Hop Protocolās Governance Power (Changes)
Q1
Hop began with approximately 200K OP provided to us by the Optimism Foundation as part of an experimental Protocol Delegation Program that has since been discontinued. Following the length of time required by the DAO to launch elections, the ambassadors were unable to reach the required vote threshold to qualify for the next season. I appealed this decision, with more information below.
200K OP > 0 OP
Q2
0 OP
Number of votes done by the ambassador (including any missed vote)
Q1
3 (100% participation during the period of having any voting power)
Q2
N/A
Proposals are written by the ambassador
Q1 ā Q2
After learning that Hop, through no fault of the ambassadors, would be unable to participate in the following season of governance, I immediately appealed to the Foundation admin to explain our situation. I followed up with her in direct messages as well to continue to understand what the best next steps would be.
The path forward was to investigate other means of achieving voting power. One of ways that was explored was using the OP granted to Hop as onboarding rewards. At this time, this OP was understood to be held in a community multisig which, by definition, the Hop DAO should hold complete control over.
If successful, this program would have not only given Hop 5x more voting power, it would have soon been our only voting power. Unfortunately, after the comment period and during the live vote, a member of the community highlighted a new rule that slightly predated the ambassadors disallowing use of OP received through a grant to be used in governance. This situation was quickly rectified in a future proposal I drafted which clarified that the address containing the onboarding funds is not to be considered the community multisig as earmarked funds should be segregated from others.
Even without this, I continued to use the platforms I had to advocate for Hop, particularly through Delegation Week which I played a role in organizing and presenting in.
https://x.com/m0xandrew/status/1660799933467832325?s=20
Progress of business development opportunities
Q1 ā Q2
These problems were communicated to the Hop DAO through community calls and on the Discord, as was the decision to focus more towards information gathering and building connections and relationships. While permitted, I also participated in grant proposal votes. The connections, relationships, and broader participation have proven to be valuable to the Hop Labs team for staying up-to-date with some of the latest research around important technical aspects of bridging like shared sequencing and intra-Superchain bridging.
Following the conversation with an Optimism developer, and a number of conversations and outreach steps with various Optimism buildersā Telegram channels, I was able to find an active community focused on these problems and quickly relayed any relevant developments to the appropriate people at Hop Labs. This included, but was not limited to, research related to the unique properties and capabilities rollups gain upon sharing sequencers, and grants being successfully awarded for this work.
Thinking beyond the interests of tokenholders exclusively and interpreting the ambassador mandate as serving Hop and Optimism users and individuals in the community more broadly, I also raised concerns around the structure of Optimism governance and suggested some solutions to ensure ongoing alignment.
Furthermore, Franco and I attended a number of community calls, sharing our input and advocating for Hop as we familiarized ourselves with the Optimism culture, practices, and operating procedures. This was instrumental for forming direct relationships with members of the community. This has enabled me to create a direct path to many of the leaders in Optimism through mediums like Twitter and Telegram and leverage that as a tool for furthering Hopās goals and values. On top of this, I not only attended, but also frequently presented on nearly all of the Hop community calls during the past 6 months and have made myself available through Discord and the forum during this time as well.
Compensation
Full Compensation: 155239.327296 HOP
$500 * 6 months / .0386 HOP (price as of 11:45 ET Oct 29, 6 months after program launch) = 77619.6636481 // Optimism Compensation
77619.6636481 * 2 (including work done on behalf of Hop DAO at Arbitrum) = 155239.327296