Optimism’s $3B Grant Fund Supports Blockchain Builders

Optimism, a layer-2 scaling network for the Ethereum blockchain, has set aside $3.3 billion worth of its Optimism (OP) tokens to be granted to projects or individuals who have made significant contributions to the blockchain ecosystem. The announcement was made by Optimism Collective, the governance and community arm of the chain, on March 26. The 850 million OP tokens, which represent 20% of the initial token supply, will be distributed across four rounds beginning in May and continuing until 2024.

The chief operating officer of the Optimism Foundation, Bobby Dresser, stated that the allocation of 850 million OP tokens is specifically designated for funding purposes. Out of this amount, 40 million OP tokens, worth approximately $158 million, have already been distributed in three previous rounds. The fourth round will focus on retroactive public goods funding (RPGF), where the community will vote on which projects deserve tokens based on their demonstrated value.

Rounds five through seven will reward contributors involved in infrastructure, governance, and development tooling, with anyone making improvements to Optimism eligible for these funds. The final round is set to conclude in mid-November. Public goods in the cryptocurrency space refer to service projects or individuals who provide their contributions to the blockchain or crypto community for free. The purpose of retro funding is to acknowledge and reward these contributors, as they may not be able to raise capital through traditional means like venture capital, as their contributions are not profit-oriented.

In the previous round of funding held in January, a portion of the 30 million OP tokens allocated were granted to various recipients, including data aggregators DefiLlama and L2Beat, token approval revoking tool Revoke.cash, and blockchain researcher ZachXBT, among many others. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin praised Optimism’s commitment to public goods funding, expressing his support for more projects implementing quadratic funding (QF) and retro funding rounds in the future.