Velodrome X Optimism

The Next Phase of Partnership

Velodrome has recently received 1.25 million OP to support the Optimism ecosystem by fulfilling three key governance “intents”:

• Expanding the Optimistic Vision: A program that rewards individuals and collectives for attracting new projects and protocols to the Optimism ecosystem. In short, earn OP for making connections and bringing new protocols and projects to Optimism.
• Increasing Governance Participation: We are developing new technology to distribute OP that will vest for 1 year, in line with governance requirements, allowing holders to participate in governance during the vesting period. OP govNFTs will be distributed to individuals and protocols making a commitment to the Optimism ecosystem by locking veVELO. In short, receive OP by locking VELO.
• Enabling Ecosystem Growth: We will continue our successful voting incentive match program on Velodrome to continue to attract new protocols and partners to the ecosystem. In short, receive OP boosts as a protocol for incentivizing on Velodrome.

Expanding the Optimistic Vision

An invitation to contribute towards growing the Optimism Ecosystem.

Velodrome has committed to being a key growth driver of the Optimism ecosystem. To date, our efforts have onboarded 58 new protocol partners to Velodrome and Optimism. To accelerate this growth, we want to empower the broader Optimism community to spread the Optimistic Vision to projects that would benefit from deploying on Optimism and contributing to the ecosystem.

Velodrome is committing 100,000 OP to supercharge its onboarding efforts and spread awareness of the Optimistic Vision — a model of funding public goods and regenerative activities, ultimately working towards the creation of a new economic model. Beginning on the 1st of September, Velodrome will be inviting the community to participate in its business development activities, offering 100% of its OP grant allocation to individuals as rewards based on the impact of their contribution.

These rewards will be split into two categories:

1. Referrals: Make connections between projects not on Optimism and the Velodrome team. Receive bonuses for levels of protocol engagement.

2. Proposals: Create a governance proposal that results in a new project’s deployment on Optimism.

Referrals

Baseline 100 OP: Individual makes an intro to relevant stakeholders, and a discovery meeting occurred with the verified core team of the project, leading to a whitelisting.

Bonus 1 — Incentives (3 tiers, capped at 2.5k OP)

• 50 OP — protocol deposits total voting incentives of >$1k USD over 10-week period
• 500 OP — protocol deposits total voting incentives of >$100k USD over 10-week period
• 2.5k OP — protocol deposits total voting incentives of >$1M USD over 10-week period

Bonus 2 — Locks (3 tiers, capped at 2.5k OP)

• 50 OP — 100k veVELO locked during 10-week period
• 500 OP — 500k veVELO locked during 10-week period
• 2.5k OP — 1M veVELO locked during 10-week period

Stakeholders introduced to Velodrome team members will be added to a public facing tracker on Google Sheets, managed by the Velodrome team. Grants can be split between a group of individuals that make the case to a project together.

Velodrome Team to confirm on tracker once meeting has occurred and met minimum criteria. Voting Incentives and locks will be verified on Velodrome Dune Dashboards.

Proposals

Baseline 500 OP: Proposal to meet minimum quality and be approved by Velodrome team before published and pass a vote in governance.

Bonus 1 — Incentives (3 tiers, capped at 2.5k OP)

• 50 OP — protocol deposits total voting incentives of >$1k USD during 10-week period
• 500 OP — protocol deposits total voting incentives of >$100k USD during 10-week period
• 2.5k OP — protocol deposits total voting incentives of >$1M USD during 10-week period

Bonus 2 — Locks (3 tiers, capped at 2.5k OP)

• 50 OP — 100k veVELO locked during 10-week period
• 500 OP — 500k veVELO locked during 10-week period
• 2.5k OP — 1M veVELO locked during 10-week period

OP rewards will be distributed to all contributors at end of Season 4

Increasing Governance Participation

Velodrome is committing 1,000,000 OP to undertake an ambitious project to increase governance participation. Optimism has implemented a one-year vest requirement to distributions of some of its grants. Currently, the Optimism Foundation does not have a means of maintaining this vest while distributing the tokens to individuals, preventing their immediate participation in Governance at a time when we are seeking to grow overall participation. Velodrome wants to solve this through the creation of GovNFTs, which will allow recipients to use their OP voting power to vote and participate in governance while their OP tokens vest.

That means that veVELO lockers, who are making a 4-year commitment to the ecosystem, will receive 1 year vesting OP that is immediately usable for Governance.

The technology is currently being built for this distribution. However we will be tracking new veVELO locks starting this epoch for three monthly “Velodrome races” that will reward the biggest lockers: so locks that are in by Thursday, September 7th 0:00:00 UTC will start to qualify.

Individuals

Individuals that lock veVELO will be eligible for 350k OP govNFTs to be distributed for 12 epochs based on newly created veVELO deposited to their wallet. The 12 weeks will be divided into 3 different 4-epoch-long “races”. 100K in OP GovNFT’s will be distributed to the top 100 veVELO lockers pro-rata based on the amount of Velo locked by the top 100. The maximum amount any racer can earn in any one race is 10k (we will be monitoring for sybil attacks). At the end 50k, will be distributed among the top 50 lockers across the full 12 weeks. We will exclude known protocol wallets from this promotion.

OP Gov NFTs will be distributed after November 22nd at the conclusion of the full event. The reason for including only the top 100 lockers is that we want to create invested governance participants and distributing higher value govNFT’s to fewer participants will encourage invested participants.

Protocols

Protocols that lock veVELO will be eligible for 250k in OP Gov NFTs. We again want to distribute OP to protocols looking to make a commitment to OP governance participation — in part because they are significant stakeholders on OP, and in part because they are an excellent means of spreading the Optimistic Vision through their own stakeholders. We will have slots for 10 protocols that express interest, and agree to lock 100k for 10 weeks (1 million total) or longer if interested. These protocols will be invested in both Optimism and Velodrome’s success. At the conclusion of this time period, we will distribute a 25k Gov NFT to these partners. This program will run until all 10 slots have been taken. Protocols, please reach out if you are interested.

All

We will create a communication channel for GovNFT holders and other interested participants to receive updates on governance cycles, key upcoming events and provide other critical information relevant to being an Optimism governance participant.

Growing the Optimism Ecosystem

In addition to the programs above, Velodrome is committing 150,000 in OP to continue its successful Tour de OP incentive match program in pursuit of continuing to grow the broader Optimism ecosystem. Current details of this program are copied below:

We hope you are excited as we are for these programs and the next phase of growth for Optimism, Velodrome, and the broader Superchain.

🚴‍♀️💨✨