Report N°2: Arbitrum Education, Community Growth and Events Domain
Introduction
In this second report on the Arbitrum Education, Community Growth and Events Domain, we present an update on the distribution of funds to approved projects, as well as our team’s experiences and recommendations for improving program performance.
Updated Budget approved
During the program we received 47 proposals in total, where 19 proposals were rejected, 12 proposals were approved and 17 proposals still are under evaluation.
Summary of projects
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Onboarding of new developers: Creating high-quality video courses to educate, hands-on exercises, and real work projects destined to attract developers from Brazil.
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Arbitrum as official sponsor of Ethereum Mexico 2023: Sponsoring Ethereum Mexico 2023 to onboard new users from the region along with an Arbitrum workshop for developers.
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DeFi Africa - Web3 BUIDL Workshops: 3 Arbitrum Workshops for developers in the African region.
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Arbitrum Academy: Creation of an interactive website with guides, simulations, tidbits, and timelines about how to use the arbitrum ecosystem.
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MetricsDAO: Web3 Analytics within the Arbitrum Ecosystem: Course focused on Arbitrum technical resources and immersion into blockchain data analysis.
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Blockchain Innovation Hub - A Three Month Bootcamp for Developers: Bootcamp for new/intermediate developers with training, product incubations, hackathons and community building.
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Arbitrum STIP Virtual Event Marathon: Virtual Marathon organized to show the candidates to receive grants from the Short Term Incentives Proposal (STIP)
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Arbitrum Arabic: Website and academy creation with videos, articles, guides and infographics, webinars and docs translations to educate the arabic community about the Arbitrum technology.
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Arbitrum Aeternum Program: A series of talks with a Bootcamp and hackathon for builders of the Italian community.
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Arbitrum Deep Dive Quest Run: Creation of interactive quests about how to use and interact with Arbitrum directly and with some projects deployed on Arbitrum.
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Atoma Project + Arbinauts + Cryptoversidad Collaboration: Creating a website with educational resources, videos, tutorials, podcast series, articles, and newsletters about Arbitrum aimed at the LATAM community.
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web3 Warri: Talks about Arbitrum in 3 different Universities across Nigeria.
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Arbitrum BUIDL Program: 25 Workshops across India colleagues destined for students in coding and newcomers to the coding scene.
Down here you can see the approved projects budgets:
| Approved Projects | Budget Requested |
|---|---|
| Onboarding of new developers | $ 9.500,00 |
| Arbitrum as official sponsor of Ethereum Mexico 2023 | $ 5.000,00 |
| DeFi Africa - Web3 BUIDL Workshops | $ 9.750,00 |
| Arbitrum Academy | $ 19.500,00 |
| MetricsDAO: Web3 Analytics within the Arbitrum Ecosystem | $ 20.500,00 |
| Blockchain Innovation Hub - A Three Month Bootcamp for Developers | $ 16.000,00 |
| Arbitrum STIP Virtual Event Marathon | $ 6.250,00 |
| Arbitrum Arabic | $ 14.025,00 |
| Arbitrum Deep Dive Quest Run | $ 17.500,00 |
| Atoma Project + Arbinauts + Cryptoversidad Collaboration | $ 22.248,00 |
| web3 Warri Arbitrum Universities IRL Events | $ 15.151,0 |
| Arbitrum BUIDL Program | $ 25.000,00 |
| Total | $ 199.274,00 |
As seen in the table, the total amount committed corresponds to $199,274.00, which is very close to the $200k allocated to each domain, as stated in the original Domain Allocator by Questbook proposal.
At the time of writing this report, of the $199,274.00 committed, only $48,950.00 has been distributed, meaning the domain still needs to distribute $150,324.00.
Proposal’s Map
This map represents an approximation of the regions and countries to which the approved projects belong, demonstrating the regional diversity on which the domain is focused, as explained in our vision and criteria for grants
As we said in our previous report, please let us know if you think there are errors in this map, we’re open to feedback.
Our experience as Domain Allocators
While being domain allocators, we came across certain situations that we would like to discuss with the community, as we believe that they can add value to the program’s performance.
Budget swap
The original questbook proposal stated that each domain would have to distribute $200k to projects during the experimental program, however the amounts expressed in the proposal were in stables, while, during the program, the payments were made using the ARB token.
The price of the token moved up significantly during much of December and early January, so there was no reason to stop using the ARB token as the primary asset for distributing grants.
However, due to market volatility and concern that the price of the ARB token would collapse lower than 1$, a decision was made together with all domain allocators, to convert the entire committed amount to stable currency in order to ensure that approved projects would receive enough funding during the program.
This decision was shared in the forum by jojo to receive the feedback from the community members and other
Project collaboration case
We experienced a very interesting case where we had 3 proposals that offered a similar concept , these project were:
- Arbitrum University
- The Arbinauts Hub: 2 video-courses + Website + Growth: X, newsletter and podcast
- Atoma Project (This one was used to create the final proposal)
After an internal discussion between our team and project members, where we checked all 3 project ideas, we suggested to the team leaders that the 3 teams could support each other in order to create just one strong proposal. This was only a suggestion, the team leaders always made the final decision.
It is important to mention that during this process, the Arbitrum Foundation has contributed to making this collaboration possible. We believe that it would be beneficial for the Arbitrum Foundation to formally establish a direct line to the domain allocator program to cover all projects. This would not only provide greater exposure for such projects, but would also significantly increase interest in Arbitrum, thus attracting more builders. We cannot underestimate the importance of establishing these direct lines of communication with the Arbitrum Foundation in this process, as we believe that actions such as this are useful to maximize the impact of these initiatives in the ecosystem and build confidence not only in the grants recipients but also in the community members.
These team leaders had a couple of meetings and finally they reached us to communicate that they will be collaborating to create just 1 proposal named “Atoma Project + Arbinauts + Cryptoversidad Collaboration”
Domain allocators collaboration
Internally, the domain allocators along with the program manager have a telegram group that is used to communicate feedback about the program and interaction between each domain member.
As expressed by Danielo in his post, in some cases a proposal can cover 2 or even more domains at the same time. This happened to us several times and we had internal conversations with other domain allocators to determine on which domain it was appropriate for the applicant to submit their proposal.
Large amount of High level proposal
As we pointed out in our last report, our role as domain allocator posed a significant challenge in managing a considerable volume of high-level proposals. In consequence, we spent considerable time meticulously reviewing each project idea and budget, resulting in a complex selection process. However, guided by our vision and criteria, our main objective remained to ensure the selection of projects with the highest quality and the most favorable value. This also gave us an indication that the funds allocated to the domain were not sufficient as we would have been able to cover more high-level applications.
Regional Diversity
During the process, we received numerous proposals from various countries and regions, which gave us great satisfaction. However, it also meant additional work. Each region had its own pricing rates, which required a concerted effort on our part to align these prices with domain costs. We tried to maintain regional diversity (as shown on the map), we believe this is beneficial for Arbitrum.
Things to improve
After the whole process we faced as domain allocators, we recollected recommendations based on our experience and perspective from other programs.
Addition of the program parameters
Through the process, we realized that we needed to clarify the maximum amount per proposal (25k) repeatedly along with the deadline of the domain allocator program. We believe these simple parameters should be visible directly from the website UI, just like the parameters that already show on the website.
KYC and Agreement Statement
One person from each approved project must complete a KYC process along with an Agreement before the release of any funds. We think that this process should be mentioned to make it clear to all proposers from the beginning. This will optimize the time process. Additionally, the KYC link + documents could also be provided in a more automated way, i.e. simply sending them the KYC link to their email upon approval + the agreement once they pass KYC.
Website Improvement
After using the Questbook site for a time, we realized that some parts of the website can be improved or added, for example allowing editing or removal of comments, increasing the character limit for rubrics (currently 300 characters which is often not enough to justify how we assign scores) or the support of hyperlinks. With these little modifications, we think that the website will be more comfortable to use.
Questbook is a very good platform for grants, it is transparent, but we believe it can be improved in case the DAO wishes to continue with the program in the future, which we believe benefits the Arbitrum ecosystem.
Program Funding
We recommend optimizing program funding by using stablecoins from the beginning of the program. This strategic approach eliminates concerns related to token fluctuations, providing a clearer path for budget analysis and accounting. This, in turn, reduces the risk of miscalculations. Another alternative would be to fund the program in ARB and simply immediately turn funds into stables upon approval of a program (unless they choose to get paid in ARB).
Diffusion to approved projects
At the end of the day, all approved projects will add value to the arbitrum ecosystem, so we believe it is very important to support these projects to give them enough diffusion to all ecosystem members. We believe this can be done with the support of the Arbitrum Foundation.
Conclusions
In this report on the Education, Community Growth and Events Domain, we have provided details about the distribution of funds, along with our experience as domain allocators, and made recommendations to improve the program performance.
From our side, we’re committed to optimizing our processes and collaborating with the community to ensure the success and sustainability of the domain allocator program. We welcome your feedback and look forward to implementing these recommendations for continuous improvement.
As we said in our first report, we are committed to presenting a comprehensive final report to the Arbitrum community when the Domain Allocators grants program concludes.