The Cycle 19 Preliminary Review has been completed. From the 314 applications we received, 252 were scored by 2 reviewers randomly selected depending on the subcommittee involved following the specified rubric. The 314 applications submitted during cycle 18 surpassed the entire Season 4 with 306 applications in total.
The Grants Council congratulates the 106 proposers that will be considered for Final Review.
Here is the list by mission request of proposals for Final Review organized by the Sub-Committee. Next to the mission request title we specify if:
Continue: Finalists are going to be chosen and submission will open again for round 2
Push forward: Submission will be open again and finalists from round 1 will be considered at the end of round 2 . The mission request stays open with no grantees elected.
Closed: The Grants Council considers there are enough applications to cover the objective of the mission request. The finalist will be elected and announced by the end of this round.
A few mission requests have no applications moving to final review. These will all be open for new application submissions and be marked as “Continue”.
Cycle 18 preliminary roundup list:
INTENT 1
Alternative CL/EL client Push Forward
op-besu - an OP Stack execution client based on hyperledger besu 16
Decentralized rollup-as-a-service Continue
Decentralized rollup-as-a-service - WakeUp Labs 7
Open RaaS - Open Sourced Rollup-as-a-Service 10
Fraud Proof CTF 5 Continue
No finalists reopening submissions
Implement a prototype of an OP stack chain with mempool encryption. Push Forward
Generalized mempool encryption interface for OP Stack chains and deployment of a mempool encrypted OP Stack testnet using threshold encryption. 3
OP Stack Research and Implementation Continue
Extend the Availability of EIP- 4844 Blobs by Integrating OP Stack with EthStorage 11
Research and development on multi-section dispute game 9
Research on Alternative OP Stack Zero Knowledge Fraud-Proof using Wasm 5
Velodrome Finance - OP Stack Research 7
OPcity stack 5
Open Source OP Stack Developer Tooling Continue
Amphitheatre Developing Platform 10
Developer Tool - Reclaim Protocol 3
Lightweight Open Source Explorer for the Superchain 1
Optimism sdk in rust 2
PermaDA: Utilizing Arweave as a low-cost permanent data availability solution 4
Veldrome Finance - OS Developer Tooling 6
INTENT 2
Builders grants program mission request 8 Continue
aDeal network 10
Community builder: IRL Age of Empires Governance Platform 5
Dark Forest ARES 11
EasyRetroPGF.xyz 11
Enhancing Decision-Making with Quadratic Voting on Optimism 6
ERC- 7265 Security Tooling 5
ERC- 7412 Tooling + Education 6
Fractal Visions 4
Karma GAP - RetroPGF Project Discovery and impact evaluation 2
LOGX: Aggregated Orderbook Perp DEX 1
Lumio - AltVM on Superchain 2
Mississippi Game Hackathon 11
Namespace 2
On-chain DAO Committee 6
RADAR Launch Future Pools 3
Synthetix IPFS Node 3
xOPTokens: enabling xERC 20 on OP Mainnet Messaging Layer 2
Growth and experiments grants program 13 Continue
[OmniBTC] $ 100 K Growth Grant Request 11
Ajna permissionless lending protocol optimism expansion 6
AlienSwap, leading NFT trading layer 12
Angle Protocol - A USD-yield bearing asset on Optimism to create network effects 5
Contango.xyz 7
Exa App Aplication 10
Gamma Strategies - Growth Experiments 4
Gearbox Protocol 5
Gyroscope growth on Optimism 3
LOGX: Aggregated Orderbook Perp DEX 1
Rage Trade Perp Aggregator 2
Spongly Sports Markets Growth Proposal 1
Synthetix Growth Grant Request 3
Thales Protocol 11
The Showdown 1
Timeswap 8
TLX - Leveraged Tokens Protocol 4
Velodrome Finance - Growth Experiments 10
Layerwide new project support Continue
No finalists reopening submissions
Additional Revenue Sources to Fund RetroPGF Rounds Push Forward
Conjure - Revenue Sources for RetroPGF
EntityDAO
Glo Dollar - upgrade to funding RetroPGF 3
Opti.domains RetroPGF Revenue Sharing
Velodrome Finance - Revenue Sources for RPGF 1
Smart contract auditing services Push Forward
Halborn - Smart Contract Auditing 1
Sherlock - Smart Contract Audits Mission Request 2
ZK Toolkit for ZK Application Developers Continue
zk Toolkit by Reclaim Protocol 1
ZK Toolkit for ZK Application Developers - WakeUp Labs 2
zkPassport tooling - PinSave 2
INTENT 3
Advancing Optimism Anonymous Community and Governance Tooling Continue
No finalists reopening submissions
An Optimistic Future for Art Closed
Audio Galleries 4
Burrito In NFT NYC 5
Edge City 3
Optimistic Future of Art in Seoul 4
Deliver a Best-in-Class Perp Dex Mission Request Closed
Elixir - Supercharging orderbook liquidity 3
Synthetix Mission Request for Perps DEX 3
Velodrome Finance - Perp Dex 11
LOGX: Orderbook Perp DEX 3
Incentivize Projects to Integrate the Farcaster Social Graph Continue
BetCaster: The Governance Game 6
Bytexplorers (ByteLight Experiment) 2
DelegateKit - A complete Farcaster DAO toolkit 7
Farcaster Toolkit 4
HyperArc - Make Social Graphs Great Again 6
Noun PCs - Zynga for Farcaster 3
Superchain Evolution: Engaging Users with Farcaster 9
Making Optimism a primary home of liquid staked eth 6 Continue
Balancer LST and LRT Hub 3
Boost LST Bridging to the OP Stack 3
ether.fi - DeFi integrations to Optimism 2
ETHx on OP 1
Extra Finance - Unleash L 2 LST Efficiency 4
KelpDAO - Bringing restaking to Optimism 1
LSTs with leverage by Compound.Finance
Stake Together L 2 Staking Products on Optimism 3
Velodrome Finance - LST Support 3
Scale ENS to OP Continue
Opti.domains ENS L 2 Development 4
Scale ENS to OP Blockful – Official ENS Service Provider 6
Unruggable - Scale ENS to OP 1
Superchain Accounts Closed
Superchain Accounts - WakeUp Labs 4
Superchain Accounts District Labs 1
Superchain Accounts Superchain Eco 1
INTENT 4
AI Assistant for governance Push Forward
AwesomeQA AI: Governance support assistant 7
GovGuide 6
Building Identity - Driving Adoption of Attestations Closed
Decentralized Vouching via Attestations 6
Easy peasy 2
OPassport - Governance Participants Attestation 6
Delegation Quest SDK Mission Request Continue
No finalists reopening submissions
Governance Mentorship Program Continue
No finalists reopening submissions
Incentivize and increase governance participation Push Forward
Velodrome Finance - Governance Participation 1
Integration of Optimism Gov and RPGF Modules into University Courses Continue
Digital Payment Methods, Blockchain and Crypto Assets Unit of the Master’s Degree in Finance at the University of Buenos Aires 9
Optimism at Boston University 1
Optimism Gov and RPGF into Latin American University Courses 7
Public Goods In Crypto Bootcamp 7
Making Impact Evaluation Accessible Closed
Impact Visualization Platform 10
Optimisms Impact Tree - Empowering OP Governance Through Accessible Impact Evaluation 4
WakeUp Labs - Impact Evaluation Framework and Dashboard 1
Create a grants Supertracker for the Optimism Collective and the Superchain Closed
Grants Super Tracker Application 5
grants supertracker 8
Grants Supertracker through Questbook 3
Optimism Grants Dashboard 5
For more indepth information on mission requests you can take a look at this doc 38 .
For more in-depth information about the application scores you can take a look at this unformated doc 10 (trying to make this better in the future)
Final Review
Over the next week, the Grants Council will complete a review of each of the final grant applications. During the Final Review, each reviewer in a given sub-committee will consider each remaining application and assign it a score. After each application has been scored by each reviewer, the sub-committee will rank the list by average score and choose the number of applications (“n”) that will receive a grant. Applications 1 -n will be finalists eligible to receive grants.
Applicants will be permitted to make edits to their applications based on reviewer feedback; however, all edits should be made by Monday, March 18 th, to ensure reviewers have time to consider any updates. Applicants should make sure to comment on their CharmVerse application confirming that they have made updates in order to notify reviewers as well.
Significant attention will be paid to all factors listed on the rubric. The Council will look to grant size requests and attendant plans, along with milestones, particularly closely. Applicants are reminded that Experiments grants greater than 150 k OP require a majority vote of all twelve council reviewers (rather than a simple majority vote of the relevant sub-committee) to pass, which presents a higher bar than the typical sub-committee process.
During the preliminary assessment of this cycle, a prominent observation was the commendable professionalism and dedication exhibited by the grant reviewers with more than 70 applications each to score during two weeks (ETH Denver included). Despite a significant influx of applications, all submissions were thoroughly evaluated within the designated timeframe. The sub-committees provided substantial feedback and recommendations regarding the assessment criteria and review procedures for the subsequent cycle.
The Grants Council applications whose submissions didn’t meet the initial criteria or advance to the final review stage within the upcoming week will be marked as declined in Charmverse. As customary in previous cycles, attention will soon shift towards the final review phase. However, proposers who believe they can enhance their proposals are encouraged to reapply for the next round.
Application submission will be open tomorrow March 14 th at 7 PM GMT.
