airdrop to be sold, make it non-transferable. In fact, if you don’t believe your airdrop is a customer acquisition cost ($) then make it non-transferable and see what happens :slight_smile:
  Likes: 44 Replies: 9
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  Replies:

  • husker.eth: Strongly concur with Cobie
  • nextalphaa: To Optimism: Cobie is giving free consulting, reflect and make something good from the advice he is giving. You want to enable good governance and a living community long term so don’t give in for the paternalistic impulse.
  • norswap: Hey! First of all I really appreciate you writing this. This is really a nice explanation and is super valuable. I feel like my job here is done =) I want to clarify I’m not myself particularly in favour of filtering out people that sell. And I even less judge people who sell. I mean I personally got the ENS airdrop and sold it after a few days. If I wasn’t working for OP Labs and didn’t want to involve myself, I might have sold this one too, who knows. No judgement there. But I also thought the proposal wasn’t stupid, and deserved a proper answer. Which you have now delivered. Nice
  • luke-ethwalker: Thank you for typing this all out so I don’t have to. I sold half of my OP reward because I will have to pay significant taxes for pressing the claim button. Has nothing to do with my opinion on the protocol, in fact I really like Optimism and it has been a pleasure to watch it grow despite its issues.
  • alex: Cobie has the most thought out response to this proposal
  • Lyule67: This is a very well written piece and I thank you for writing it, I also concur. Without reiterating the points youve already made, I’ll try (and fail)* to keep it simple from a narrow/more concentrated perspective. Historically, I am active in both governance and innovation, on and off chain, for any any project I am active in. To name a few: YAM, DARK(segmented release, one of the first polygon native tokens, eventual failure), veDAO, and FRAX. These statements can be (chain-wise) verfied by my synonymous twitter/eth/discord handle “Lyule67(.eth)”. I sold all my $OP simply because at the moment I am financially hurting and over burdened and I was beyond grateful for being included in the airdrop. The same was the case with my $UNI airdrop, and my $ENS/airdrop. My soul genuinely hurt reading that due to temporary circumstances I might suffer lasting consequences, ae being shunned in the very place that I love the most, the place I have dedicated more time to than anywhere else in the last 5 years While I understand the desire to cut “the fat” or burdensome non-contributing (f)actors from the system (and/or future airdrops), I think a rolling blacklist is a terrible idea. I love the narrative of crypto, I love Ethereum’s mission, and I love what I believe we all are working towards. The idea of free and open, distributed, censorless systems ESPECIALLY in regard to public goods is probably the greatest objective, the greatest movement, the greatest narrative, I have ever seen, much less been a part of. The Ethos of Ethereum is what brought me here, and what will keep me here til im dead. The money ive made along the way has been life changing, and I have been forever grateful for that, but it truly was and remains but a great bonus to what really matters, which leads me to my conclusion: (TL;DR) Unless im mistaken, we all share the goals of universal inclusivity, of building not only (a) much more efficient and resilient system(s), but FAIR and incorruptable mechanics, in short, to make the world a better place and to change as many lives for the better as possible. Pushing for a rolling blacklist on the grounds of “deadweight/dumping” does none of these things. Im sure, like many before you, your hardwork and generosity literally changed many lives for the better. Many people in crypto possess 0 traditional crypto-esque skills, yet still strive to and do make a huge difference to the benefit of us all by other means. Maybe they’re a struggling artist who freely dedicated time and work to various unpaid advertisements and sold to support themselves another month. Maybe, like me, it was just horrible (and miraculous) timing and saved me financially. Maybe they live in a less fortunate economy and the immediate benefit was far greater to them than the power to create change in the system later. Almost everything in life is circumstantial, and I implore you (Optimism Coop) and anyone else not to make permanent decisions based on temporary circumstances/actions. At the root of it all, I believe most of us come to crypto to make the world a better place. Regardless of your decision, I want to thank you, truly, for being profound contributors in this space, and for fighting on the frontlines of arguably one of the absolute most important hurdles between us and global adoption. I commend you for your accomplishments and, for the benefit of us all, wish you well on the road ahead! (PS, thank you for proving my 2017 “rollup” hypothesis correct, I KNEW it could be done !!) In finality, I am all too sure the last 72hours have been a rollercoaster of emotions for the Optimism Team, and I know there are plenty of thankless, entitled, arrogant a****les who care about none of the aforementioned, but they, I believe, are the minority, and I for one am nothing less than thankfull for your contribution(s). STAY OPTIMISTIC (= Thank you for your time, I apologize for the length. Lyule67.ETH
  • divers: how about putting the minimum voting power to 271.83 as it stated on the allocated airdrop per address. so, everyone who sold should rebought their tokens
  • Billion: 0 CAP FOUND thanks ser @invesersebrah
  • ArguingOverGovernanc: I agree to some extent with the ideas presented here, but I think the originally referenced proposal was just a poorly relayed idea that you are taking at face value. Obviously it doesn’t make any sense to restrict future airdrops purely based on whether an account sold their allocation, but I think it is very important to use governance participation as a criteria for future airdrops. I definitely disagree with the lazy participant ideology for a number of reasons. Is a holder more valuable? cobie: If Optimism is to be the primary L2 of Ethereum, it will have millions of users. It will not be expected that every user is also a governor. Disagree here, delegation is incredibly easy, and people’s participation in governance is vital to the livelihood of the chain. As is the case in any democratic society, it is a moral imperative for members to contribute to equitable governance, whether this be through delegation or direct voting. None of this experiment works without people contributing to governance, and it has been shown time and time again in crypto and elsewhere that governance is not something that can just be left to a few seemingly benevolent parties. Why does price matter Token price will strongly affect Optimism’s user acquisition efforts, as protocol incentives will be paid out in OP. There needs to be incentive to hold or acquire the token (Prior to actual value accrual being added (pls)), otherwise the token will just be farmed to a point where the incentives are worthless. All of the other incentive programs are done on the backs of holders, and they deserve to be compensated more so than those who sell and immediately realize their profit. You raise all of these valid reasons for people to sell the free tokens they got to lock in profit, but somehow don’t come to the conclusion that holders are taking on all of that risk and should thus be rewarded moreso than those who sold. I have no problem with people selling the airdrop, but doing so is inherently less beneficial to the ecosystem than someone holding/buying and participating in governance. There are plenty of ways for active users to acquire OP going forward, as many different protocols were given an allocation to distribute. These incentives can be “gamed” however you like, as they are there to simply bring activity to the chain. The airdrops on the other hand have no business going to people who will just dump them. Conclusion The point of the airdrop was to equitably distribute OP to as many real users as possible with the limited toolset available in DeFi, not to “reward” people for being here. There is 0 value added by giving tokens to people who don’t plan on staying long term. Temporarily pumping usage numbers is pointless, and we should be focused on distributing OP fairly to those who have an interest in the long term success of the ecosystem. Thank you for listening and please don’t flame me on tweeter