S5. Ep. 5 - Wrap Up Episode

Transcript

welcome to the green pill. network podcast you are listening to season five this summer of retro rounds which is hosted by SEL and La now Ma this season we'll explore retroactive funding in web 3 and each episode features a different ecosystem unpacking their experience in implementing the retr funding mechanism we'll explore how they're tailoring retroactive funding to their unique ecosystem along with the challenges they've faced in ways of overcoming that this season is co-hosted by SEL and laau and the next voices you'll hear on this episode are from [Music] hi everyone welcome to the last episode of Summer of retro rounds it's a wrap up we finally made it how are you feeling L

we towards the end of the season I'm really happy and I think this season has been really insightful and really interesting I'm really happy as well to for more people to be able to look and peek into the uh what's happening on the back end on the background of several of these rounds I know that for you and for me this is a this has been a our everyday thing uh collaborating with this incredible teams understanding why they are running their rounds in the way in which they are and this is a black box for several people basically everyone uh so I'm really excited that we get to open this black box for people

through through these conversations and that now people are enabled with this information to think about how they want to design their own rounds what are some of the learnings that they should consider and just making it easier for others that want to run the Run rounds they want to understand better how to participate or collaborate contribute to these efforts that are running in the different ecosystems and I because this is what's going to enable us to continue developing the mechanism will lead us to scale the mechanism and just try out and experiment with different approaches absolutely and I'm excited for everyone

to you know dive into this episode you know in this episode people can expect to know about how the whole thing started like where what is the journey how we met right and how we sort of went through the whole copot and what is next so yes let's dive in maybe we start with where did ezr pgf come from when did it come and what happened like what is how it all started as a guid in line for this episode I think it's important for others to learn as well those that may not be familiar how the EC for pgf program started like I think for some people it might be interesting to suddenly learn that oh there were

actually SE all of these different ecosystems running their their rounds like where did this come from how did it start it and Cel I would love for you to share with us how did the journey for easy Reacher pgf started yeah absolutely so EAS rgf as a tool was launched precisely on 12th January 2024 just this year and uh you know it was launched by Kevin aukee and built by Carl who our you know Dev and uh you know it was definitely the idea was how do we um democratize this mechanism right this has been bed by optimism and we are essentially standing

on the you know as Kevin says standing on the shoulder of the giant here yeah so that is why that was the intent of launching it that how do we enable more and more ecosystems to leverage this mechanism and run a retroactive round in their own ecosystem right so we launched it and then within a week we launched a training program program right so this is a beautiful Cadence that I'm seeing with mechanisms that gcoin is launching that we are following that we launch a mechanism followed by a training program and Then followed by a Cort because training program why is it important it is important because yes we understand retroactive mechanism but there are so many nuances right and how do you design around how what goes behind you know actually planning to run around and we

wanted to make sure we invite experts from optimism such as yourself love to you you know take a few sessions you know help our audience better understand that what this is what mechanism is this how does this work right so 17th January again to be precise I am also mentioning dates because I want to communicate the importance of moving fast right like when we launched it within a week we launched the training program finalized curriculum you know list short listed the instructors rolled out the program and to our surprise there were almost around 80 people people registered for the training program this just you know motivated us even more because we sort of saw the interest that this was

gathering right and um I also do want to take like a moment to just uh you know share that how we met because you know it's been a long journey and just if people don't know that you know we sort of posted on the optimism Forum as well that you know we're launching the program and we we are inviting experts and whoever you think should be you know should would be great ad or would be a good instructor for this please reach out and laamu dm'd me on Twitter and was like hey I saw this you know uh and I have a few ideas and we hopped on a call and then you know rest is history so la just like she you know I think really grateful to you because you also not just you were not just an instructor for

module but you actually helped me shape the training program and then you know actually we were able to launch the goo so that happened we did the training program almost um not getting into too many details we almost had six to seven sessions we covered pretty much from the you know different phases of the round we'll talk more about the design yeah no I was really excited when I read that uh gitcoin was enabling and had already open source the platform for others to run reer rounds um having been super close to rer optimism's reach round three and one seeing like so being really close to what some of the common pitfalls were in that round um as we saw

batch holders participate uh having rants of the workshops that we used to support batch holders in terms of assessing impact and measuring impact when they were making a decision I knew that it was really important to support people and ecosystems as they were designing and thinking through the processes for their own rounds so I was just really excited one to see someone a whole team actually being interested in supporting providing support for those that were interested in how to run it uh how this knowledge was being shared so that it was all size like communities of all sizes that were interested in

participating and I think I was most surprised as you shared with how excited people were to learn about the mechanism and think about this mechanism for their own communities like I remember in the workshops that I gave for the cohort there were so many people participating actively participating because like uh I remember we had one session which was like Theory and then the next session was like hands on uh we jumped on a fig gy and people were like putting their posted notes and there were I remember like over 30 40 people and I had this like large um fig jam with so many different

Post-it notes with the ideas of how people were thinking how can I use this for my community what are the incentives I'm trying to drive so it was so fascinating to see that people were not only thinking about it as oh this is how I give out free money or like oh this is how I can like get more people to engag but they really went into the depth of what are the incentives that I'm trying to promote and think really thoroughly about what is relevant what is important in my community who are my audiences like who are my community members who could be badge holders in our rounds uh and just see the level of commitment that people had when going through the

cohort and taking really seriously the design phase I think it's going to be one of the things that I will never stop emphasizing that for retro rounds the design phase is the most important one because it will determine how successful your round can potentially be and it will also determine what how your rounds and this experiment within your own ecosystem can continue to evolve so I was really surprised and will reiterate what you just shared about how important it is to one move really fast ensure that people are able to participate they know what

the next step is and I think most important as well is that they feel supported in their Learning Journey absolutely and um you know I do want to say that those sessions are recorded and they are on git coin's YouTube channel so if you think that oh you missed it you didn't know there was a training program you can still go check that out and you know learn from it uh and one of the points that you mentioned L I think is super important that specifically and probably this we will see more with more mechanisms but you know round design is such an important part and it differs right like it's different from how we think of running a gr program when we are using qf as a mechanism right because with retro the

elements like you know it's retro as the name says right we have to think about evaluation you know what is the impact evaluation framework you're using what are the metrics what are the things we want to look at what do we want to Value more right right so there are so many of these elements that come into picture and I want to make sure like I do want to say if you're an ecosystem or Community around operator ecosystem lead thinking of running around please make sure you contact us like you talk to us and we'll work with you because I've seen this mistake this thing people make this mistake of just thinking of it like oh we just need an eligibility criteria and have questions and just run with it no that's not how you know it is supposed to be if you want it to be

really effective right it's important you design it you know nicely and now we have a bunch of learnings to learn from as well so you know getting on now we we were done with the training program and also want to give a shout out to other instructors um you know like magenta from Dow drops we had Jonas from optimism so it was overall like a great group of people who made it happen right and then we launched the cohort where we invited ecosystems to you know run around and and I just remember we there was a you know we we launched the sign up and we had around 15 to 20 ecosystems sign up to run around and we were like oh my God like that is crazy like there

are so many people already thinking about you know using this mechanism which just again gives us a you know sort of data point that yes this is needed right and because obviously it was the first time we wanted to make sure we're doing it right so we sort of narrowed it down to four to five ecosystems right which you have heard from in this season right which is again just to you know remind everyone was spile coin cell Lippy toy and pocket who ran the rounds but I want to also get into how did we start working with them like we just talked about the complexity or how important it is to design the round so which means that you know

getting deeper into ecosystem so do you want to talk a little bit about how did we get into this and then I can share more on the things that we sort of went through during that but what was this cohort like we decided to go through a cohort base since one of the things that we as well wanted to experiment with and and dive into was how many learnings could ecosystems share among one another if running in a cohort experimenting is hard especially if this if you're pionering this this type of experiment so optimism had already built such a good groundwork for everyone to build on

top of but it was still going to be the first time that other ecosystems were leveraging easy Reacher pgf as a platform and one of the first things that we thought was well if we have a cohort there are so many things that we can drive together with the ecosystems both in terms of marketing and attention for the different rounds that were happening particularly in terms of learnings projects would be able to learn from one another as they were going through the different phases of their own rounds and explore as well like it would give us a good ground for exploration in terms of what were the particular needs for these different

ecosystems for the goals that they each had so this is one of the reasons why for us it was incredibly important to have this as a running cohort we would our expectation or our hypothesis was that ecosystems would be able to share the learnings as they were happening they would also be able to share the barriers or challenges that they were facing and since they might not be the only ones that were facing them they could also like within the same Hort people could iterate and improve like was already one like a pitfall for one of the ecosystems could be something that someone else could already build on

top of and they wouldn't have to go through the same mistake but S I know you mentioned already it's like there were this four ecosystems that we ran around with and that we collaborated and worked with how did it come to be that it was these ecosystems how did that process that's a great question and um you know so to be honest like there was not like a lot of uh you know thinking behind behind this but for us it was more like uh you know what is the timeline of the Cort right so we defined the timeline because we wanted to make sure we have the resources like we have the right uh people available during that time right so we defined that timeline which was like we will launch

on 8th April and then you know it will take this much time for us to sort of design it this is the time period for voting everything and we wanted to sort of wrap it up before itcc like around you know July June end and and that was the first thing and we wanted to see which all ecosystems have that like similar timeline if not exactly they're looking you know around that and second was also the size of the the round and you know Community right like how big is the round like you know because it really again like I said uh it needs focused work right so we wanted to make sure like that's how we sort of filtered the ecosystems right so it was timeline and it was the size of the round and the

community because we were sure that after these you know rounds are run we'll have learnings and also the tool right it was not you know it was so early it was at a state where it had like it was you know was supposed to be fed it was supposed to be like there was so much work that had to go into it it was not a s version which we have now today eventually probably anybody can use and you know just spin up around like they can on Grand stack right so that is how you know we sort of um decided how which ecosystems yeah yeah and I think this is particularly one of the things that uh became really relevant as we started working with the ecosystems that we were all in the same understanding that the product was an

MVP it had just been the platform itself had just been launched so it was incredibly important and valuable that the ecosystems were willing to work with us in improving the platform and making sure that it was meeting the their needs uh there were I think as you all heard in the in some of the different episodes there were still several buxs this is how it goes when you're launching an MVP when you're figuring out this is how it goes when you are working with an MVP when you're experimenting and you're learning how to use these new platforms when you understand what the different audiences look like I think particularly

one of the very good learnings was that not every single ecosystem needed the same things for their own rounds so for us as well it was such an incredible help that the ecosystems were so open to experiment and it was also one of the things that I think was really top of mind as well uh engaging with who would be part of this cohort I think a lot of the other some of the PE of the communities applying uh were expecting an experience more similar to what Grand stack currently looks like which is a quite polished experience of oh I just click here click there it's super neat there's there isn't a lot of resources that need

to go into providing feedback and making changes into the platform which wasn't the case for this yeah absolutely and you know now just getting into that now we have the cohort launched we have the EOS systems right like what happened next how did we manage to you know go design the round with these ecosystems right so you know again these are like small details I think but they really help in experience you know in the whole experience you know I think one of the good things that we did was initially you know we fixed a few things where we had a fixed Cadence of meeting these ecosystems which again you know when we run qf rounds I've seen that we don't

have to necessarily meet every week like but in this cohort I realized one of the things that was super helpful and we did WR was we made sure that you know we have the right Channels with the ecosystem right and the Cadence of meeting was right and early on I remember that you know the first ecosystem was file coin because I think rest of the ecosystems was sort of like you know like I said initially one week two weeks you know Gap was there so with filecoin I think a good thing was that we were able to put together like a few templates as well like we sort of need knew that okay this is how we want to start thinking about it right like simple things right where do we want to

run the around like you know how many projects uh do we expect what are the different areas or categories in which we want projects to apply right but before getting into too much detail I would like to ask you because you are also like you're an expert and how and what do you suggest also what did these ecosystems sort of think about as first few questions when they were sort of thinking about their around and uh you know maybe we can talk about it in a generalized way also where people can use this as a template for themselves if they are thinking of running it around I remember that the first conversation that we had I think with every single ecosystem was let's start by discussing the design of your round what is the

goal that you're trying to to achieve who are the audiences that you would expect to participate like who would you like to see applying to your round what type of projects if individuals what type of individuals what is the type of impact that you would like to reward so I think this is one of the most important things that ecosystems communities that are thinking of running around should consider as their starting point the starting point shouldn't always be the amount of money who the badge holders are but thinking in a really Broadway what is the design of the round

what are the different elements that will be part of this of the round that they are running um starting by what is the goal for this particular round why am I running the round and as you mentioned this is the first conversation I remember when we started working together and this was like okay we're we're going to be working with the file coin team or like we're going to be working with this team and like let's keep Jump Right In into the timelines and let's jump right into this other parts and I was like wait but what's the design what are why are they choosing to run around like do we understand this because this is this is a key element that is going to enable us to craft a

really good round for and support the ecosystems in running a really good round and will also enable them to determine if they had a successful round or not like I think this is one of the most important reasons why you want to start the design of your round by identifying why am I running this program what are the outcomes that I would like to see because otherwise it becomes really hard to evaluate did I achieve my goal if you don't know what the goal is then you can't tell if the way in which you ran your round was actually conducive to achieving this goal so so for anyone looking to run

their own Reacher round I would definitely suggest start by asking yourself what is the goal that you're trying to achieve with this round there isn't a right answer each ecosystem each program each Community will have different reasons for running around and we saw some examples during this season for example we saw that the goal for C was to understand who who were the builders that had been around this cell ecosystem the longest how can you reward them for participating um how do you incentivize that they stay within the ecosystem particularly as the as cell is transitioning into becoming a layer two

for filecoin it was more General it was let's identify who have been the main contributors in these different categories and how do we Kickstart this mechanism in which people are incentivized to continue contributing so a lot more similar to optimism then for for pocket we saw that this was actually an improvement on a previous rer mechanism that they already had and for example in the rer round that if you're in Mexico held the thing that was valuable for us is how do we continue to incentivize particular behaviors that we believe are relevant to our communal development so there isn't one right answer but it's fundamental that project

that ecosystems think about what is the goal for the round why are we running it and once you answer that question a lot of the design will become a lot easier if you know what your goal is then it's a lot easier to identify who are the players in your round who should be badge holders who are the projects and what type of projects you want to be rewarding and therefore what should be the type of selection criteria that you want to have um for which projects can apply once you know what is the goal and what is it

that I'm trying to have more in my ecosystem you'll be able to choose better metrics by which you want to evaluate the projects that are applying because you'll be able to tell these are the things that I want to see more of in my ecosystems these are the pointers that should be increasing so it will make the design and the scoping of the round a lot easier once you define what the goal is I love that do you want to share a little bit about I don't want to get into like too much of this detail because you know we have a training program and please anybody can talk to us you if they want to but you know a little bit on impact evaluation framework like maybe something which is

like bare minimum that they need to keep in mind when they sort of thinking about this I think several people might be familiar with this the phrase that vitalic used to define why why we run ritual rounds instead of proactive Grant uh grants programs and that being it's a lot easier to tell if something was useful after the thing has been built and used by others than trying to predict the future and assess if something might be useful and how useful it will be and this is the way in which we in which it's useful to think about how to set up impact evaluation when

designing a Reacher round you want to clearly understand what are the goals that you're trying to achieve and therefore you and once you know what the goal is then you can identify what is the impact that you would expect projects to have so that they are getting your community or your ecosystem closer to that goal once you know what that goal looks like and what is the type of outcomes that you want to see in your ecosystem you can start defining what are the metrics that are needed for you to correctly for you or voters batch holders to be able to assess if projects

that are applying to the realm have actually been contributing to this path that is necessary for your ecosystem to go through to get to that goal and for you to be able to generate these incentives of well we've identified that by completing this Milestones or completing this type of work we are getting closer and closer to our end goal I want to see more of this type of Engagement I want to see more of this type of collaboration that is actually getting us closer to our and so when thinking about impact it's necessary for us to have this idea of where are we going like what is our theory of change what do we what

hypothesis and expectations do we have of how this path would look like and how this and not just expectations but how has this actually materialized and then ensure that this is what we're rewarding this is what we Define as impact so I think here it's also very important to mention that impact will look very different for different ecosystems because each ecosystem is trying to achieve different things so there may be areas metrics in which there is an overlap but there will also be metrics that are only serving one particular goal that one ecosystem has and the rest of the ecosystems don't have them so this is a good way in which to think

about how do you develop a framework for example when I developed the impact evaluation framework for optimism from round three the guideline that I was following and the goal sort of like theory of change that was behind it was the four intents that the collective had at the time these were the four most relevant things that we as a collective were aiming towards in these different areas so this was what we were trying to achieve and so what are the metrics that we could use to measure if we're getting closer to those goals similarly for other ecosystems this is a good way to make it easier for badge holders to determine okay what do

impact look like what is it that we're trying to reward so that we can see more of in the future in upcoming rounds and the ecosystem can continue to thrive so definitely look at what is it that you're trying to achieve where are you trying to go and then based on that what are the metrics that you can use to determine if the project that are part of your ecosystem the contributors that are pitching in into your ecosystem are actually helping you get closer to that goal love that thank you so much for sharing love yeah I don't think a lot of people know that you were the one who developed it so I'm glad that you know that's out there and we'll also put resources you know anybody who wants to

look at the framework you know in the show notes for to use that and I think to some to a lot of extent ecosystems were able to sort of adapt to it right and they were able to sort of you know design the round bingly I know that I there is a shift that I'm seeing where you know people are moving towards a more metric driven approach where they have the framework and at the same time you know sort of like you said defining the you know the outcome they're looking for and accordingly looking at the metrics which sort of serve that right so a little bit on anything on that any shift that you've seen or any pattern you've seen in terms of impact evalu you know when by running rounds with

different ecosystems and you know what is it trending towards one of the really valuable lessons that we had already suspected before launching round three for optimism was that standardization of evaluation was going to be one of the main challenges that badge holders or would face like I remember when I was working on um metrix Garden which is which initially started as this database of metrics I think we have or I have over 50 metrics listed there for different goals within the optimism Collective and like at the time it was over 10 metrics for each one of the

categories that were running in Richard pgf 3 uh we identified that the way in which the round was initially designed was very open-ended which meant that anyone could throw one metric here one metric there and we had very little standardization which was one of the things that we wanted to get closer to and this move into a more metrics based approach is the next iteration of that so once we've already laid out the ground of okay this is how impact can be measured in the different areas you can set start setting some standardized metrics that every project will be

evaluated against this has both its benefits it has some shortcomings as well in terms of there's a lot of different data that might not be already available right it's like some of it is and this is what we've seen most in the rounds that are being planned now and also some of the things that uh we saw a lot of projects uh leverage in this past cohort in which there are some metrics that a higher value or less or lower value several projects within one category can have and based on that again sort of like linking it to once you know what is it

that you're trying to incentivize you can determine what these metrics are and so for example if what you're trying to incentivize is the usage of block space then you can look at how much was generated in gas fees how if you what you're trying to incentivize is user engagement in your chain or in your ecosystem then you can look at okay how many monthly active users did this protocol have how many daily active users how many unique wallets have interacted with it so there it's very important for projects to for ecosystems to sit down and think through what are the type of behaviors that I want to reward both in like a good way and a bad

way because once you like once we start working with this metric based approach you'll also see how people are going to try and gain this system so I fully believe that moving into a metrics based approach is a really good point especially when you're coupling it with other types of information that are not only preed data but that give you more insight into the context of how impact is being developed and how people are leveraging different tools and like the different things that are part in of your ecosystem and that are generating value to the users and members of your ecosystem like you can also determine

what are metrics that I would that are still even if people try to gain them you can still outweigh the benefit that having this metric be used will generate within your ecosystem so I think as wrapping up this idea is we're seeing seeing a lot of ecosystems moving towards a metric based approach and really nicely as well we're seeing several of these ecosystems coupling this metric based approach with some additional insights into how people are using these Technologies not only how much but how the experience is since

this is one of the things that they also want to reward yeah and I love how you mentioned like you know its metrics plus you know what all other information we can have sort of you know together Define the impact of that project or you know was able to achieve right and um yeah I'm uh you know curious and excited at the same time to see how this sort of uh is used more and more right because this has been such a hot topic for so long that you know how do you measure that you know if the impact or the outcome that we aim for or we funded this project for has been achieved or not right so this you know uh brings me to the tool easr pgf right like the

right now what it has that is you know what it has to offer right now how do we see it getting evolved you know and one of the things I really like we also talked about it during our ECC dog which was like you know Choose Your Own Adventure with EAS rgf right it was like there's a SAS version which is you know which you you can use do a little bit of customization which is like you know it's a not go too wild with it but at the same time you know if you have limited resources like limited Dev resources and you just like it's a small team and you just want to run with it and then you have this open- Source version where you have ample resources you can folk it you know do whatever you

want to include you know just completely change it right and um deploy it so you know there are different versions of it how do you see this uh you know evolving what are your thoughts on um you know the tool and what are the most common things that you think should immediately happen that or you know be provided by the tool this is a great example of why having these tools be open source is so necessary and relevant in the ecosystem because it really enables ecosystems to have control of how they want to shape their Reacher round experience right as you mentioned right now Kon provides

this as this SAS option for the tool which very similar to what the experien is with grand stack people are just able to deploy a richual round with a couple of clicks so making it super simple for others to run their own rounds you can make it as complex and and tailor to your own needs as you want because this code is open- source so anyone is able to Fork it as well shift it to what their needs are modify the front end to give voters a different experience similar to what we saw with pocket ecosystem so it really this tailoring of

the tool really enables ecosystems to make the best use of the mechanism according to what is needed within their own communities in terms of what's going to happen next with the tool I'm really excited to see how uh we continue to work on enabling more interoperability and connecting other mechanisms to this tool I think like easy Reacher pgf is a really good platform in which projects are able to apply it makes it really easy for operators to administrate the round determine which are the projects that

are applying how do you surface them for people to be able to vote on them how do you tally the votes and it's a really good tool as well to complement with other things that are needed for around to be successful right there's several different components that go into a rual round it's not only okay there is there is a platform for for people to submit applications there is this other part as well of how do we gather the information that is needed for people to inform their votes so I'm really looking forward to how this new mechanisms to collect information are going to be

integrated into the tool like we've already started seeing some um collaborations with the open source Observer team with some other data providers and there are some experiments as well that are being launched in terms of new mechanisms that serve to aggregate data and how that is going to be displayed into the tool and then once we continue looking forward is also how new distribution methods are going to be enabled through the round like right now we've seen different ways in which maybe it's releasing the funds at at one go but there's also some additional

Integrations that are being developed to use other type of dispersements so there's all of these different things that are being developed for the tool to continue to evolve to serve the needs of the ecosystems and there's also this improvements that we're seeing in terms of transparency of the information that badge holders have to make a decision and overall just in terms of improving the user experience I think as we mentioned it's like the first time that we launched it it was an MVP there were so many different things that we didn't know that could go wrong or that weren't as uh as useful for round operators and through the process of having this first

cohort we learned of them and we've been able to modify them on the price product so those are some of the things that I'm really excited about Cel from your perspective having worked with all of this different ecosystems what are some of the things that you are excited about this about how the tool continues to develop yeah you know when I think of the Tool uh you know I imagine probably this is with any mechanism um you know I I see there are a lot of like these side apps right for example like we have Checker right so Checker is like an AI B based review tool right like you can review applications using that and then like you said there are different ways

on how you can distribute funds right we have examples like trips right so I hope and I want to see I would love to see and this is what really excites me that what would happen if all of these sort of come together right and how can you know this be complimentary or sort of like be part of the platform right where anybody can choose choose that oh I want to use this dispersement method select this and this is what I want to use to review right like because there are so many of these um sort of Parts which feel like absolutely necessary irrespective of the mechanism right so I think any platform which will have this

encompassed in it right would be a really powerful platform in my opinion right because there will be a lot of options for a round operator for any system running around right so that that is something I think is a possibility and I know like we've been discussing about it and really looking forward to see what are some of the those those things that sort of get implemented and you sort of uh increase the capability of the platform overall particularly as you mentioned each ecosystem has different needs when it comes to and into who their audiences are and how they are used to collaborating and communicating with one another like I remember with the fileo team something that was really surprising it's like oh

uh unlike some of the other communities or projects in which most of the communication happens in a governance Forum it was like GitHub is where most of the conversations are happening so it's also identifying oh what are some of the like Integrations that could be useful for a particular audience for a particular ecosystem and validating if these are also useful for others and and therefore it would be great to have them and I think particularly as well for for disbursement methods this is one of the things that depending on what type of tokens are being used what's the strategy that the team is following to materialize their incentives with the community this will look very different

so I think being able to do your own pick and choose approach is going to enable others to start leveraging this mechanism I think we've been talking to some other people is one of the things that can prevent them from using the mechanism is perhaps it doesn't feel right for them it's not fulfilling what they are thinking of maybe it's even like some of the pieces of it are not compatible with how they run some of their grants programs or the type of team that they have so by seeing more of this composability and

different pieces being developed that can be plugged into easy retop pgf we'll see more adoption of the mechanism we'll see more experimentation around it and then we'll have more learnings that people can leverage to build better mechanisms that serve their ecosystems and communities better exactly and uh you know and like I also initially mentioned that you know we would love to speak to you if you're even considering or if you don't know which mechanism right like you have funds you want to do a GRS program that we should definitely talk because you know I have also seen like it's kind of a discovery process as well right for the ecosystems that okay this is where we are this is the stage

we are at right and this is what we want more of so we can figure out a way talk and see that what would be the best suited mechanism it can be retro it can be you know a combination I've seen like combinations to be recently being used in some ecosystem systems which are really powerful like you do direct grants you give some upfront funding and then you sort of like you know give a window for projects to sort of create that impact or you know do things that they claimed they will do you know while raising funds through direct grants and then you sort of run a retro right so there are ways in you know which we will definitely would love to advise you and work with you and uh you know this you know as we are approaching towards the

last segment of the of this episode uh I one of the things that I keep thinking about and I would also love to know what you think about this is that how do we scale a mechanism probably we somewhere talked about it you know by definitely I think the tool that you that is available that is at your disposal like what all capabilities it has right how easy it is for you to try it out is I think a huge part right and how easy it is to sort of launch it right but when we think think of a mechanism like what how do we scale it because and also like this question is I think is so important because as getcoin now thinking of a multi mechanism world

right um you know as we think about or build new mechanisms I I often think like you know how this would be is this something that can be scaled and that is obviously doesn't mean like everyone uses it because like we talked about ecosystems also have unique needs they need unique mechanisms probably but at the same time how do we have that uniqueness and you know like that scalability with the mechanisms I think this size and really well with what we were talking about before in terms of uh enabling people to and enabling mechanisms to pick and choose what's useful for them so I think in order for for the mechanism to scale there's a couple of components that we need to see

more of the first one is making the whole experience of Designing operating launching around executing around by reducing the friction that operators face to run their own retro rounds uh we'll see more people being interested willing and capable of running more rounds and therefore using this mechanism I think only by using the mechanism is that we will also be able to complete the second thing that I need think is necessary which is generating more learnings around what works what doesn't work optimism has done a really good job in laying the

ground for people to understand what were the hypothesis that they had when they kickstarted each one of the rounds that those hypothesis turn into a reality that those hypothesis played out to be like this didn't go the way in which we expected and we identify that this generated a lot of friction uh We've also seen the file coin the field Reacher pgf team produced their own report as well on what are the learnings that they had on their last round so I think the second point of what's really needed is for ecosystems to share what their learnings are we need to experiment it's only through

experimentation that we're going to be able to learn and identify what's working and what we should stop doing it there's this framework that I really like to think about which is the start stop continue you so I think this is something that we need to keep in mind when we're designing and running rual rounds is let's make sure that we keep a good note of what did we do why did we do the thing and then we'll be able to tell okay should we continue doing this thing should we stop doing this thing should we start doing new things and then the third thing that is necessary for the the mechanism to continue to scale is have having these add-ons that

can improve the way in which the mechanism is used whether it is an increase in dispersement methods that keep Builders keep participants of the Rounds Around for longer whether it is New Impact evaluation tools that enable the evaluation of the projects to scale and reduce the workload for badge holders or voters new add-ons in terms of the voting itself I know there's other work like per wise being explored by different teams to reduce the

cognitive load for voters I think the fourth thing that I believe is really important for the mechanism to scale is for people to be aware of how richer pgf goes hand inand with other Grant mechanisms like I strongly believe that r pgf on its own is not viable for every single ecosystem especially if you want to see a large diversity of of participants entering your ecosystem like it's always best to couple rer rounds with another mechanism that

delivers some of the funds UPF front so that people are able to Kickstart their development process and maybe you reward them with the rest or the larger portion of the fundings with a Reacher around but ensuring that people are able to get started with their work uh enables you to have more contributions in your ecosystem so I think this goes hand inhand really well with we starting to see a multi mechanism web3 space and this is also necessary for Reacher pgf to continue to scale so like these are the four points that I've been thinking

about that could really help us scale this mechanism I know you're closer and like to other communities like you've been working as well with several like local communities setting up their own funding rounds what are some of the things that you've identified that have been useful to scale other mechanisms and that could be particularly insightful or useful for rual rounds to continue to scale yeah um you know probably I like I just already said that I feel like combinations are really powerful right like a standalone mechanism I don't think it can fully serve the purpose always like maybe good to have like you run one or two rounds but long term I think you need to look

at the Spectrum of the mechanisms and then sort of see what that coupling would look like right it can be different for different ecosystems right like where I think there is very focused sort of program or you know you know exactly okay I want to fund like five projects within this category and they should doing this specific thing I think direct grants is the best option for them whereas where it is a bit more open-ended where you just want to see like you know oh this is the category I want to see grow in my ecosystem and then you know and I don't want to be the one deciding like these are the funds let's just see you know if people are doing something in it I think qf is the best way to go for that right and then and similarly for other mechanisms also

like qf interact can be a couple I do I'm interested in seeing like what is the most common mechanism which happens in this coupling probably direct grants but that would be interesting to see and the other thing that you know you also said is that I also feel like there are so many decision points in when you design around right like and probably and I've seen that it's not always um you know super straightforward or easy to actually decide upon those things it can be things like you know what of the metrics how do we all agree upon that especially ecosystems which are a way a bit more decentralized which like to sort of like talk to the Community First before like sort of you know deciding on things I think there can be mechanisms or there can be tools which sort of

enable that decision making right I know like we are also sort of thinking of experiments you know with ecosystems with filecoin you know things on that coming soon uh you don't want to reveal too much so that people are you know they are curious so so that is something I am also seeing that you know maybe decision making tools along with capital allocation mechanisms like it has you know there is a lot of permutation combination of these things so uh you know that's how I think we'll be moving towards a more like you know in a space which is uh which feels more viable and more sustainable and longterm as opposed to just like a oneof gr round or one off you know State particularly as we're looking into the long-term development

of Reacher rounds and reach your pgf for those rounds that are specifically targeting public goods we see that there's this need for more collaboration between the different operators running these rounds I know that for the cohort that ran like one of our like biggest internal lessons Learned was on the way in which working with a cohort played out like I know that the initial hypothesis that we had was that by running rounds with a cohort like teams would be able to learn from one another and avoid making mistakes and interestingly one of the things that

happened was this hypothesis did materialize we did we were able to spare um some of the ecosystem from the mistakes or the even just like bugs that we saw that other ecosystems had faced when they were running different phases of their rounds um but interestingly it wasn't because or it wasn't through direct communication between the ecosystem that this came to be but it was more uh due to the fact that we were working closely with the different ecosystems so I think one of the really interesting things as well that we definitely want to continue exploring

and bring on board more of the community to continue opening this black box of how rual rounds are designed and operated is how can this collaboration happen in public how can these learnings be shared in public so that everyone is able to benefit from others running their own experiments and continue to add into this base work that or groundw that optimism has developed by sharing their learnings filecoin has already added into that by sharing their learnings as well um of their first round I know C has also developed a report on what were

some of the learnings and some of and the outcomes of their own reach around and seeing more of this is going to enable a more sustainable and long-term future of reach rounds so Cel I know that this is an idea that we've been like thinking of and putting out there what does the MVP for this looks like yeah this is you know like you said has come up so often so frequently we were like why is no one no one doing anything about it like optimism started this but I know like we've had events where you know walk has hosted Grand's up night in an attempt to really bring people together

and talk about the you know learnings mistakes they have had but you wanted to make sure like we have a virtual space like you said like an MVP and see how this goes so we'll start a dedicated conversation a you know dedicated space and a thread on gitcoin Forum pretty simple straightforward right we'll start a thread and we'll talk about the Retro rounds designs right like what are the different things that goes into it and most importantly we'll discuss on the Forum itself how this is evolving in optimism how this is evolving now in other ecosystems who are running these rounds right so look out for the thread it will be on the show notes I invite

you to you know write on it like share your thoughts ask questions there from different ecosystems right like because everybody you know it's the Retro mechanism but it works very differently in every ecosystem right so ask questions and learn from the answers and you know sort of learnings right so look out for that we are yes we are launching this and this is the next thing perfect I'm I'm really looking forward to having this conversations more out in the public I know that as we'd been operating and supporting The Operators for these different rounds it was one of the things that we had in the back of our heads is sort of like thinking how do we get this information like all of this bird side view that we have of the

different rounds how do we make them public how do we make it easier for others to leverage these learnings so really excited to see this happening in in a public forum and as you've said this is the MVP we'll see where this goes how this scales on its own as well to enable more people to run their own reach rounds this is a wrap up thanks everyone for listening to the whole season it was incredibly fun and interesting to be able to host the Seas I fascinated and really excited to see how RR rounds continue to evolve in the different ecosystems how do we improve how the funding is allocated and how do

we continue to support ecosystems to reach the goals that they are interested in aiming for uh within their own communities how do they support those the builders the users the contributors that make their ecosystems thrive so I hope you enjoyed these conversations that we had as much as I did and Cel what are some of the things that you would like to people to take away from this whole season yeah I would actually you know I think um there's so much that we have shared I would like to actually see people talk about what have been their takeaways right uh because I really the intent of the season was to

like share what goes behind the scenes you know there is so much like thinking strategizing exec tion everything right and I hope this has been really helpful for people and I just want everyone to start thinking about doing a retro round in their ecosystem and if you are already please talk to us and yes hopefully we'll do one more season and with more learnings thank you [Music]