2026 AGV Council Elections: 2-Seat Council Nominations for Reconfirmation

DAO Programs & Initiatives Arbitrum Gaming Ventures (AGV)
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Summary

This proposal seeks DAO approval for each of the two candidates nominated by the existing council to sit in the 2026 term.

The existing AGV Council’s nominations are:

  • Tim Chang
    • Core Competency: Venture Capital and Investments
  • John Kennedy
    • Game Development / Go-To-Market Leader

Rationale

Building on the governance tradition established with AGV and subsequently OpCo, which combined appointed and elected positions, this election proposes a hybrid approach for filling council seats.

Ensuring continuity of institutional knowledge across our oversight, advisory, and investment programs is critical for effective governance. Having experienced DAO representatives who understand our historical context and strategic direction, independent of the operational team hired to lead these initiatives, helps maintain stability during transitions and preserves organizational memory that might otherwise be lost.

To address this need, the existing AGV council has voted to nominate two candidates for continuity seats, subject to DAO reconfirmation prior to the election, with three additional seats open for a DAO-wide election.

Council Nominees for Reconfirmation

Below are the extended details of each nominee for reconfirmation:

Tim Chang

Role / Expertise

Venture Capital Leader

Bio

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Tim previously led consumer technology investments at Mayfield Fund, focusing on next-gen Commerce & Marketplaces, Communities, Health & Wellness, Gaming and Digital Media, and has been named twice to the Forbes Midas List of top 100 VCs in the world for his early-stage investments at the beginning of the social and mobile smartphone gaming eras.

Tim has also been named to the AlwaysOn Power Players of top investors, as well as receiving the Special Achievement award from the Gamification Summit for his work in leveraging game design thinking to domains beyond gaming.

Tim has led early-stage investments in Grove Collaborative, Tonal Fitness, Fitmob/Classpass, Iridigm Display, Playdom, ngmoco, Basis, AdChina, Moat, and Pillow, creating more than $2.6B in total exit value. His current board seats include Alignable and TRIPP VR.

He holds an MBA with honors from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a MSEE/BSEE from the University of Michigan, where he received a departmental scholar fellowship. Tim has also been an active and avid investor in Web3/blockchain since 2014, helping to establish and invest in early crypto hedge funds, as well as advising and supporting multiple web3 gaming startups.

Outside of his passion for venture and startups, Tim is also a proponent of healing and flourishing of Mind, Body and Spirit, and serves on the non-profit boards of California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), and Ecoversity, and formerly served on the nonprofit boards of Little Kids Rock, NorthStar.guide, Gray Area Arts and Reimagine Death, as well as advising Transformative Tech Lab, Consciousness Hacking, Building Bridges, Near Future Summit, Edmund Hillary Fellowship, GoldHouse, Berklee School of Music, and other efforts to uplevel Capitalism with greater consciousness, regenerative models and inclusive stakeholding. His impact efforts include supporting MAPS and co-founding Northstar.guide to ethically commercialize psychedelic medicine, and he is dedicated to supporting Men’s Work, greater financial literacy for Women and Girls, ethical design principles for AI and tech products, and regenerative agriculture/Permaculture.

Tim is the cofounder of a cutting-edge social wellness members club called The Portal (https://theportal.house) in the San Francisco Bay Area, with additional locations opening soon.

Major AGV Accomplishments:

  • Guided initial thesis creation and subsequent thesis evolutions.
  • Worked with the team to create infrastructure, including approval processes, IC review rituals, memo templating, risk management parameters, best practices, due diligence checklist, as well as how to assess behind-the-scenes deal, team and investor syndicate dynamics.
  • Acted as a source of additional context, given his large VC/founder network for deals with known founders, co-investors, and other strategic partners.
  • Provided 23 years’ worth of early-stage venture investment expertise and wisdom as advisory and due diligence support for all deal leads that advanced through the IC pipeline in 2025.

Why are you interested in serving on the AGV Council again?

“I genuinely enjoy working with the people on the investment team and the wider AGV stakeholders. This is a unique experiment and opportunity for a leading L2 network to pioneer what DAOs can do, and the mandate to grow one of the largest verticals within entertainment and gaming is exciting. There are challenges, but I have always believed in forging new frontiers while accepting the risks that come with innovation. I have advised multiple Fortune 500 corporations in forming and implementing corporate strategic investment programs, and to do something similar for the AGV is a chance to build an investment and ecosystem program in a wholly new format for the web3 world. I’m proud to be part of this journey, and hold huge hopes for how Arbitrum and web3 overall can bolster the leading edge of gaming and gamified experiences, as well as the convergence of generative AI with blockchain.”

John Kennedy

Role / Expertise

Game Development / Go-To-Market Leader

Bio

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John, formerly Head of Product at AWS GameTech, left in 2023 to launch Actual AI—an engineering manager agent for software teams that provides guardrails for AI-powered software development. Actual AI has received venture funding from AlleyCorp, G2C ventures, OrangeDAO, Alchemist Accelerator, and Irregular Expressions.

At AWS, John successfully pitched the CEO on transforming Amazon’s Lumberyard into a cutting-edge open-source 3D game engine. He secured a team of over 100 top game engine developers to build Open 3D Engine (o3de.org), a modular, extensible, and high-performance 3D engine featuring a new renderer, visual scripting tool, and physics engine. Additionally, John launched and grew several high-revenue AWS services, enabling game developers to seamlessly serve hundreds of millions of players with capabilities for streaming, multiplayer servers, and cloud storage.

As a Core Partner at Underscore VC, John has advised numerous early-stage startups on product development and go-to-market strategies. His executive experience spans multiple high-growth startups, including Platform.sh and Acquia. John continues to mentor Series A-C startups, sharing his expertise in scaling businesses.

In 2024, John co-facilitated Arbitrum’s two GovHack events in collaboration with Hack Humanity at EthDenver and EthCC. Each event drew over 200 participants and resulted in the creation of 48 new governance proposals.

Major AGV Accomplishments

  • Worked with the team extensively on the formation of the investment thesis, bringing deep gaming industry experience and over 20 years of experience building and marketing digital products.
  • Guided the hiring process, including working on the evaluation rubrics, working with the team and recruiter on candidate triage, and interviewing most candidates.
  • Mentored the team on operations, strategy, and growth, including bi-weekly sessions with the leadership team.
  • Deep deal analysis on all deals that passed IC from the gaming and software development perspective.
  • Met with candidate portfolio companies to vet leadership and technical expertise.
  • Established relationships with partners and portfolio companies.

Why are you interested in serving on the AGV Council again?

“I’m excited about the 2nd gaming revolution that is coming to Arbitrum. We have now established the groundwork to execute on our thesis of building a vibrant gaming ecosystem of service providers, games, and gamers. I think we can build the Steam of web3 backed by Arbitrum.

It has been great to see AGV grow and put down roots. We now have the dream team that is going to blow up the industry. Gaming is in dire need of new channels for user acquisition and monetization. We are in the perfect position to take advantage of this need.

I can’t wait to dive in with the team, guiding portfolio companies on their way to success with GTM and operational expertise, building playbooks, and by connecting the AGV team with new partners who can extend our reach in gaming and AI.”

Process, Implementation & Next Steps

In order to seek tokenholder approval for the discrepancies between the original GCP Proposal and this proposal, the AGV team and Council now submit this proposal for a DAO vote.

Following the posting of this proposal, a one-week community feedback period will remain open on the forum to gather input from delegates and stakeholders.

Following the discussion window, an Introduction and Q&A Call will be held on Google Meet on November 13.

A Snapshot vote will then go live on Thursday, November 13, and remain open for seven days.

Each nominated candidate will then undergo a separate confirmation Snapshot vote (simple majority with a quorum of at least 3% of all votable tokens voting either “For” or “Abstain”) on Thursday, November 13, and remain open for seven days.

Timeline

Voting Options

Each proposal will include the following voting options:

  • For
  • Against
  • Abstain

Should FOR be the majority preference, and the combined FOR and ABSTAIN votes meet at least 3% of the total votable ARB supply, the respective candidate will be considered reconfirmed to the AGV council for the 2026 term.

If either of these nominations are vetoed by the DAO, that seat will then be added to the Election Process, and the nominee(s) will be automatically entered as an applicant(s) for the Election. If a nominee is vetoed and added to the Election, the number of open seats would increase from three (3) to either four (4) or five (5) seats.