Arbitrum Strategic Objective Setting (SOS) – Defining the DAO’s Interim Goals

[pedrob]

I will vote in favor of this proposal during the Temp Check. I am highly aligned with the framework developed to discuss and establish the short- and medium-term goals of the DAO with a view towards the MVP. Thank you for this.

@Entropy

Here, we are not taking a stance on whether the DAO has recently overspent, but would like to point out that even given the treasury data brought up by @pedrob, we know that many delegates would still argue that capital usage has recently been appropriate due to, e.g., Arbitrum being in a “growth stage”.

That said, I want to reiterate my concern regarding the treasury—not just from the perspective of the percentage of spending relative to the total available, as I can understand (though subjective) the interpretation tied to the “growth phase” that Arbitrum is currently undergoing.

It’s worth noting that 2025 will once again be a year of massive ARB unlocks.

As Arbitrum grows, the incentives to attack it also increase. Continuously dumping ARB to fund initiatives without a proper plan to minimize its impact on the token’s price only heightens the risk of such attacks becoming feasible.

For example, although it acknowledges the issue—which I think is appropriate—the OpCo does not outline a specific plan to mitigate that impact.

@Entropy

Of the remaining 26M ARB, tokens will be liquidated until $12M worth of cash equivalents has been attained. At ARB’s price of $0.68 as of January 21, this would require roughly 18M ARB. The liquidation will occur over up to 3 months immediately following this proposal passing Tally at the discretion of the liquidating party (the Arbitrum Foundation together with a provider of their choice for asset liquidation) with a mandate to minimize price impact.

The approved STEP 2 the same:

@thedevanshmehta

The foundation will at their discretion liquidate the ARB and once complete, announce the average conversion price on the forum

This year, three initiatives have already been approved to dump 80M ARB for stables (OpcCo, STEP, and Treasury Management v2), with more to come.

If we are going to continue pricing incentives/payments in USD instead of ARB as if they were equivalent, and covering everything with ARB, we need a plan to mitigate the price impact asap

With that in mind, I will refer to the principles outlined in the Constitution.

This is why I believe initiatives like ARB staking with a lock-up period and yield that makes holding ARB attractive, or proposals to deepen ARB liquidity, should be a priority before allocating and executing additional budgets for other initiatives.

I understand that discussing the budget alongside initiatives is more complex, but I believe it is the right approach to mitigate security risks.