Optimism Collective

The Optimism Collective is a band of companies, communities, and citizens working together to reward public goods and build a sustainable future for Ethereum.

Together we will dispel the myth that public goods cannot be profitable. Public goods (including public goods for Optimism and Ethereum) often go underfunded when incentives aren't properly aligned, forcing many to make trade-offs between earning a profit and building for the common good. The Optimism Collective is bound by a mutually beneficial pact, a vision (opens new window)that can be summed up with the equation Impact = Profit.

Impact = Profit

The Optimism Collective will deploy a new model for rewarding those who create or sustain public goods - retroactive public goods funding (opens new window), to support projects and communities building for the common good.

Retroactive public goods funding is advantageous because it is relatively easy to agree on what is useful, and see who built it. It is a lot harder to identify in advance what will be useful, and which team will do the best job of building it. The possibility of an eventual exit payment can also encourage investors to fund initial public good development efforts until the usefulness is obvious, in the same way that the possibility of an eventual IPO or buy out encourages investors to fund startups today.

How is this going to be governed?

The Optimism Collective takes an experimental and agile approach to governance relentlessly iterating towards a system which stands the test of time. Initially, the Collective's model of digital democratic governance will consist of two houses: the Token House and the Citizens' House.