Delegate Guide - RAF1

RAF1: Delegate Guidelines

As a delegate, your participation in the RAF1 round is pivotal. By contributing your expertise, you will help direct public goods funding to initiatives that fortify Ethereum’s consensus layer. This manual will guide you through your responsibilities, timelines, and the voting process.

Thank you for joining us in this exciting journey! :tada:

:bulb:TLDR;

  • Voting Period: Feb 10 - Feb 16 23:59 UTC
  • Objective: Allocate 1M OBOL tokens to public goods strengthening and promoting Obol’s Decentralized Operator Ecosystem.
  • Time Commitment: This requires ~2-3 hours within a one week period.
  • Activities: 2x community calls, discussion in Telegram, and voting in the RAF app.
  • Top100 delegates are selected to vote this time. Snapshot to define the top100 Delegates was taken at the time the RAF1 application process started

What is the RAF?

The Obol Retroactive Funding (RAF) mechanism is a community-led funding model designed to reward projects who have made meaningful contributions to Obol’s Decentralized Operator Ecosystem. Read more about this journey here.

For the RAF Round 1, we need your support to Vote across eligible projects. This vote will define the allocation of funding that each project receives.

Overview and timeline of Obol RAF1

  1. Project Applications (Feb 3 → Feb 9)
  2. Application Feedback (Feb 3 → Feb 17)
  3. Application Review Process (Feb 6 → Feb 9)
  4. Voting & Feedback (Feb 10 → Feb 16)
  5. Announcing Results (Feb 21)
  6. KYC & Grant Delivery (TBD)

All Top100 Delegates are invited to participate in RAF Round 1. Snapshot to define the top100 Delegates was taken at the time the RAF1 application process started. The official communication channel for coordination and reminders will be Telegram. Please be aware of potential scammers, no one from the Obol Collective will ask you for any personal information! Report any incidents to our Governance Administrator if you see any strange activity

Feb 3 → Feb 9 EOD - Project Application → No action needed
Any project fitting the scope of the round can participate in this round. Projects must complete an application in the Obol RAF app in order to be eligible for voting.

Feb 6 → Feb 9 EOD - Review Project Applications → No action needed.
The Obol Association will review submissions for spam and fraud. Any project may be hidden from the voting round at the Association’s discretion, if they are missing a correctly verified GitHub or Twitter account, do not meet the eligibility criteria, are impersonating another team, or do not have a complete profile.

Feb 10 → Feb 16 EOD - :envelope_with_arrow: Voting & Feedback!! → :point_right::point_right:Action needed. :point_left::point_left:
You will cast your vote on how to allocate the 1M OBOL Tokens across all the eligible projects. Voting will take place in the Obol RAF App. The Obol Association will conduct a retrospective and gather feedback after submitting your vote…

Feb 21 - Results → No action needed.
After voting concludes, tokens will be distributed among projects based on delegate votes and the quadratic funding mechanism. The Obol Association will also share the gathered feedback to identify strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement

Evaluation Guidelines

What you’re voting on

RAF1 focuses on funding public goods that play a vital role in Obol’s Decentralized Operator Ecosystem.

The Obol Collective champions the retroactive funding model as a mechanism for supporting public goods within decentralized ecosystems. By offering ex-post rewards grounded in measurable impact, the Collective empowers builders to pursue high-risk, high-reward projects that drive meaningful advancements within the Obol Collective’s Decentralized Operator Ecosystem. The formula is simple yet powerful: “Proven Impact = Rewards”. This principle, pioneered by Optimism, fosters a meritocratic and accountable funding environment, where resources are directed to initiatives that have demonstrably advanced accessibility, security, or decentralization.

Through this approach, the Obol Collective not only addresses the financial sustainability challenges of pure public goods but also builds a foundation for the widespread adoption of Obol Collective’s Decentralized Operator Ecosystem, driving long-term resilience and equitable growth.

Please read the impact Metrics - Funding allocation design on the RAF1 guide.

Discover Projects

You can see all the projects that have applied in the RAF app at raf.obol.org

You can sort projects either alphabetically or by application date by clicking on “Sort by” and you can filter projects based on their name.

When you click into a project, you can read their own description about the impact they had, their sources of funding, and team size.

How to evaluate

Allocating funding is never a perfect process. You may not feel like an expert on a given project, or it may be challenging to compare projects directly based on your assessment of their impact and funding availability. Here are some considerations to use throughout the process.

  • Don’t fake expertise. You are voting for you — not for all of the Collective. You are not individually responsible for knowing everything about every Obol RAF category. Some delegates may be experts in education, while others may be deeply experienced in technical infrastructure. We urge you to share your expertise with others, and where necessary, relying on the expertise of other trusted contributors.
  • Make sense together Feel free to engage with other contributors and the broader Obol Collective in evaluating project impact.
  • Make holistic impact determinations, but when in doubt, don’t make assumptions. A combination of data and research should leave you qualified to make an informed decision about a given applicant. Still, there might be some projects whose impact argument is more subjective and hard to quantify (in the education category, for example). Use your gut in these situations, but don’t be too charitable with an applicant. If an impact statement seems like a stretch, it probably is.

Evaluation Tool

The Association also provides a Evaluation Tool to facilitate the process

Given the number of projects expected to participate, it may be easy to lose track of your vote allocations. We recommend evaluating and allocating your votes before casting them onchain. To do this, you can use this evaluation Framework sheet. Save a copy to your Google Drive by clicking “File” and “Make a copy”. Review projects, determine your allocation, and then cast your vote onchain.

How to vote

Voting will be done via the Obol RAF App where you will be able to allocate 0-100% of your voting weight across any number of projects. Abstaining from the vote will not change the overall amount of funding allocated in RAF1.

Voting Operational Procedure

Login: Visit the RAF App at http://raf.obol.org and click on Apply. To connect, you must sign a message in your wallet to verify that you are the owner of this account and you are an official Delegate registered in Tally.

Review: Click the “Projects” tab on the top of the page. Here you see the projects applying to the RAF1 and that have been approved by the Association. You can click on the project card to open the project details page.

Select: Add projects to your Ballot after reviewing their impact. Then, click on ‘View Ballot’ to visit the Ballot Page. The Obol Association has provided a Framework to help with selecting and evaluating the projects. Even if it is not mandatory, it is encouraged to organize the evaluation and selection of projects.

Evaluate and Submit: The Ballot Page shows the projects you have chosen. Enter the desired number of votes for each project, based on your total vote allocation. Click “Submit ballot” and sign the transaction.

Delegate Engagement & Operations

Public Communication

The success of this funding mechanism depends in part on widespread awareness of it.

There will be two Community discussions (Mon Feb 3 and Mon Feb 24 18:00 UTC). Your attendance is optional but encouraged. The agenda of each Community call will be shared before each call.

Don’t forget to add the Obol Governance Public Calendar. to stay updated! :date:

Internal Communication

Announcements and updates will be posted regularly on the Obol Delegates Telegram group.

If you have questions you’d like to ask 1:1, you can also email eliza@obol.org.

Conduct

Delegates are expected to abide by the Rules of Engagement. Violation of the rules may result in removal of voting rights in RAF1 or beyond. Note that the rules of engagement document includes a “conflicts of interest” section.

In RAF1, the Obol Association will manage enforcement for all types of violations.

Feedback

Feedback is encouraged throughout the round. To submit feedback on your experience go to the survey prepared on Typeform (You should have received it after voting in the RAF app).

This is an iterative process. We use the feedback gathered as part of our commitment to make this process better season by season.

We welcome your notes, reflections, and feedback at any step. You can submit more than one feedback survey throughout the process.

The Association will run a public community retrospective after the round ends.

FAQs

  • Can you make decisions for a project’s eligibility based on information that isn’t contained in its application?

Yes, you may make decisions about how to vote based on what you know about a project even beyond its individual application.

  • Can you allocate all your votes to one project?

We strongly discourage allocating all votes to a single project. As a delegate, you’re responsible for thoughtfully distributing 1M OBOL Tokens across multiple projects, weighting their impact on public goods supporting the Obol’s Decentralized Operator Ecosystem. Communication and collaboration with other delegates can help you to weigh allocation decisions across multiple applications. (When in doubt, re-visit the evaluation guidelines above.)

  • Can you vote for projects that you have personal connections to? (i.e. social or business connections that would introduce bias)

Delegates are expected NOT to cast votes in favor of any project they have a financial or reputational stake in. See the Obol Delegate Code of Conduct for more information. If you are unsure about whether a specific relationship counts as a conflict of interest, please reach out to eliza@obol.org with any questions.

  • Can you vote based on expectation of impact in the future instead of just past evidence?

Voters should evaluate projects based on past impact, not on prospective future impact. Retroactive funding is not proactive funding.

  • What happens if I don’t vote in time?

Votes must be cast by 23:59 UTC on February 16th. If your vote has not been cast by then, it will not be counted. Not voting or voting abstain will not change the overall amount of funding distributed in RAF1.

Can I talk to other Delegates about my allocation strategy?

Yes! Collective investigation is welcome. One of our main areas of interest and exploration is how the social experience affects voting outcomes.

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