• Optimism is reported to have distributed more than $100 million in the third round of its (Retroactive Public Goods Funding.)

• Some applicants came under serious criticism for submitting a request despite having strong financial backing. 

The third round of Optimism’s Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RetroPGF) is on as more than $100 million gets distributed. Following the announcement, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin disclosed his admiration for the dedication to funding public goods. According to him, it will be very beneficial for the ecosystem to see such initiatives coming from other projects in the future.

Over $100m distributed in @Optimism RetroPGF round 3. Really impressed to see their ongoing commitment to funding public goods, and helping devs and others contribute to Ethereum even if they lack a business model. Hope to see more projects doing QF and RPGF rounds in the future!

For context, the initiative is meant to provide support for developers and contributors to the Ethereum ecosystem. According to reports, the RetroPGF is designed to ensure that individuals and projects that build essential infrastructures, tooling, and content are adequately rewarded. 

So far, the third round of the initiative has recognized 501 projects and individuals for their contributions to the Collective. Across the three rounds, 643 projects have so far received rewards. In a Medium post published by Optimism, the explanation of the initiative by Vitalik Buterin was captured.

The core principle behind the concept of retroactive public goods funding is simple: it’s easier to agree on what is useful than what will be useful. The former is still often a source of disagreement, but it’s a type of disagreement where you could still get reasonably good top-level judgments by using some existing voting mechanism (eg. quadratic voting or even regular voting). The latter is much more challenging. For the profit-making sector, the best that we can do is to build out an ecosystem where people can create startups invest in them, and get rewarded if they end up correct.

Optimism Collective Asked to Ignore Projects With Strong Financial Backing

While the whole idea behind RetroPGF has been lauded by crypto enthusiasts, the distribution has been heavily criticized by a section of the crypto community. According to some reports, projects with solid financial backing stand a chance of receiving the tokens, which should not be the case. They suggested that these funds should be distributed to those with no financial support. 

Earlier, it was reported that Optimism Collective was distributing $53 million in OP tokens as the voting on applicants ended on December 7. It is important to note that public goods in crypto are known as projects, services, and people who provide free services to chains of Ethereum’s MEV relayers. 

Some community members have also suggested that the team focus on those who work for free instead of public goods providers that have funding sources. Interestingly, documentation by the Optimism Collective has established that VC-backed groups are also eligible for funding. This has brought a lot of criticisms on Web3 development platform Alchemy which has raised more than $500 million in multiple funding rounds. 

As of press time, Optimism (OP) was trading at $3.79 after declining by 1.16%. However, the asset has a bullish market sentiment with a weekly gain on investment of 6.8%.