Introduction
As a Firestarters grantee, @rikagoldberg from Axia Network conducted research to validate the need for a Contributor Incentives Program in Arbitrum DAO.
This research emerged because it was not clear what kind of work a contributor program would actually support. More broadly, “contributor” is a term widely used across DAOs without a clear or consistent definition, even though in practice it can refer to very different roles, responsibilities, and forms of value creation. A central goal of this research was to make the role more legible by clarifying where contributors may be best positioned to add value.
In Arbitrum’s case, the role of contributor could entail improving information flow so that existing and new builders can navigate the DAO more effectively, surfacing and scoping new initiative ideas, extending Arbitrum’s geographic reach, making strategic introductions, or supporting ecosystem functions that do not cleanly fit within an existing AAE, grant program, or full-time role. While there is broad intuition that contributors may be valuable, there is much less clarity on where that value is actually strongest, where current pathways may already be sufficient, and where a formal program would create more ecosystem benefit than coordination cost.
If validation confirmed a clear need, a follow-up Firestarter or other appropriate funding path could then focus on program design. The purpose of this report, however, was not simply to produce a yes-or-no answer. It was to provide a clearer view of the current state, identify the most meaningful gaps within it, and clarify the conditions under which a future contributor model would or would not make sense.
To produce that assessment, this report combines insights from 16 stakeholder interviews, follow-up validation, and a review of the broader contributor-incentives context that led to this Firestarter grant in the first place.
Executive Summary
Stakeholder interviews and follow-up validation point less toward immediate program launch and more toward a focused design phase. The strongest use of this research is to shape what a future contributor model should actually be for, where it would add value, and what constraints it would need to satisfy.
This research suggests that contributors may be valuable in a few specific areas, but only where the role is clearly defined, the need is real, and the work is well suited to external support. The clearest evidence in this report points toward roles centered on DAO information navigation for builders and protocols, particularly for teams that want to engage meaningfully in governance but struggle to keep up with proposals, discussions, and ecosystem signal. It also points toward contributor-led idea origination and early scoping for new initiatives, especially where outside contributors may be uniquely positioned to identify gaps, research opportunities, and develop early concepts before internal teams decide whether and how to operationalize them. A third, though less mature, area is more distributed geographic ecosystem support, where contributors could help extend Arbitrum’s presence through local relationships, events, and ecosystem coverage that current teams may not be able to provide consistently across regions. Other areas, especially those that depend on deep internal context, prioritization authority, or ongoing operational ownership, appear less suited to contributor-led structures.
The follow-up validation also made clear that these opportunities should not be treated as a general case for contributor incentives. As the report discusses in more detail below, any future model would need to be selective, clearly scoped, aligned with real ecosystem demand, and designed around hard, measurable outcomes, such as increases in revenue or active voting power rather than activity volume. Just as importantly, it would need to avoid creating low-signal participation, duplicated effort, or new coordination burdens for the teams it is supposed to support.
Why This Research Was Needed
The question of contributor incentives did not emerge in a vacuum. It emerged because stakeholders across Arbitrum’s existing structures have repeatedly expressed interest in seeing more meaningful contributor participation, whether through explicit discussion of a contributor incentives program, posts like Patrick’s exploring different types of contributor engagement, or broader calls for more new proposals, ideas, and forum participation. The reality, however, is that those expectations have not been matched by a formal structure or pathway for contributors to add value. Without that, the idea of “more contributors” remains mostly aspirational: there is still no shared mechanism that clearly defines what contributors should do, where that work belongs, or how it would be supported.
At the same time, Arbitrum DAO already has several pathways for participation, support, and funding. Builders can access different grant and ecosystem support structures. Delegates now have RAD. Firestarters has created a pathway for certain kinds of exploratory research and early-stage work. Yet despite these mechanisms, the contributor question remained unresolved, because it was still not clear whether there was a meaningful category of work that was falling between them, or whether the issue was simply that existing pathways were underused, fragmented, or hard to navigate.
That ambiguity is what made validation necessary. The issue was not simply whether contributors can be useful. In many cases, they already are. The more important question was whether there are forms of high-value work that are currently under-supported, whether those forms of work are actually well suited to contributors rather than existing pathways or traditional hiring, and whether enough real demand and contributor supply exist to justify designing a more formal model.
This was especially important in the context of prior contributor and delegate incentive efforts. Previous programs left behind a mix of skepticism, caution, and unresolved lessons about low-signal participation, weak accountability, and incentives that were easier to game than to tie to meaningful ecosystem outcomes. As a result, any future conversation about contributor incentives needed to begin not with program design, but with a clearer understanding of what problem, if any, a contributor model would actually be solving.
That is the role this research was intended to play. Before proposing a structure, it aimed to determine whether a meaningful gap existed, where that gap was strongest, and what kinds of contribution would actually justify more formal design work.
Research Questions
The research questions were designed to test the contributor question from multiple angles. The goal was to understand whether a meaningful category of work actually existed, whether the relevant stakeholders wanted support in those areas, whether credible contributor supply was available, and whether the evidence justified moving toward a more formal model at all.
This validation research was designed to answer five core questions:
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Gap Analysis: What work needs to be done that is not currently covered by AAEs, grants, Firestarters, or consultancy arrangements?
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Demand Validation: Do AAEs and builders actually want or need contributor support? What specific help would be valuable?
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Supply Validation: Are contributors willing and able to do this work? What is preventing them from contributing now?
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Past Program Analysis: Why did previous DIP programs fail? What lessons should inform any future program?
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Needs Confirmation: Is there sufficient unmet need to justify a contributor incentives program, or are existing pathways already adequate?
Research Approach
To answer these questions, the research combined stakeholder interviews, follow-up validation, and review of relevant ecosystem materials.
The core of the work consisted of 16 stakeholder interviews across the groups most likely to shape, operate within, or be affected by any future contributor model. This included AAEs and Foundation stakeholders, builders, delegates, and existing contributors. The goal of this interview round was not only to surface candidate areas of unmet need, but also to understand how different parts of the ecosystem currently perceive contributor work, where existing pathways appear sufficient, and where they may be falling short.
Following the initial interview round, a second phase of validation was used to pressure-test the emerging conclusions. This was especially important because the first round surfaced a more conditional and nuanced picture than the idea of a contributor program initially suggested. Follow-up validation helped clarify which workstreams had the strongest support, which were weaker or more context-dependent, and what constraints any future model would need to satisfy in order to avoid repeating previous design failures.
In parallel, the research also reviewed the broader context surrounding contributor incentives in Arbitrum, including prior discussions, existing participation and funding pathways, and lessons from past delegate and contributor incentive efforts. This made it possible to evaluate the findings not just at the level of individual interviews, but in the context of the DAO’s current operating model and the institutional memory surrounding earlier programs.
Taken together, this approach was designed to produce something more useful than a surface-level sentiment check. It was intended to determine whether the contributor question was pointing to a real structural gap, a problem of fragmented access and unclear pathways, or simply an area where existing mechanisms were already adequate.
Current Pathways
One of the first questions in this research was whether a contributor incentives program would address a real gap, or whether the relevant work was already being covered through existing pathways.
As the compensation pathways map below shows, Arbitrum already has multiple builder-facing support and compensation pathways, along with a clearer delegate incentive path through RAD. By contrast, contributor-facing pathways are much thinner and less legible. In practice, builders have several ways to access support, delegates now have a defined incentive structure, and contributors have far fewer clear answers to the questions: what work is actually wanted, where should it go, and how would it be evaluated or supported if valuable?
This asymmetry does not, on its own, justify a contributor incentives program. But it does help explain why the contributor question has remained unresolved. The issue is not that Arbitrum has no support structures. It is that some types of contributor-shaped work do not map cleanly onto the pathways that already exist, and the current system does not make it especially clear how those contributions should be surfaced, routed, or rewarded.
What the stakeholder interview round helped clarify is that this gap is not simply about “more pathways” in the abstract. It is about whether there is a meaningful category of work falling between existing structures, or whether the real problem is that current pathways are fragmented, hard to navigate, or only legible to people who are already close to the ecosystem.
Stakeholder Interview Insights
Across the interview round, stakeholders repeatedly pointed to a small number of work areas that do not appear to fit cleanly within existing structures. Importantly, these were not all equally well supported by the evidence, nor were they all equally suited to contributors rather than existing pathways, internal teams, or traditional hiring. What emerged was not a general case for “more contributors,” but a narrower set of recurring themes that helped clarify where contributors may be best positioned to add value, where current pathways may already be sufficient, and where the underlying issue may be fragmentation, routing, or prioritization rather than the absence of support altogether.
Across the interviews, four recurring categories of unmet or under-supported work surfaced:
- Information navigation and signal-routing for builders and protocols
- Idea origination and early scoping for new initiatives
- Geographic ecosystem coverage and community-building
- Business development and network support
They must also be contextualized with the research findings which showed skepticism and caution if designed incorrectly.
The four categories were useful as a way of organizing the interview material, but one of the most important outcomes of the validation process was that they did not all hold up equally well. Some emerged as stronger candidates for future contributor design work, while others appeared more dependent on internal context, existing structures, or forms of support that may be better handled elsewhere.
What The Validation Clarified
The second round of validation did more than confirm the initial interview themes. It also sharpened the picture by clarifying which workstreams had the strongest support, which had weaker evidence or greater design risk, and what constraints any future contributor model would need to respect from the outset.
What emerged from this second round was not a broader case for contributor incentives, but a narrower and more actionable understanding of where contributors may be useful, what precedent already exists, and where the limits of the model become clearer.
First, the follow-up validation strengthened the case for information flow and DAO navigation as a contributor-suitable area. Builders who wanted to engage more meaningfully in governance consistently described the same challenge: too much noise, too little prioritization, and no easy way to translate proposals, discussions, and ecosystem updates into a small number of relevant actions. This made the idea of contributor roles centered on DAO information navigation, especially for builders and protocols that value governance participation, one of the clearest and most actionable directions to come out of the research.
Second, the validation also gave clearer shape to the “idea origination” category. What initially appeared as a broad cluster of lower-priority or under-owned work became more concrete when reframed around contributor-led research, feasibility analysis, and early scoping for initiatives that AAEs may later operationalize. This was one of the clearest areas where contributor work appeared to have both some precedent and a plausible structural fit.
Third, the validation made it harder to treat all candidate workstreams as equally viable. Geographic ecosystem support remained plausible, especially where local relationships, events, and regional coverage matter, but it appeared less mature as a near-term design area. Business development and network support, while real in some cases, became weaker as a contributor-specific recommendation because they depend more heavily on internal context, prioritization judgment, and relationship ownership that may be difficult to externalize cleanly.
Finally, the constraints became sharper. The follow-up round reinforced that any future model would need to be selective, clearly scoped, aligned with real ecosystem demand, and designed around hard, measurable outcomes, such as increases in revenue or active voting power rather than activity volume. Just as importantly, it would need to avoid creating low-signal participation, duplicated effort, or new coordination burdens for the teams it is supposed to support.
The second round narrowed the contributor program thesis. That narrowing is one of the most useful outcomes of the research, because it moves the conversation away from whether contributors might be useful in the abstract and toward the more actionable question of where a future model would actually make sense.
Before turning to the recommendation, it is also important to situate these findings in the context of prior incentive efforts. One of the clearest questions running through this research was not only where contributors may add value, but how any future model could avoid repeating the failure modes of earlier programs.
Past Program Lessons from the Delegate Incentives Program (DIP)
One of the clearest parts of this research was the consistency of stakeholder feedback on prior incentive programs, especially DIP. While views differed on whether contributor incentives should be revisited, there was much more alignment on what previous programs got wrong and what lessons should carry forward.
What Worked
The research did not suggest that previous programs failed in every respect. Several stakeholders noted that DIP and related efforts did succeed in generating participation, surfacing contributors, and, in some cases, retaining people who remained active in the ecosystem over time. At a minimum, these programs demonstrated that there is some appetite for compensated contribution and that incentive design can quickly shape participation patterns.
They also helped clarify an important design distinction: some categories of contribution are much easier to define and evaluate than others. That lesson matters directly for any future model.
What Created Gaming and Low-Quality Participation
The most consistent critique was that prior programs rewarded activity more reliably than value. Stakeholders repeatedly described models that compensated posting, compliance, or visible participation without a strong enough connection to meaningful ecosystem outcomes. That made the programs easier to game and harder to justify.
Several related failure modes surfaced repeatedly:
- low barriers to participation created noise
- incentives encouraged optimization around the metric rather than the mission
- quality was harder to evaluate than quantity
- some participants were weakly aligned with long-term ecosystem value
- changes to incentives or expectations could quickly undermine trust in the program
These lessons point to a clear conclusion: the problem was that incentives were often too loosely scoped, too easy to optimize around, and too weakly tied to hard outcomes such as revenue or increases in active voting power.
Recommendation
Taken together, the interview round and follow-up validation point less toward immediate program launch and more toward a focused design phase. The strongest use of this research is to shape what a future contributor model should actually be for, where it would add value, and what constraints it would need to satisfy.
The recommendation that follows is less about whether contributors could be useful in the abstract, and more about which contributor functions now have the clearest evidence, strongest precedent, and most actionable design questions.
This research suggests that contributors may be valuable in a few specific areas, but only where the role is clearly defined, the need is real, and the work is well suited to external support. The clearest evidence in this report points toward roles centered on DAO information navigation for builders and protocols, particularly for teams that want to engage meaningfully in governance but struggle to keep up with the volume of proposals, discussions, and ecosystem signal. It also points toward contributor-led idea origination and early scoping for new initiatives, especially where outside contributors may be well positioned to identify gaps, research opportunities, and develop early concepts before internal teams decide whether and how to operationalize them. A third, though less mature, area is more distributed geographic ecosystem support, where contributors could help extend Arbitrum’s presence through local relationships, events, and ecosystem coverage that current teams may not be able to provide consistently across regions. Other areas, especially those that depend on deep internal context, prioritization authority, or ongoing operational ownership, appear less suited to contributor-led structures.
The follow-up validation also made clear that these opportunities should not be treated as a general case for contributor incentives. As the report has shown, if Arbitrum chooses to take this work further, any future model would need to be selective, clearly scoped, aligned with real ecosystem demand, and designed around hard, measurable outcomes, such as increases in revenue or delegation. Just as importantly, it would need to avoid creating low-signal participation, duplicated effort, or new coordination burdens for the teams it is supposed to support.
Accordingly, the recommendation is not to move directly into launch, but to use this research to scope a future contributor model around the few work areas that now have the clearest evidence, strongest precedent, and most actionable design questions. In that sense, the most useful outcome of this research is not a finished program concept, but a clearer design brief for what a future contributor model would need to optimize for, and what it would need to avoid from the outset.
Closing
This research was designed to answer a narrow but important question: whether ArbitrumDAO should move toward a contributor incentives program, and if so, on what basis. Taken together, the interview round and follow-up validation do not point to a simple case for immediate launch. What they do provide is a clearer understanding of where contributors may be best positioned to add value, where the evidence is strongest, and what constraints any future model would need to respect from the outset.
The most useful outcome of the research is not a finished program concept, but a clearer basis for what a future contributor model would need to solve for.
Rather than treating “contributors” as a broad or loosely defined category, this research helps make the question more concrete. It narrows the field of plausible contributor functions, clarifies where existing pathways may already be sufficient, and gives the DAO a more grounded basis for deciding whether a future design phase is warranted.
If Arbitrum DAO chooses to take the work further, the next step should not be to rush toward a finished mechanism. It should be to use this research as a design brief: to define the specific functions a future contributor model would serve, the operating conditions required for it to work, and the outcomes it would need to produce in order to justify its existence.
A companion deck summarizing the research findings is also available here.
About The Author
Rika Goldberg has been a delegate in ArbitrumDAO since its inception, first through 404 DAO and now through Axia Network, which she founded. In addition to serving as a delegate, she has also been a signer on Arbitrum’s MSS. Her work in Arbitrum has focused on contributor onboarding, with this research examining how the DAO might create clearer pathways for meaningful contributor engagement.
This report was produced through a Firestarters grant to evaluate whether ArbitrumDAO should pursue a contributor incentives program, where contributors may be best positioned to add value, and what constraints any future model would need to satisfy.