Arbitrum Day 2024: Gas Free

Proposals
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Arbitrum Day 2024: Gas Free – Proposal: 23 March 2024 No Gas Fees for Users

Constitutional / Non-Constitutional - Not Constitutional

Abstract - On March 23, 2024, a year after the Arbitrum Airdrop and ten days after the implementation of EIP-4844, the Arbitrum DAO should fund a gas free day on Arbitrum and all Arbitrum Orbits on mainnet. This would bring users onboard for a single day and display the ecosystem at minimal costs to users near and far.

Motivation - Arbitrum DAO has one of the largest treasuries in Decentralized Finance and a bustling community of top notch applications to offer to the world. However, the DAO has been very conservative in spending and for good reason. A certain level of skepticism is necessary to maintain prudence but as the DAO has matured, it is time to kick off our second year of existence with a bang! To cast aside our fears and usher in a period of growth in the broader community.

Rationale - There are many people who have yet to venture to the Layer 2 ecosystem, let alone Arbitrum and we should open the door for people to come with this event. Arbitrum, being the best of the Layer 2 ecosystem should also be the first to offer a gas free celebration.
The average cost of an Arbitrum Transaction is 0.000387 Ether, in the last 24 hours. Arbitrum’s highest transaction count, recently, was roughly 5,000,000 (16 Dec 2023) in a single day. I went back to the day and sifted through blocks 160600000 - 1607500000 and noted that the transaction cost was very limited.
Lastly, the key to this day is not just showing how robust Arbitrum’s Ecosystem is, but how robust the technology stack is. At zero costs, demand for Arbitrum’s block space would likely skyrocket to unforeseen heights.

Key Terms (optional) - EIP - 4844: The Addition of Blob Space to the Ether Mainnet is expected to lower costs of Transaction.
Specifications - The Arbitrum Treasury will spend a portion of its treasury, particularly the ether, pay for a day of free transaction. I am nontechnical so I do no’t know how this might occur, but I don’t expect it to be too intensive.

Steps to Implement - Debate should occur. Vote should follow, if the debate warrants a vote.

Timeline - After 30+ days of debate, a vote should take place on 13 March 2024, and settled by 17 March 2024. If possible a POAP should be developed for Arbitrum Day for users who manage to spend 0.001 in transactions on Arbitrum One, Arbitrum Nova and or Arbitrum Orbits.

Overall Cost - If the average Transaction Cost remains 0.0005 Ether and there are 5,000,000 transactions there would be a cost of 2500 Ether or 6.25 Million USD or 3.25 Million Arb at current prices. If Arbitrum manages 10,000,000 transactions then the costs of this day would double. (All costs are Pre - EIP 4844)

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Hello!
I think this proposal is quite controversial.
Of course, I want to attract users to the Arbitrum ecosystem.
However:

  1. Taking into account the low transaction cost of 10-20 cents, we can attract users only with very minimal finances.
  2. Users want products that provide benefits to them, so products need to be promoted first. If the ecosystem has the right products, users will spend money on gas.
  3. There is an Aurora project on the near protocol, which provides free transactions, but this did not have any effect, the project is really over.
  4. The proposal to spend 3.25 ARB (at minimum estimates) should help attract more capital, but I don’t see how this is possible.
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Well, feels like this is a way to think outside of the box.
I don’t mind the initiative per se, I just think it might not gonna bring the value expected for two reasons:

  1. people who are on arbitrum will keep being on arbitrum, maybe transact a bit more, with the low fee
  2. people who are not on arbitrum won’t have a necessary reason to be here. Especially cause they will have to bridge for example.

This initiative might work is a more complex marketing campaign in which, for example, most of the protocols lower to 0 their fee. But that is easier said than done.

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Fees play an important role in how the system works and the reason to have them is to avoid attacks on the network and pay for the space in L1. I believe such a proposal should come with a technical analysis of the costs and possible risks to the network. Maybe as a stress test would be interesting but not without a deep analysis

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Yup, high risk of the network being spammed?
What would be the cost if that happened…
And what are the estimated benefits (as Jojo pointed out they might be limited).

All in favor of finding creative ways to attract/retain users:
I don’t find this initiative particularly valuable in its current form.

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We believe that this proposal brings more risks than benefits to the Arbitrum ecosystem. Like @maxlomu and previous delegates mentioned, there is a high risk of spam/DDOS. Transaction costs help protect against these attacks, and believe that we should keep them.

In terms of bridging costs, new users would still have to pay for those like @JoJo mentioned. However, there is free bridging from Eth to Arbitrum through Synapse Protocol until Mar 29th that users can utilize. Hence, we are skeptical of this proposal.

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