Greetings, Plurality Labs. We have read, reviewed, and discussed your proposal. We are delighted to know that your team has been involved in DAOs and is familiar with governance. Apparently, the proposal has been nicely planned and well-thought-out. But we couldn’t make sense of a few of the points mentioned and didn’t find it enough. Funding is clearly an essential development source for all ecosystems and will definitely foster growth. The desired amount of funds is really large, and it is a fund allocation that can only be tolerated with complete trust in the other party. There is no problem with 72% of the money being required for the grant program, but the usage of the remaining funds must be further explained. The proposal does not define how long the milestones will take, when the entire process will start and finish, or what the actual duties of the managers who will receive a portion of the budget will be. Additionally, many ecosystems are now running grant programs, and the budget allocated to these grant programs is far less than what is requested in this proposal. The growth of the Arbitrum may require as much funding as you said, but we believe you need to explain how you intend to manage it and why the arbitrum requires more funding than others. We decided to vote against the proposal because of the insufficient findings and the fact that our questions were not answered. Thank you for your proposal; we look forward to seeing it further developed and revised.
Changes coming before Tally
The constitution requests, but doesn’t require, a temp check prior to posting to Tally. We think that any substantial changes to deliverables or higher amounts being requested SHOULD offer another temp check. In our case, we are trying to broaden support and will be lowering our ask. Any changes to content are simply to better explain or include info from previous versions which was left out of the temp-check version for brevity.
Please come and talk with our team at 2pm UTC tomorrow for our bi-weekly grants & governance session. (The third one!) All delegates are welcome!
Replies to ITU
We agree that this can be brought down. Tomorrow, we will be sharing an update that is near 600k less, removes the buffer amount, and sets fees against the amounts allocated, not the entire proposal amount. (We are still debating last minute adjustments, thus not sharing here yet.)
We had planned for this to be a 6 month engagement. Some delegates had concerns that by putting a date on the end, we would be incentivized to allocate poorly to say we allocated it all. I promise we will not do that. We would roll-over funds to milestone 2 OR return them to the DAO.
Milestone 1 Timeline & Security
Milestone 1, this proposal, will loosely be a 6 month engagement. It is hard to see exactly when funds arrive in our wallet from Tally, or if they will until further down the road. If Tally has YES momentum, we will likely start our team full-time on 8/1, then consider the end of the engagement to be the end of February 28th. However, we would like to maintain a small cushion for discretion which might include aligning with a seasonal cadence or executing last steps to ensure our best opportunity to be approved for milestone 2.
We have setup a Grants Safety Multisig on Arbitrum using a Zodiac module that will allow the DAO to clawback funds which aren’t spent at anytime. We are still looking for other delegates to be on this multisig and may use an election process the same as Questbook. All of the funds will be sent here, even Plurality Labs payment (30% paid upfront, the rest streamed over 6 months). This provides both the clawback capability, plus another safety check level to ensure we aren’t self-dealing or abusing funds.
Milestone 3 - Completion of the full project
We expect this to take 18 months. Each milestone being a 6 month cycle of iterative improvement. At the end of the third milestone we hope to have:
Metrics
- The number of active developers building on Arbitrum is growing at an increasing rate
- Voter participation is increasing
- DAO delegates’ satisfaction with Plurality Labs service is improving as measured by NPS
Capabilities
- Capture-resistant governance of the grants program (Which could influence the governance of contract upgradeblity for Arbitrum overall)
- Ability to massively scale allocation amounts by improving sourcing pipelines, standardizing evaluation models, and allocating using multiple allocation methods appropriately aligned to outcomes
- The DAO will have a circulatory and nervous system. Resources will go out in a cadence with smaller grants being almost constant. Our improvements in the DAOs ability to sensemake will bring the right information to the right decision making apparatus in a way that cuts off poor performance and doubles down on high-impact work.
The Pluralist Program Managers
As Plurality Labs builds the framework, the Program Managers will be executing grants rounds with the help of our team.
A quick example. We may do a QF round to source grants for the 4 domains Questbook is allocating to provide a stronger pipeline of quality projects. The manager has to discover and set requirements for each domain, communicate and market the event, execute the contracts, and ensure best practices for fraud defense happen.
Another consideration is in this reply to Olimpio where we discuss that we are putting ourselves out of a job. We are like architects designing a building. The program managers are the contractors building it. They will likely be salaried positions once we build the framework in a way that scales and is capture-resistant.
Another example is our ongoing discussions with Jokerace.xyz and/or Thrivecoin about how we can incentivize participation and better outcomes. Should we, Plurality Labs come up with the best way to use their tool, or could we pay someone from their team to implement the system in a best way possible.
These are two examples of how pluralist program manager funds may be used. (These are examples, not suggestions that those are decided programs we will do.)
Replies to @seedlatam in their awesome delegate comms thread.
Total Proposal Amount & Lack of Details
Our final version will lower this around 600k ARB. However, your comment discusses the relationship of the amount to the clarity of what will be funded.
We are doing a discovery phase to truly understand what the community wants AND where the most impact potential exists. In my past work in data-driven growth, we look at every touchpoint and suggest how much potential each has for creating growth. Many startups will assume a specific area, but without going through this exercise, they are often developing in areas that are suboptimal for their stated goal.
We want to do the same for grants allocation. During discovery, we will find what the community is most interested in seeing advanced AND create hypothesis driven experiments to prove (or disprove) the potential.
It would be nice if we could say exactly what would be funded, but imagine we chose four domains, then realized that we are completely missing an untapped market in Latin America. Watching for biases and untapped potential is a strength of what our framework will provide the community.
Potential Conflicts of Interest with Gitcoin
I have fully stepped back from my role as a workstream lead as of 4/28/23 when we dissolved the FDD workstream.
Shawn Grubb has been the steward relations & DAO governance person there for a while. In Season 17 which ended in April of '23, the workstream he reported to, DAOops, was voted down for an extension. His work was valued and he posted a proposal to pay him for half-time work continuing his governance relations work through 7/25. He also joined a group running the “Gitcoin Citizens” round. This engagement still has some time, but is minimal.
I asked Shawn to join Plurality Labs because he is phenomenal both as a communicator understanding different stakeholder roles AND as an executor getting shit done. I am trying to assemble the best possible team of passionate missionaries to execute a herculean task.
We have discussed his current obligations and he is opening up space for this opportunity should it pass. I do not see a conflict of interest.
I should put on the table that I hold GTC which I was granted being an early team member. (I also hold other tokens.) I still believe in their mission and plan to continue holding their governance token. I am a fan, supporter, and do see collaborative opportunities.
This community is poised to elevate governance capabilities to another level. I voluntarily closed down the FDD workstream because their protocol is launched. The work I was doing is now a service to be offered to their program managers. I believe the opportunity to improve grants & governance is more directly applicable and useful to the Ethereum ecosystem as a whole with Arbitrum. This ecosystem has shown a willingness to prioritize decentralization, unstoppable code, and lead the pack as an innovator.
Breakdown of Funds Usage
Unfortunately, these were pulled from the “Request for Comment” proposal we did to get community feedback on our first draft of a proposal. Our final proposal was listed here and was listed as follows.
As mentioned above, we are planning on reducing the total ask by 600k ARB before moving to Tally.
How Funds Will Be Distributed
Along with the discover mentioned above, there may be a concern about how the funds would be released. Our update for Tally will include the following:
- We created a Zodiac module for the DAO to clawback funds from the Grants Safety Multisig which would receive the funds
- The Grants Safety Multisig is an extra layer of protection to ensure we aren’t self dealing.
- The Grants Safety Multisig will pay Plurality Labs 30% upfront, then stream the rest of our funds. This way the DAO could clawback our payment as well as the grant allocation amount.
- We will rollover or return any of the unspent allocation funds and commit to not expediting poor allocation to say we spent it all.
Project Metrics
During Milestone 1, we will baseline many of these metrics. Our core promise is to have these three metrics as a sign of success for the overall program including all three milestones:
Because we must innovate and baseline these metrics during milestone 1, we put ourselves completely at the mercy of the community. It is up to the DAO to approve our milestone 2.
Hi @DisruptionJoe, it’s a capy paste error.
SEED Latam records all calls, and as you can see the discussion was about the current budget. You can corroborate it on our youtube channel where we upload all our governance calls.
In terms of the scope of funds, we are referring to how these funds will be distributed among the grant programs, what the criteria will be and how the grant program will select them beyond those known as Gitcoin or Quesbook. And how will the allocation of funds be determined, who will have priority?
For example, if I have no experience in a grant program and I want to launch one of my own through Plurality Labs, what will those filters be? How will you determine when to allocate funds to me?
You can also see that this topic was discussed in the call
Thanks for letting us know that you did use the correct numbers in your internal conversations! I was kinda hoping you didn’t so we would have a great case for you to change the vote, but I see in the video that you did. It’s a really interesting conversation. Perhaps I could join a call sometime and speak with your DAO?
This is what the discovery phase is all about. It feels like your community is trying to balance the uncertainty of not having a specific plan with the understanding that we need to speak more with community members like yourself to find out what the community would like to see. Then we need to see if the broader community also supports the ideas AND evaluate the potential impact of your program.
What criteria should we use to measure this? Is liquidity mining program going to be evaluated the same as a local community education program? Will all funds be allocated with measurable outcomes or does the community value some allocation spent towards innovation?
I promise that we will make the effort to hear your community. We will weigh systemic biases and opportunity costs. We will provide fair access opportunity for you to run your program to the best of our ability.
You might have a great idea for allocation, or you may have a passionate community. Our service will provide coaching to fill in the gaps. Let’s say you want to run a LatAm builders round. What are things we at Plurality Labs might consider.
- Does this mean we should have other regional rounds?
- How can we make sure they know about all the best practices available for reducing fraud?
- How can we help them craft criteria and make a comms plan that best matches their intended outcome?
Imagine we are about to build a house… not just one, but a development! Would we just pick up the tools and start building or would we first think about the infrastructure (builder, program manager, funding priorities, evaluation processes)? Would we build the houses in a clockwise order? or maybe we would talk to the community and find out that there is one family who needs to move in right away and it wouldn’t hurt anything for us to build theirs first. Maybe we find out there is a huge business opportunity if we put up a gas station and a grocery store first.
This endeavor is both needed and complex. Complexity requires great communication and adaptability over preset plans. I hope this helps to clarify why we are reluctant to say specifically what will be funded prior to a full discovery.
The calls are public in the SEED Latam Discord. The previous vote came @Saurabh de Quesbook and resolved some doubts that the community had about his proposal.
To be clear, the vote is run in community neither @cattin nor me nor any member of the SEED Latam delegation for arbitrum has power control over the vote. We are not a DAO either but we behave as such.
If you want to know more about our work and how we organize ourselves, here are our statutes.
I think this is really good, this is the way forward and I think Plurality Labs has a great role to play here.
I understand that, but I would at least like to have some predictability on these points. I know you can’t give exact metrics, but I would at least like to know what the direction is and some guidelines that we should keep in mind.
Finally, these are personal opinions and not those of the SEED Latam delegation for which I collaborate.
My apologies for the mistake while quoting and any confusion that might’ve caused, and thank you so much @axlvaz_SEEDLATAM.eth for the clarification. As it has been mentioned before, my main concern goes around metrics and how we measure the success of the program.
Even though I agree that this is a decent way to measure Arbitrum’s success, I think it would be difficult to directly link it to the program’s success, since it might be due to other exogenous factors (except the last criteria ofc).
Beyond this, I do think we need to tell apart a particular grant’s success and this specific program’s success, each requiring different metrics/KPIs. But I do agree that it’s difficult to set specific KPIs for potential programs that we might not even know about, however, I do think we could start off by having some general guidelines on what’s expected of a program so that we can have some degree of predictability and that those applying for grant programs know what we expect from them.
Thank you for taking the time to address our communities concerns, and as Axl mentioned, you are more than welcome to join any of our community calls, we usually announce them on twitter a day before
Below this point is the conversation on the Final Edits posted before moving to Tally. The previous version is available in the version history if needed.
Final Version for Tally Last Edit 7/20/23
In discussion with delegates who voted no and through forum feedback, we feel confident moving the vote to Tally with a few changes.
- TL;DR - We are lowering the total ask. By removing the “buffer” funds and using percentages against funds allocated rather than the entire proposal, we reduce the total by almost 600k ARB.
- Multisig Management - We’ve included the exact payment address, added the DAO ability to vote to clawback funds, added how Plurality Labs will receive funding, and are requesting delegates reach out to be multisig signers on a 4/6 with 2 PL team members. Also, committing to snapshot governance only needed for the DAO to request changes to the multisig signers.
- Looking Forward to Milestones 2 & 3 - We reintroduced more details on what the full completion of the project entails including metrics to hit and achievements.
- Reworded 2 sentences in the Deliverables / Discovery section to clarify misunderstandings.
The feedback we have received is that the changes we are making do not substantially change the content of the proposal and are meant to clarify or add detail. The only substantial change of lowering the total ask is unlikely to move “yes” votes to “no”, but that can still be expressed on Tally if there are issues.
Looking for Multisig Signers
- Must have at least 500k delegation
- Must be active and willing to sign transactions within 24 hours
- Basically signing to execute Plurality Labs & program manager decisions unless something looks fishy, then you should bring attention to the issue.
- Unpaid role, but very low time commitment.
DM me if interested!
Is there any other requirement for the team besides multisig signers?
I am personally very active in the blockchain space and can contribute in the following areas:
- UI/UX
- Website development
- Social media management
- Content creation
- Branding
Please let me know if there are any additional qualifications or skills needed for the team.
Thanks
Overall, we think that the ask amount in this proposal is rather moderate, keeping in mind that it’s largely supposed to be distributed to fund projects built on Arbitrum. And grant program frameworks need a lot of experimentation in different areas to make them more successful.
I’ve attended workshops held by Pluralistic Labs and I’m convinced that their approach will provide a lot of useful and valuable insights for ArbitrumDAO regarding future grant frameworks. In addition, Pluralistic Labs has been very active in discussions on various topics in ArbitrumDAO, which shows their commitment to this ecosystem.
Therefore, we are voting FOR this proposal. We will also closely monitor the progress and remain active in all future workshops.
Hi all,
I will lock this thread as the proposal is complete.
The funds have been sent to the Plurality Labs multi-sig holders:
There is news about the grant program by Plurality Labs here: