Arana Digital Delegate Communication Thread

Governance Delegate Statements
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21

Delegate Updates December 12th - DAO Holiday

Snapshot Votes:

  • Unifying Arbitrum’s Mission, Vision, Purpose (MVP)
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: The unification of the DAO’s goals and vision for it’s role in the Arbitrum ecosystem was a necessary step towards aligning delegates on the DAO’s approach to proposals and its overall function going forward. We thank @Entropy for their effort here and look forward to seeing the impact.

  • Partner with ETH Bucharest 2025
    Vote: AGAINST
    Rational: The success of the previous Bucharest Hackathon by this team is commendable and we are excited to have them look to have Arbitrum engage with ETH Bucharest 2025, which is sure to be an incredible event for the space. That being said, the DAO’s role in sponsoring events has been outlined in the Events Budget for 2025. Though this proposal is above the Questbook cost, it is due to the DAO being placed into “Genesis Block Package” and included an hour speaking slot, a speaker dinner, and VIP area sponsorship, all of which are excessive and unnecessary for an DAO entity. We align with the importance of a strong Arbitrum presence at large community events such as ETH Bucharest 2025, but we agree with many of our fellow delegates that a restructured proposal at a reduced budget would be a perfect fit for the new season of Questbook Grants. Given the support and positive response for their previous efforts through Questbook, this feels appropriate and sets the standard for event proposals that should come before the DAO. We understand time constraints and logic for expediting, but we do not support this proposal as it stands and stand behind the effectiveness of the Domain Allocators and Questbook’s Program to work with projects and opportunities such as this.

  • OpCo – A DAO-adjacent Entity for Strategy Execution
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: We have watched the progress and iteration to develop this final proposal and feel is aligns with the community’s needs and vision for the role of such an entity. As the DAO looks to mature and form the foundation for an efficient and effective governance group, the OpCo is a large step in the right direciton.

Tally Votes:

  • Arbitrum Hackathon Builder Continuation Program
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: Similar to our rational for the Snapshot, we find this to be a reasonable conclusion to the matter and would like to focus on preventing such delays and issues from the DAO’s side in the future.

  • Treasury Management V1.2
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: Aligning with our snapshot vote, this is a necessary proposal for the DAO.

22

Delegate Updates Jan 6th - 17th

Snapshot Votes:

  • Non-Constitutional: Stable Treasury Endowment Program 2.0
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: We are proud to be voting in support of this proposal. As the DAO (and this industry) matures, the diversification of treasuries is a necessary step to ensure longevity and sustainability for the Arbitrum ecosystem. This initiative has been pursued with transparency at the forefront and we agree that the continuation of these efforts should be supported. STEP as its own program will continue and this new iteration leaves us excited for what may come down the road with this engagement and partnership.

Tally Votes:

  • [Constitutional AIP] Activate Arbitrum BoLD + Infura Nova Validator Whitelist
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: We maintain our support for this proposal as we indicated during the Snapshot temperature check. BoLD is an exciting step for Arbitrum, and being one of the most widespread and reputable providers in the space, the whitelisting of Infura for Arbitrum Nove validation is sensible and exciting for the growth of the ecosystem.
23

Delegate Updates Jan 18-24

Snapshot Votes:

  • Arbitrum D.A.O. Season 3 Elections - New Protocols and Ideas
    Vote: 1/3 for Castle Capital, 1/3 for Saurabh, 1/6 for Gabrial, 1/6 for Uhthred
    Rational: This Domain Allocator position was stacked with deserving and credible applicants. With our large deligation, we did not wish to have a drastic impact on the outcome as our review of the applications and personal experiences with the candidates led to our sense that many would perform a fantastic job. Our breakdown of votes was determined by our reflection on the applications submitted by the applicants and our evaluation of their fit for the role given prior experience working with the candidates.

  • Arbitrum D.A.O. Season 3 Elections - Education, Community Growth, and Events
    Vote: 100% SEEDGov
    Rational: Our work with SEEDGov throughout our experience as an Arbitrum delegate and their exceptional efforts as a DA in past seasons has led to our decision to fully support their return to this position. We look forward to continue working with Gianluca and the team going forward.

  • Arbitrum D.A.O. Season 3 Elections - Dev Tooling on One and Stylus
    Vote: 100% Juandi
    Rational: Similar to SEEDGov’s rational, we have evaluated Juandi’s performance, ownership of the position, and efforts in this role over the past few months and have concluded that we support the continuation of his participation.

  • Arbitrum D.A.O. Season 3 Elections - Gaming
    Vote: 100% Flook
    Rational: Flook has continued to demonstrate his expertise and fit for this role both through their application and performance in the position in the past. By bringing on additional support, their performance should only continue to improve and we support them confidently.

  • The Watchdog: Arbitrum DAO’s Grant Misuse Bounty Program
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: The decentralization of effort to ensure funds are not being misused is crucial for the immense funding the DAO has distributed and will look to distribute in the future. This initial bounty program takes a promising step in the right direction and we look to analyzing and reflecting on the success of such programs so we can continue to improve our grant processes going forward.

24

Delegate Updates Jan 25-31

Snapshot Votes:

  • Proposal for Piloting Enhancements and Strengthening the Sustainability of ArbitrumHub in the Year Ahead
    Vote: FOR without Retroactive
    Rational: We agree with and recognize many of the concerns addressed by our fellow delegates with the budget and potential fragmentation of efforts with ArbitrumHub’s own social presence and potential overlap with OpCo. The proposal has not been supported at this stage, but our support stemmed from a recognition of the significant effort put into the process of incorperating feedback and developing a tool that addresses many of the issues this community has felt being arguably the most active DAO in the space. While the costs were high, significant time and effort has been dedicated to this development and the transparency they offered for the cost structure helped us feel comfortable with the budget. We appreciate the team’s efforts and look forward to working with the community to address these issues.

  • Arbitrum Strategic Objective Setting (SOS) – Defining the DAO’s Interim Goals
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: The development of this proposal went through thorough phases of feedback and iteration and we appreciate the community for all the effort they’ve put in here to better align the objectives of the DAO. This will continue to be a process of iteration and we believe this establishes the correct framework from which to build upon.

25

Delegate Updates Feb 1-6

Snapshot Votes:

  • Approve the Nova Fee Sweep Action
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: It is sensible to combine these proposals into one as the DAO is very supportive of these moves by the Arbitrum team.

Tally Votes:

  • OpCo: A DAO-adjacent Entity for Strategy Execution
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: From ourconversations with fellow delegates and members of the AF and OCL, the need for a fully aligned entity to spearhead initiatives that the DAO has struggled to empower itself is worth this experimentation and support, especially after the considerable effort and community input that went into this proposal.

  • Non-Constitutional: Stable Treasury Endowment Program 2.0
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: The continued diversification of the treasury and setting of a framework for the financial sustainability of the DAO is worth advancing through these initiatives. We continue to support this proposal as we did from the temperature check.

26

Delegate Updates Feb 12-28

Snapshot Votes:

  • Request to Increase the Stylus Sprint Committee’s Budget
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: Stylus is one of the prominent differentiators and points of emphasis for the Arbitrum protocol and attracting new talent to the ecosystem. We support providing additional funding to push these efforts.
  • Arbitrum Growth Circles Event Proposal
    Vote: Against
    Rational: We support Arbitrum and the DAO have a significant presence at many events, but this is not an area to be discussed and decided upon by the entire DAO. We echo others concerns and views that this proposal should be fit for the Questbook program as well.
  • [CONSTITUTIONAL] AIP: ArbOS Version 40 Callisto
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: This proposal continues to push Arbitrum to the forefront of the Ethereum scaling roadmap and aligns with our views of the role Arbitrum will ever-increasingly play in the space.
  • Arbitrum Audit Program
    Vote: Abstain
    Rational: The ADPC is supporting the transition and internalization of this process by the Arbitrum Foundation. We support AF and OCL taking on larger roles and ownership of initiatives such as this, but the proposal left a lot of questions unanswered around the transparency and specific purpose of this program. We look forward to working with AF and better rounding out this proposal as it approaches Tally.

Tally Votes:

27

Delegate Updates March 1-12

Snapshot Votes:

  • TMC Recommendation
    Vote: FOR (#3 Only Deploy Stable Strategy)
    Rational: We are voting in line with the recommendation made by the TMC. Though we do not agree with this vote being a ranling style rather an a multiple choice, we believe they have chosen adequate partners and have performed sufficient due diligence to move forward with deploying a stablecoin strategy for managing our treasury. We look forward to continuing to work with delegates, entities, and service provides to work on promoting use for $ARB as well in the future.

Tally Votes:

  • Request to Increase the Stylus Sprint Committee’s Budget
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: We continue to support this proposal as we did in the temperature check on Snapshot. Providing additional funding for Stylus, one of the best differentiators and most impactful products for Arbitrum, is worth it.
28

Delegate Updates March 15- 28

Snapshot Votes:

  • GMC’s Preferred Allocations (7,500 ETH)
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: The DAO agreed to task the GMC with determining the appropriate use of the DAOs treasury built from sequencer revenue of 7500 ETH. This significant funding can not only assist in ensuring the DAO develops into a more sustainable organization that funds itself through rewards on such assets, see the GMC’s use of major ecosystem projects Lido, Aave, Fluid, and Camelot, while also assisting to boost liquidity and TVL across the ecosystem. We support the continued granting of authority by the DAO to aligning committees and entities such as these and support the transparent recommendations they determine to be best fit for the DAO.

  • [CONSTITUTIONAL] Proposal: For Arbitrum DAO to register the Sky Custom Gateway contracts in the Router
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: We support this proposal due to it’s thorough review, having the contracts audited and formally verified, as well as the collaboration with Offchain Labs to promote alignment with the Arbitrum Ecosystem. The expansion of USDS, sUSDS, and the Sky ecosystem into Arbitrum only serves to benefit our community and users due to their longstanding success and remainder at the frontier of innovation in the space.

Tally Votes:

  • [CONSTITUTIONAL] - Adopt Timeboost + Nova Fee Sweep
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: We continue to support these initiatives and are encouraged to analyze the impact of Timeboost on Arbitrum as Offchain Labs continues to push the frontier across sectors such as MEV in this case.

  • [NON-CONSTITUTIONAL] Arbitrum Onboarding V2: A Governance Bootcamp
    Vote: AGAINST
    Rational: There seemed to be several major issues with the current version of the proposal that we agreed with. From the Snapshot, we had hoped more would be done to align more with delegate feedback as the idea around the initiative of encouraging new delegate engagement and participation is one we stand by. However, the proposal being for 10 delegates and at the budegt requested simply does not justify our going forward. We recognize the need for increased particiation in the DAO and the potential risk we face meeting quorums, but we align with some of our fellow delegates in preferring to focus our attention on Arbitrum ecosystem entities and how we can encourage participation from major, align token holders such as ecosystem projects, founders, and supporters. While this iniative assists in furthering this coversation, we do not support it’s current form.

  • [NON-CONSTITUTIONAL] Arbitrum Audit Program
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: We are voting FOR this proposal on Tally after having abstained in the temperature check. Having heard feedback from delegates, the improved transparency and detailed eligibility requirements, and aligning with the overall goals of the initiative to empower our ecosystem of builders and assist in the securing of expensive audits that often serve as a barrier.

Many of the issues with this proposal remain around the potential impact on $ARB and the role of the Arbitrum Foundation. It is our view that the internalization of this role by the AF is a positive step towards the DAO’s maturity. The transparency included in the updated version of the proposal, along with the development of the OpCo for accountability, will bring the AF into tighter relations with the DAO and will further the trust between OCL, AF, and Arbitrum DAO to further effect positive change on the Arbitrum Ecosystem together. The DAO is not able to provide the expertise on the audit vendors and determining which projects are deserving of the services. This proposal and it’s support from ADPC highlights an improvement in the position of the AF alongside the DAO and we support such initiatives. We agree with @jameskbh’s view with optimism looking ahead to the reduced friction and defined lanes for the entities that drive Arbitrum forward.

29

Delegate Updates April 1 - 14

Snapshot Votes:

  • OpCo – Oversight and Transparency Committee (OAT) Elections
    Vote: 50% Frisson, 25% AJ Warner, 25% Patrick McCorry
    Rational: The quality of applicants that applied to OpCo is a testament to the Arbitrum ecosystem and furthers our enthusiasm for the future of the DAO and Arbitrum as a whole. The OpCo itself and the applications of AJ and Patrick are signals of a shift towards these essential entities becoming increasingly involved and responsive to the DAO. The position of OpCo is among that of OCL and AF in being able to maintain accountability across all of the Arbitrum-aligned entities and therefore, having these two involved was a meaningful step towards the next stage for Arbitrum. Given this understanding, we were also confident that they would be able to secure seats, and we felt it would be proper to use half of our votes to vote in a third member that met our standards for DAO involvement, Arbitrum ecosystem commitment, and a proven builder in the space. Having worked with Frisson as a delegate, the choice was clear that he was the right fit for OpCo. We are thrilled to see these three applicants fill the seats for this initial election and we are excited to work with OpCo and our fellow delegates to see this succeed.

  • TMC Stablecoin Recommendation
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: We are pleased to see the recommendation from the TMC approved and have the DAO implement a strategy to further increase our revenue and drive sustainable growth for the DAO and Arbitrum ecosystem. The selected partners are credible and the initial experiment with these transparent stablecoin strategies with prove worthwhile as we move to better manage our treasury over time.

  • TMC ARB Recommendation
    Vote: NO, Deploy Nothing
    Rational: Similar to the rational above, we align with the TMC and, as a DAO, motion to trust their in depth analysis and criteria for each strategy. Though this initial ARB allocation has not been approved, it furthers the notion that the ARB token needs to be more ingrained into the ecosystem and opportunities for such yield and engagement should be plentiful and meet risk/reward expectations.

30

Delegate Updates May 7 - 14

Snapshot Votes:

  • Approval of STEP 2 Committee’s Preferred Allocations
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: The proposed allocation reflects a thoughtful diversification strategy, as it ensures each provider receives sufficient capital to generate meaningful yield, rather than spreading the allocation too thin and diluting long-term value. By concentrating on these three stable funds, the DAO benefits from multiple yield sources while mitigating concentration risk. We note that the committee has “aimed to strike the right balance between fees, existing live TVL, risk-adjusted setups, and community involvement”. Such a balanced strategy should yield stable, low-volatility returns that strengthen the treasury. Looking ahead, we encourage reserving a modest portion of future STEP allocations for emerging or higher-risk RWA protocols. Allocating a limited experimental fund to innovative RWA entrants could foster new opportunities and ecosystem diversity, while keeping the majority of capital in proven, lower-risk assets. In practice, dedicating even a small pilot allocation to promising new projects — with appropriate risk management — could help the DAO capture upside from new protocols without jeopardizing the core strategy. We consider STEP 2 to be overall beneficial for the DAO because converting ARB into stable, liquid, yield-generating assets amid heightened macro-economic uncertainty is a good strategy for capital preservation.
  • [Non-consitutional]: Top-up for Hackathon Continuation Program
    Vote: Yes to both
    Rational: We support using a portion of the Domain Allocator funds left over from Season 1 to top up the Hackathon Continuation Program. However, we argue that this one-time instance should not become the norm and that funds should be returned to the DAO without disruption in the future. It is important for the Arbitrum DAO to maintain trust with developers, so we are in favor of using DAO funds as reimbursement this time; however, such a situation should have been avoided in the first place. An important question is who will cover any future shortfalls like this if there is no leftover funding. We also support sending the remaining funds from Domain Allocator Season 1 to the Treasury Management Committee to increase its stablecoin pool, ensuring that the DAO always has liquid, low-risk, yield-generating capital to cover dollar-denominated expenses and service-provider contract shortfalls. This approach prevents the need to sell ARB for immediate actions like this case, as it provides deep USD liquidity for DAO operations.

Tally Votes:

  • The Watchdog: Arbitrum DAO’s Grant Misuse Bounty Program
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: The Watchdog delivers a safeguard for the DAO’s treasury at negligible cost. The six-month pilot limits spending to 400 k ARB, which is trivial next to the hundreds of millions the DAO has already deployed. A clear reward ladder (up to $100 k or 5 % of claw-backs) plus an anonymous GlobaLeaks portal deters “grant hunters.” Embedding this oversight now protects future distributions and signals that fund abuse will be swiftly uncovered and penalized.
31

Delegate Updates May 15 - 30

Snapshot Votes:

  • DeFi Renaissance Incentive Program (DRIP)
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: We support the DeFi Renaissance Incentive Program. Targeting concrete goals such as creating the deepest USDT/ETH liquidity should make it easier to measure and evaluate outcomes compared with broad, protocol-level incentives. In addition, maintaining an extensive whitelist of eligible protocols and rewarding users for defined on-chain actions—like lending or borrowing under clear criteria—avoids giving any single platform an unfair advantage and encourages ecosystem-wide growth. We also expect higher post-incentive retention, because users will have multiple venues to choose from rather than being forced onto a single protocol only to leave once rewards stop. Our main concern is that the Season Selection Committee can unilaterally adjust parameters or terminate a season; while this flexibility enables rapid iteration, it also limits delegate influence.
  • [Constitutional] AIP: Constitutional Quorum Threshold Reduction
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: We are in support of altering the quorum threshold from 5 % to 4.5 %. We support this change because the participation rate, measured as a percentage of votable supply, has fallen from 8 % in early 2024 to 4–5 % in early 2025. As the circulating supply of $ARB grows and voter turnout remains relatively flat, the participation rate decreases, making quorum requirements increasingly difficult to meet. If the threshold is not lowered, legitimate proposals may fail to pass solely because they cannot reach quorum.
  • Adjust the Voting Power of the Arbitrum Community Pool & Ratify the Agentic Governance Pivot
    Vote: Option B
    Rational: AranaDigital supports Option B—acknowledge the pivot to agentic governance and reduce the Event Horizon delegation from 7 million to 100 thousand ARB—because the shift from a human voter–enfranchisement pool to AI-driven voting is a fundamental change that requires renewed consent from the DAO. Reducing the stake minimizes governance risk while still allowing the team to continue testing agentic tools at a scale that cannot swing votes on its own.
  • Wind Down the MSS + Transfer Payment Responsibilities to the Arbitrum Foundation
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: We support getting rid of the MSS and acknowledge that it caused major inefficiencies because it added extra steps—such as dual approvals and manual coordination between the DAO, the MSS, and the Foundation—but this change also shifts power away from decentralization toward greater control by the Arbitrum Foundation. Decentralization is a trade-off with efficiency; however, this move gives the Foundation too much control over DAO operations, as it will now oversee all spending. Overall, we are in favor of the proposal for the added efficiency, but the centralization risk must be carefully considered.

Tally Votes:

  • [CONSTITUTIONAL] AIP: ArbOS Version 40 Callisto
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: This proposal continues to push Arbitrum to the forefront of the Ethereum scaling roadmap and aligns with our views of the role Arbitrum will ever-increasingly play in the space.
32

Delegate Updates June 1 - 30

Snapshot Votes:

  • Reallocate Redeemed USDM Funds to STEP 2 Budget
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: With USDM wound down after Anchorage Digital’s acquisition of Mountain Protocol, we support reallocating the $3.5M USDC to the STEP 2 basket exactly as approved (WTGXX 30 %, USTBL 35 %, BENJI 35 %).
  • Updating the OpCo Foundation’s Operational Capability
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: We support the changes to OpCo because they will let the team sign service-provider contracts on its own, so good ideas get vetted quickly instead of waiting for a full DAO vote; they free up any extra budget for small pilots, letting us test new plans before asking the DAO for large sums; they turn the 4 M ARB bonus pool into a broader pay-and-bonus pool, making it easier to hire and keep top staff; and they loosen the election rules so more skilled people can serve on the oversight council while still limiting one seat per company.
  • Let’s improve our governance forum with three proposals.app feature integrations
    Vote: Against
    Rational: We are aware of the benefits that the new Live-Vote banner will pin real-time quorum and deadline data to every proposal thread, guiding delegates straight from discussion to Snapshot or on-chain ballots and sharply reducing missed quorums; the Voting-Power tags give instant context on each commenter’s ARB weight, enabling readers to distinguish substantive delegate contributions from less-relevant commentary; opt-in proposal-notification emails pull busy or new delegates back whenever a thread opens, a vote launches, or 24 hours remain, trimming late votes; every feature ships as a self-hostable, open-source Discourse component backed by an AGPL-licensed GitHub repo and a publicly monitored uptime dashboard. However, we thought the proposed budget was too high for the service, thus we voted against.
  • Arbitrum Treasury Management Council - Consolidating Efforts
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: We voted for the creation of the unified Arbitrum Treasury Management Council because merging the TMC, GMC and STEP programs into a single council removes the calendar clashes and fragmented mandates that have hampered coherent strategy, giving delegates one clear decision funnel and retiring the ≈ $581 k overhead tied to three separate groups. Entropy’s three open calls and the text revisions that followed show an iterative, collaborative design process that already aligns stakeholders around this structure. By re-using the 1 M ARB already budgeted for the legacy committees and adding no new salaries, the overhaul curbs administrative spend while still leaving room to hire specialist service providers when needed. Moving the DAO “checking account” under the Foundation lets invoices be settled in stables instead of liquidating ARB, which shields operations from price swings and smooths budgeting.
  • [Constitutional] AIP: Remove Cost Cap on Arbitrum Nova
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: Continuing to fund or run Arbitrum Nova is no longer warranted; our energy and resources belong solely on Arbitrum One. Thus we voted for.

Tally Votes:

  • DeFi Renaissance Incentive Program (DRIP)
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: We support the DeFi Renaissance Incentive Program. Targeting concrete goals such as creating the deepest USDT/ETH liquidity should make it easier to measure and evaluate outcomes compared with broad, protocol-level incentives. In addition, maintaining an extensive whitelist of eligible protocols and rewarding users for defined on-chain actions—like lending or borrowing under clear criteria—avoids giving any single platform an unfair advantage and encourages ecosystem-wide growth. We also expect higher post-incentive retention, because users will have multiple venues to choose from rather than being forced onto a single protocol only to leave once rewards stop. Our main concern is that the Season Selection Committee can unilaterally adjust parameters or terminate a season; while this flexibility enables rapid iteration, it also limits delegate influence.
  • CONSTITUTIONAL Register the Sky Custom Gateway contracts in the Router
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: We support this proposal due to it’s thorough review, having the contracts audited and formally verified, as well as the collaboration with Offchain Labs to promote alignment with the Arbitrum Ecosystem. The expansion of USDS, sUSDS, and the Sky ecosystem into Arbitrum only serves to benefit our community and users due to their longstanding success and remainder at the frontier of innovation in the space.
  • [Constitutional] AIP: Constitutional Quorum Threshold Reduction
    Vote: FOR
    Rational: We are in support of altering the quorum threshold from 5 % to 4.5 %. We support this change because the participation rate, measured as a percentage of votable supply, has fallen from 8 % in early 2024 to 4–5 % in early 2025. As the circulating supply of $ARB grows and voter turnout remains relatively flat, the participation rate decreases, making quorum requirements increasingly difficult to meet. If the threshold is not lowered, legitimate proposals may fail to pass solely because they cannot reach quorum.