Hello and gm. Let’s go step by step here.
Thanks for spinning this spreadsheet up. The numbers look indeed correct.
And this number is correct as well.
I can totally see how you would perceive some projects worth a funding. While any program has guidelines and a set of accompanying docs such as RFP and others, there is always a certain degree of subjectivity in the evaluation of a grant/investment, and in general in any job that requires handling capital to third parties for them to manage. So, I really see your point when you say that in your opinion they should have been funded.
At the same time, my general take would be that, if the DAO elected a set of people to do these evaluations, these people should be trusted and their judgment should be taken in account also considering that degree of subjectivity.
The reason is, honestly, quite simple. Castle has a very specific internal framework for approval and rejection, with two main steps: in the first one they ask a specific set of questions (that are derived but also altered from their other internal framework, an investment one). If the proposer passes this first set, then they go more in deep with tailored questions.
When you see a lot of rejections with very similar rationale is actually an indication of the consistency of this framework: most proposers are currently not able to pass this first step and so they get rejected for similar reasons.
Note that other DAs have similar frameworks as well: most of them have a specific set of initial questions with follow ups after certain details are disclosed.
First, thanks for the link to their answer in the forum. I wasn’t tagged there nor they did contact me in private and would have been good to have awareness (on my side) of this answer. So will reach out to them.
I want to go a bit in deep on this proposal. There is a lenghtly discussion in questbook about the valuation which is worth sharing partially here since it was not posted for whatever reason.
What you see here is the rational of rejecting.
I would like to point out that
- Before this 800 words review, there were certain questions from Castle to the proposer which were answered in length
- After this proposal, there was a followup from both the proposer and Castle on the review itself and other details.
One thing stands out: the team is for sure committed to the product, and it shows by their answers. At the same time,
- the biggest question mark (and not the only one) is about sustainability which was not properly addressed and was cardinal in this review
- governance tooling are not a main focus in the “new protocols and ideas” for this season.
All of the above is something that was really worth addressing and I thank you for reaching out on these points.
I want also to add my personal point of view as program manager of this season and will try to be brief:
- in an agnostic way in regard to the quality of proposals, I am relative neutral right now on underspending vs spending at capacity; but underspending offers the advantage, if/when the right time comes, to heavily invest in good teams and opportunities. The opposite is instead not possible
- the DAO vote gave us the mandate to finance good projects through the judgment of the current DAs team with a certain yearly budget. We don’t have the mandate to spend a certain amount of capital per month, nor to even allocate the whole amount assigned to the program as a whole
- the “new protocols and ideas” domain is the most general bucket, and also the one that can be more elastic in relation to DAO’s needs. We are, right now, in a transitional phase, with the OpCo being stood up and the SOS proposals being aggregated. I am personally fine in being more spending averse now in the general bucket, waiting for a time in which there is more clarity in the DAO as a whole
- the domains are quite different between each other in term of verticals and goals and very different in term of people behind that manages them. There are intrinsic differences due to these that translates, among others, in different spending rates.
I am totally fine with @CastleCapital and specifically ndw/chilla being conservative in spending if they don’t find proposals that, in their opinion, are good enough. The last thing that we want, as a DAO, is to just throw money away.
I want to emphasize that they could just avoid all of this noise by simply increasing the pace of approvals. Not a lot of people would complain. This would be the “easy” route. The hard route is to try and focus on the teams that have the highest potential and alignment with Arbitrum, up to deciding on spending money at a slower pace if these teams are not to be currently found, according to their judgment.
I want to know focus on a few key points that should probably be highlighted as well.
Quite a strong take. You are stating that “this is the main cause for good builders to shy away from Arbitrum, forever”. Do you have any data or conducted any meaningful number of interviews to protocols and builders that decided to not build in Arbitrum due to either a lack of grant programs or direct rejection in the grant ask from the D.A.O program?
I can see your point. At the same time is extremely unrealistic to think that, if a project was supported in one of the program/initiative of our DAO or of other DAOs, should automatically be supported in all or most of other programs we have running.
Having every project that got a grant from thrive/plurality, questbook, foundation, our dao, get all a second, a third and a fourth grant in other programs, would mean for us to just waste our treasury.
In my personal view, being allocated a grant and complete that grant successfully, or being first in an hackaton, or anything similar, is a very good data point to consider to judge a follow up. But is also just that: a single data point, and not a blank sheet to be necessarily entitled to further support.
And no, this doesn’t clash with the vision of a funnel for builders that both me and others posted, but is instead a sounding and logical way to approach a situation in which we have builders in an amount of several order of magnitude above the capital and support we can offer.
As a final note, this is the point that kept me thinking for the last few hours.
The question about approval rate in this specific domain was already asked by you in the last GCR call, and I provided an answer. Maybe it was too brief due to also the time we all had at hand, so I can understand why you wanted more details.
You could have reached out to me or to CastleCap in relation to this question instead of going directly to the forum; regardless, this is (kinda) fine as well tho.
But
- wanting to ask this question
- not reaching out to the PM of the program or to the DA or to the company for which the DA works for to get clarification
- posting on a public forum statements containing insinuations about the work ethics of the individuals involved
is something that doesn’t provide any value to our program, to our DAO or to Arbitrum as a whole.