Arbitrum DAO Procurement Committee: Phase II Proposal

Proposals
62

The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.

We’re voting AGAINST the proposal.

First off, we want to thank the ADPC both for its tenure over the past 6 months and for the effort put into creating this proposal. We appreciate their work, and we carefully considered our decision before voting.

There are 3 distinct reasons why we’ve decided to vote against the proposal:

  1. When it comes to work package one and the procurement of service provides for the two verticals outlined in the proposal, we’re not sure to what end we’ll be procuring these SPs for. There is currently no way for the DAO to utilize and engage with service providers in a way that would make procurement meaningful.
  2. Regarding work package 2 and the administration of the subsidy fund, we were under the assumption that the ADPC would administer the fund within the scope of its first term — which is also why we were supportive of ADPC managing the subsidy fund instead of setting up a separate committee for it. We’re supportive of this part of the proposal, but we believe it should be a standalone proposal specifically for the management of the subsidy fund.
  3. Lastly, while the creation of an OpEx budget could help the DAO better define and manage its finances, similar to work package one, there’s currently no way for the DAO to use such a budget. Unless we figure out the other part of the equation, which is who is responsible for managing the OpEx budget and who is responsible for keeping the service providers that are paid through the OpEx budget accountable, then we do not see the reason to proceed.

We believe the work proposed is valuable, but it comes at a time when there’s no fertile ground in the DAO for it to work. We’d suggest a separate proposal is created for managing the security services subsidy fund and for the other work packages to be revisited down the line.

4 Likes
63

We’re voting FOR this proposal. The ADPC has proven its value in Phase I. While concerns about centralization and election procedures are valid, disrupting the committee’s momentum could be counterproductive. We urge the ADPC to prioritize knowledge transfer and explore more robust election processes for future iterations, ensuring long-term decentralization and continuity. As mentioned by others, we should start working on a general election framework, tenure terms (duration and compensation).

64

The results are in for the ArbitrumDAO Procurement Committee Phase II off-chain proposal.

See how the community voted and more Arbitrum stats:

65

Hi @krst and @Sinkas,

Thank you again for the thorough discussions we’ve had over the past few weeks. We do appreciate the exchange we’re continuing to have.

We value your perspective and we understand that you’re currently against this proposal, and will closely take your inputs into account when moving this forward. As promised, we’ll connect you with builders who have expressed an interest in the procurement of RPC services, so they can share their insights on the value they see in it. Re. the OpEx budget, we are taking your feedback into account as we design how to make it operational.

I know we’ve discussed these topics before, and while our views on feasibility differ slightly (though not entirely), we remain confident in our ability to fulfil our commitments and support the creation of this fertile ground for the DAO.

We’ll stay in close touch and hope to alleviate any concerns going forward. Thanks again for providing meaningful feedback that helps us to shape our scope in the right direction. Appreciate it!

66

Hi all, thank you so much for your continued engagement and feedback on this proposal, and your trust in us for the next term!

Over the past few weeks, we had a lot of great discussions on and off the forum that have allowed us to identify the areas to sharpen our focus in for Phase II:

  1. Making sure to measure the explicit value created by the procurement frameworks for projects building in the Arbitrum ecosystem from the additional discounts and value-adds, better SLAs, and improved service scopes that we are able to negotiate with providers.
  2. Close collaboration with the key parties involved in driving the Events Strategy for 2025 and ensuring that the Strategy is as comprehensive and granularly defined as possible.
  3. Ensure that marketing and awareness creation is top of mind and executed well; the best outcome for the Arbitrum ecosystem is to have as many top-quality service providers apply and get whitelisted, while ensuring that builders are similarly aware of the opportunities within the ecosystem.

Furthermore, we have heard the community’s sentiments on key topics and are taking them into consideration as outlined below, specifically:

  1. Re-Elections

    We will make sure that there is a round of elections held prior to any next phase and will drive the preparation ourselves - obviously, we would also appreciate any support from Entropy as the DAO Liaison to make sure expectations and handover are aligned with the DAO’s expectations and best practice. We absolutely have no intention of centralizing any power in the current members and solely proposed re-election for Phase II to enable productivity and efficiency and avoid significant ramp-up costs and time. As such, we want to make it clear that any next iteration of the ADPC includes a well-planned and executed election process.

  2. Budget Breakdown

    On the basis of the feedback we have received from @dianedai, @pedrob, @CastleCapital, @kuiclub, @BlockworksResearch, @PGov, @ocandocrypto, and @Tane, we have included a breakdown of the budget including the tasks and allocation of resources at the bottom of the Budget section of the proposal above:

    Please note that the breakdown assumes efficiency gains from executing the work packages as proposed. The delivery timelines are based on our project plan and are indicative. If the scope of the proposal is altered, individual budgets will need to be to account for any potential modifications.

Further, we have heard feedback that whitelisting Dev Shops and making their services easy to access for projects aiming to build on Arbitrum would be valuable for the ecosystem in the mid-term, and we will explore this vertical further if it is relevant to the community and if our capacity allows us to do so. We will also explore opening up another round of whitelisting for security service providers, since we have seen demand from multiple top auditors who were not able to apply in the first round.

Lastly, we are grateful to have had helpful discussions with key delegates off the forum on further verticals to tackle. As you all know, it’s not always easy to capture everyone’s attention, and we’re mindful that mindspace is the rarest commodity - we truly appreciate any time you have taken to engage with this on the forum or directly with us.

Overall, with this incredibly helpful direction from the community and key delegates and our resharpened focus, we couldn’t be more excited to continue our work in Phase II!

2 Likes
67

After consideration, Treasure’s Arbitrum Representative Council (ARC) would like to share the following feedback on the proposal.

We voted FOR this proposal.

We commend the ADPC for its accomplishments in its first term, particularly in establishing the service infrastructure that has become highly sought after by various projects. This aligns well with our vision of the DAO as a service hub, contributing to making Arbitrum a prime destination for builders.

While we occasionally wished for a quicker pace, we value the significant efforts of the ADPC team and support their continued leadership in managing this process. We also recognize the potential of several additional verticals being explored. However, L2Beats’ perspective on the importance of a comprehensive DAO budget before finalizing an OpEx-specific budget offers a compelling point of consideration. We look forward to seeing how discussions and this proposal evolve as the ADPC and the community provide further feedback.

68

We voted YES to extending the ADPC for another 6 month term. We would like to first acknowledge this group’s pioneering efforts — as a DAO Procurement Committee is the first of its kind. We would like to also thank the committee for its laborious work. After reviewing the Outcome Report and attending the most recent ADPC call, it has become more apparent how time and energy intensive it was for the committee to navigate and set-up the required legal infrastructure backbone.

With that said, we would like to echo others concerns about the election procedure. Although we agree that it makes sense for continuity for the committee members to be automatically re-elected, the Tally vote that set up the ADPC does say that members are elected for a term of 6 months. Therefore, at the end of Phase II, we would like to see an election take place.

We look forward to the Phase II deliverables to procure Events Providers and RPC Providers, and would like to see updates made to the DAO throughout the process.

1 Like
69

Hi all! In preparation for the Tally vote for Phase II of the ADPC, we wanted to (i) highlight the changes we made to the proposal after the Snapshot vote and (ii) provide further clarifications. These changes and clarifications incorporate the feedback provided by the community and optimize our operations.

Re-Elections

As highlighted in the comment above:

We will make sure that there is a round of elections held prior to any next phase and will drive the preparation ourselves - obviously, we would also appreciate any support from Entropy as the DAO Liaison to make sure expectations and handover are aligned with the DAO’s expectations and best practice. We absolutely have no intention of centralizing any power in the current members and solely proposed re-election for Phase II to enable productivity and efficiency and avoid significant ramp-up costs and time. As such, we want to make it clear that any next iteration of the ADPC includes a well-planned and executed election process.

Budget Breakdown

Based on feedback received from community members, we have provided a detailed breakdown of the budget in the Google sheet here. As mentioned above:

Please note that the breakdown assumes efficiency gains from executing the work packages as proposed. The delivery timelines are based on our project plan and are indicative. If the scope of the proposal is altered, individual budgets will need to be to account for any potential modifications.

ARB Conversion Strategy

We want to ensure that the amount of ARB utilized to obtain the budget of 414,000 USDC is as minimal as possible. Therefore, we have decided to use a Protocol-Owned Execution strategy on Gauntlet’s Aera solution for the conversion mechanism…

Once the ARB is converted into USDC, the Aera vault will utilize LlamaPay to stream the total payment due to the ADPC member wallet addresses over the course of the 6-month period (120k USDC per member, 360k USDC in total). The remainder of the converted funds (54k USDC) will remain in the MSS as the OpEx budget. This process will be coordinated with the MSS chairs and members.

Further details about the ARB conversion strategy and about Aera can be found in the newly added Section XI. ARB Conversion Strategy in the proposal.

ARB Token Calculation

We have updated the final ARB amount required to obtain the budget of 414,000 USDC based on the 14-day Time-Weighted Average Price (TWAP) of ARB/USD, each as listed EOD UTC, until EOD on Thu Sep 19 on CoinGecko (https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/arbitrum/historical_data).

The TWAP ARB price used has been updated from $0.5425 to $0.5204, and the total amount of ARB requested has been updated from ARB 915,658 to ARB 954,608.

The Tally vote for this proposal will be live from 15.25 UTC on 26 September 2024 to 15.25 UTC on 10 October 2024 here.

We’re looking forward to continuing our efforts in Phase II and would like to thank the community for all the incredibly helpful feedback and engagement on this proposal!

3 Likes
70

Thanks for the detailed budget information.

However, I have a question:
This budget does not include information on committee members’ salaries.
Are they part of the original budget or will they be separate expenses?

71

Voted in favour to this proposal in the Snapshot stage.

Changes posted by @sid_areta are positive towards the Tally vote, especially around any future phase re-election.

1 Like
72

I’ll be voting in favor of extending the ADPC’s role into Phase II on Tally and Snapshot.
Their achievements in Phase I, including cost savings and setting up procurement frameworks, have demonstrated their effectiveness. The Phase II strategy is well-planned, with a clear and transparent budget.

73

We voted FOR this proposal

Rationale

  • Based on feedback from key delegates, the DAO is mostly satisfied with the team’s performance in Phase 1 (here, here, here, here, here)
  • The proposal outlines a comprehensive action plan detailing the objectives to be accomplished over the next six-month term
  • The budget is thoughtfully prepared, with a detailed breakdown and clear justifications for each expense
  • As noted in the discussion here, procurement typically requires a specialized team with relevant expertise and long-term commitment. Electing a new team would not only disrupt the progress made in Phase 1 but also discourage skilled professionals from engaging with the ecosystem
74

The following reflects the views of the Lampros Labs DAO governance team, composed of @Blueweb, @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.

We are voting FOR this proposal in the Tally voting.

The changes made by @sid_areta from the Snapshot to the Tally proposal have provided better clarity to the proposal. Aside from these updates, our overall thoughts remain the same as expressed in our rationale during the Snapshot voting.

75

Just voted ‘FOR’ this proposal on Tally for the reasons already outlined on my previous reply. Also, I appreciate the changes made from the Snapshot proposal (Budget breakdown + ARB Conversion Strategy) which provide further clarity for this proposal.

76

Had to vote AGAINST, in agreement with @GFXlabs that automatic renewal of member terms without an election is bad form, even if it is time ineffient.

If it was a continuation of the same project i would understand, but given there are completely new deliverables i don’t see the need for having the same members.

1 Like
77

We voted in favor of this proposal during the Snapshot stage, and we’ll continue our support on Tally.

The changes posted by @sid_areta are improving greatly the Tally proposal, particularly regarding future phase re-elections. As others have noted, we should begin developing a general election framework, including tenure terms (duration and compensation).

78

voting Against the current onchain proposal because we can’t create a procurement committee on the premise that it’s members will be elected by the DAO every 6 months and then on the end of the first term don’t do an election process and entrench the current members even more, with more scope, and therefor more power, especially for a procurement committee which is a function that concentrates immense power in itself, by definition.

79

I’m reiterating my choice by voting in favor at this phase too. I’m both satisfied with the past performances and with the goals that have been set for the second phase. I also appreciate the efforts that were made to come up with a detailed explanation of the budget, providing a transparent and large view of their intentions. Concerning the electoral procedure, I already expressed my thoughts here

80

I’m voting against the proposal in Tally

As I mentioned in my feedback, I believe the DAO should first determine whether it wants to allocate resources to RPC and event service providers, and how much, in order to properly assess the cost-benefit of the procurement service.

I am very grateful to the team behind the ADPC, they truly took the feedback into account and worked hard on this proposal. Also, as I mentioned to Bernard privately, I highly value the structure and completeness of their reports. I believe they raise the bar for the quality of reporting and information the DAO receives. If that pending discussion moves forward, I would be happy to vote in favor at another opportunity

81

I fully support the proposal so voted for. A exceptional work has been done and budget seems rasonable.