Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin in a tweet lauded Optimism's dedication to funding public goods, coinciding with the distribution of over $100 million in the third iteration of Optimism's Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RetroPGF) initiative.

Buterin, underscored Optimism's role in supporting developers and contributors, highlighting its departure from a traditional business model.

Optimism's official Twitter account revealed that RetroPGF Round 3 allocated 30 million OP (Optimism tokens) to contributors pivotal in constructing public goods that empower the Optimism Collective.

The 501 recipients, spanning roles such as builders, writers, creators, educators, and contributors across the Optimism ecosystem, received recognition for their impact in four key categories: OP Stack, Collective Governance, Developer Ecosystem, and End User Experience and Adoption.

The comprehensive list of awardees can be found here.

Economic Flywheel

According to Optimism, RetroPGF functions as an "economic flywheel", generating a positive impact within the Optimism Collective by supporting contributors in the development of public goods.
RetroPGF has recognised 643 projects across categories spanning infrastructure to education, governance to the OP Stack, and the developer ecosystem to end user experience.

While categories and rounds are iterative and evolving, the focus on impact, irrespective of the ecosystem part it benefits, remains constant.

I Qualify. How Do I Receive My OP Tokens?

Recipients of RetroPGF 3 will receive instructions about claiming OP token grants via email from [email protected].

Upon confirmation of wallet addresses and approval of KYC/KYB, OP tokens will be delivered to recipients over 90 days.

The compilation of the list involved Optimism's badgeholders, who dedicated their time and effort to evaluating projects and providing feedback to improve the program incrementally over time.

This round also received support from teams building public goods infrastructure that facilitated Round 3, including OP Labs, Agora, West, OS Observer, Pairwise, GrowThePie, Retrolist.app, and RetroPGFhub.

This ensures that core tools and infrastructure vital for blockchain operations and flourishing ecosystems receive ongoing resources.

In the third round of RetroPGF, one notable recipient, crypto sleuth ZachXBT, secured 149,455 OP tokens, with an approximate value of $580,000.