What’s been the impact of Retro Funding so far?
This post is a brief exploration of the before-after impact of Optimism’s Retro Funding (RF) on open source software (OSS) projects. For context, see some of our previous work on the Optimism ecosystem and especially this one from the start of RF3 in November 2023.
We explore:
- Cohort analysis. Most RF3 projects were also in RF2. However, most projects in RF4 are new to the game.
- Trends in developer activity before/after RF3. Builder numbers are up across the board since RF3, even when compared to a baseline cohort of other projects in the crypto ecosystem that have never received RF.
- Onchain activity before/after RF3. Activity is increasing for most onchain projects, especially returning ones. However, RF impact is hard to isolate because L2 activity is rising everywhere.
- Open source incentives. Over 50 projects turned their GitHubs public to apply for RF4. Will building in public become the norm or were they just trying to get into the round?
As always, we've included source code for all our analysis (and even CSV dumps of the underlying data), so you can check our work and draw your own conclusions.