The official start date for the ARDC is April 1st, 2024, with the conclusion of the ARDC’s mandate being on October 1st, 2024, after a 6-month term, as described in the original proposal.
With June now upon us, we’re posting a monthly update to let everyone know what the ARDC has worked on for the past month and what is currently on our plate.
Deliverables
STIP Analysis — Concerns Regarding Possible Misconduct by Synapse with Respect to the Usage of ARB Incentives Allocated Through the STIP by Blockworks Research
While Blockworks was conducting research for its analysis of the STIP, serious concerns were raised regarding Synapse’s use of the ARB incentives. Given the perceived misconduct’s potential severity, we decided to immediately create a forum post and invite Synapse to address the concerns in public. Following that publication, Synapse withdrew its application to STIP Bridge.
STIP-Bridge — Support Material for the Community by Blockworks Research
Following their case studies on GMX and Jojo, Blockworks, in their capacity as one of the research members of the ARDC, created and published a workbook that included qualitative data on the applicants’ incentive structures, operational approaches, reporting standards, notable protocol changes, etc. This data was primarily collected from protocols’ original STIP applications, bi-weekly updates, final reports, and STIP-Bridge addendums. They also included some relevant commentary and any possible red flags and minimal/open-to-interpretation rule deviations they encountered.
Using Hedgey for Proposal Payment Vesting — Security Review by OpenZeppelin
OpenZeppelin, as the Security Member of the ARDC, reviewed a proposal for WakeUp Labs, building a front-end interface to force transaction inclusion during sequencer downtime. The security review focused on the executable payload from the on-chain vote on Tally and the use of Hedgey smart contracts for the streaming of funds, and no issues were found. The review was published in the forum.
Gaming Catalyst Program - SWOT Analysis by Delphi Digital
Delphi Digital put together and published a SWOT analysis for the proposed Gaming Catalyst Program (GCP). The analysis seeks to highlight the program’s various opportunities and issues that need to be addressed as the program’s mandate is further fleshed out.
Gaming Catalyst Program - Compensation Structure Memo by Delphi Digital
As a follow-up to their SWOT analysis, Delphi Digital, at the request of the team behind the Gaming Catalyst Program proposal and with the approval of the DAO Advocate, put together and published a short memo outlining reasonable compensation ranges for the roles the GCP is looking to hire for in the near term.
STIP Risk Analysis — Case Study #1: Vertex Protocol by Chaos Labs
Chaos Labs has been working on conducting case studies on STIP recipients. The first case study completed and published provides an in-depth analysis of the Arbitrum STIP program’s impact on the Vertex Protocol, focusing on its efficiency and associated risks. This analysis is part of a broader series that evaluates the STIP program across three major protocols.
STIP Risk Analysis — Case Study #2: Silo Finance by Chaos Labs
Following their first analysis on Vertex, Chaos Labs worked on and published a second case study, this time on Silo Finance. The scope of the analysis is the same as of the previous case study and focuses on an in-depth analysis of the STIP program’s impact on Silo Finance.
BOLD Proposal Analysis
Following the submission by Arbitrum Foundation of the proposal to upgrade Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova’s Rollup Contracts to use Arbitrum BOLD, we (the DAO Advocate) instructed all the members of the ARDC to review the proposal and inform on the potential areas that the ARDC could be helpful in.
BOLD Dispute Mechanism Summary & Comparisons by Delphi Digital
Delphi Digital created and published a summary of BOLD, the newly proposed dispute resolution mechanism for Arbitrum, and compared it with other such mechanisms in Optimistic Rollups. The delivered report is comprehensive and walks the reader through what a dispute is in the first place, how disputes are resolved, different kinds of attack vectors for rollups, and the differences between Arbitrum’s BOLD, Optimism’s Canon, Cartes’is DAVE, and Fuel’s dispute mechanisms.
Security Council Improvement Proposal — Security Review by OpenZeppelin
OpenZeppelin conducted a security review of L2BEAT’s proposal that seeks to introduce changes to the structure of the second Security Council and specifically increase its threshold from 7/12 to 9/12. The security review of the proposal was focused on the executable payload from the on-chain vote on Tally, and no issues were found. The review was posted in the forum.
Current ARDC Work
A high-level overview of the work that is currently on the plates of the members of the ARDC is as follows:
Blockworks Research:
- STIP Retroactive Analysis - Perp DEX protocols report
Delphi Digital
- Research on the creation of a DAO Budget
OpenZeppelin
- BoLD Proposal Analysis with a focus on the concerns against hardcoding a reward distribution to honest validators is the potential for dishonest actors to profit from collusion
- Analysis of the security considerations of the DAO staking the ETH accrued from the sequencer
- Security oversight for the creation of a DAO Budget
Chaos Labs
- Third STIP case study on Pendle
- Risk analysis of the DAO staking the ETH accrued from the sequencer
- Risk analysis of the governance parameters
We want to remind you that anyone can follow along with the progress of the ARDC’s work in our Notion Dashboard.
Requests for the ARDC
Over the past month, we’ve had 5 different requests for the ARDC from proposal authors and other governance participants. The requests were the following:
- @Jojo requested an analysis of the LTIPP and STIP that controls and accounts for the market environment and/or other ecosystems.
- Blockworks Research is already working on such an analysis as a research member of the ARDC.
- @danielo requested the ARDC’s help with validating the impact report of their Arbitrum DAO x RnDAO CoLab (funded by Plurality Labs) and with reviewing and recommending improvements to their active proposal for Arbitrum Collab Tech Business Cluster.
- Upon discussing the proposal internally, the ARDC members concluded that there are no obvious ways to add value at this stage.
- @RikaGoldberg requested ARDC’s support with reviewing a proposal for ‘Empowering Underrepresented Delegates.’
- Due to the ARDC’s resources being expended on endeavors of higher priority, we provided high-level thoughts.
- @EntropyAdvisors requested/proposed that the ARDC lead the charge in creating a comprehensive budget for the Arbitrum DAO.
- The ARDC will be working on the groundwork necessary to create a budget for the DAO.
- @Jojo requested (during the ‘DAO Advocate Call’ - see below) that the ARDC look into the governance parameters and provide recommendations on whether they should remain as is, or if there are any recommended changes to be made.
- We believe examining the governance parameters might be beneficial, so we have asked the ARDC members to add it to their backlog.
The requests coming in made us realize that there are no guidelines from the original proposal to establish the ARDC on how requests should be treated. Our understanding and interpretation is that the decision-making ultimately lies with the DAO Advocate and that we (in our capacity as the DAO Advocate) are responsible for triaging the workload for the ARDC.
ARDC handling of requests
The course of action we have decided upon is to discuss all the requests with all the members of the ARDC in our weekly calls, create a brief overview of areas that we could potentially help with, and then we (as in, the DAO Advocate) decide whether or not to expend the ARDC’s resources on them. It’s mostly a process of setting priorities rather than a process of ‘accepting’ or ‘rejecting’ requests.
Additionally, we want to clarify that any proposal author that has requested the ARDC’s help and their respective proposal has passed the temp check will receive priority over others that haven’t, without that, however, being a requirement.
We appreciate all the requests and encourage all delegates and other interested parties to provide feedback on what the ARDC could do to help with the DAO’s activities.
ARDC DAO Advocate Open Call
On May 10th, 2024, we hosted a ‘DAO Advocate Open Call.’ We invited delegates and other governance participants to discuss all matters related to ARDC, from a brief update on what we were working on to questions or requests they might have.
Although the call wasn’t recorded, brief meeting notes are here.
Call to Action
We want to remind delegates that the ARDC is here to support the DAO and the work delegates are doing, and it’s at their disposal under the direction of the DAO Advocate. To that end, there’s a biweekly call every other Monday at 12 pm UTC. You can find the link for it in the Arbitrum Governance calendar.
In addition, we invite delegates to reach out to us (L2BEAT) in our capacity as DAO Advocates if they have topics in mind that they believe the ARDC should be assigned to. To that end, we are available at the biweekly call mentioned above, on Telegram (Krzysztof & Sinkas), and during our L2BEAT Arbitrum Office Hours every Thursday at 3 pm UTC.