Optimism: Analyzing the 10th Grants Cycle Finalists

Key Insights

• Optimism’s 10th grants cycle is coming to a close. There were 12 applications and 8 developers and developer groups that made finalist in the growth experiment and builder categories respectively.
• Kyberswap, MUX, and Sonne Finance are three of the top protocols to watch based on pre-incentives growth, the potential for incentives to accelerate growth, and the overall competitive outlook in their respective markets.
• Shutter Network’s shielded mempool, Metronomo’s programmatic ad network, and Rotki’s open-source EVM transaction decoder are three top builder proposals to watch out for.
• Incentive programs have risk. Protocols look great during the live incentives period, but small and large applications alike can see that growth erased once incentives dry up.
• The wide variety of project finalists shows a high level of interest and development within the Optimism ecosystem. These teams are still worth watching even if they do not end up receiving grants.

In the past, incentivized Layer-2 (L2) applications like GMX, Velodrome, and others have turned out to be winners – looking at the next round of potential incentives recipients may illuminate the next wave of rising protocols.