Areta Delegate Thread

Key Information

Please delegate to us on 0x8b37a5Af68D315cf5A64097D96621F64b5502a22


Introduction

Areta Governance specializes in supporting DAOs and foundations to establish and grow decentralized governance structures. We develop tailored solutions in governance inception and optimization, ecosystem growth, and service provider selection. Our connected investment bank with deep strategic expertise, enables us to serve our partners holistically, rather than working in isolated governance silos.

We have had the privilege to work for some of the leading companies and DAOs in the crypto space (Safe, Uniswap, Aave and dYdX). Examples of our work include managing a larger Aave delegation, setting up key contribution initiatives for SafeDAO, leading the first cross-ecosystem growth initiative for Uniswap and Arbitrum, and crypto-native transactions like the first acquisition of Coingecko or the sale of Solscan to Etherscan.

As DAOs emerge from their infancy, their structures have proven powerful tools for enabling decentralisation and autonomy. We view a well-designed governance system as a critical enabler for decentralized projects to allow them to leverage decentralization as a strategic advantage, rather than an inconvenient necessity (where most of the market is currently at).

However, DAOs often encounter challenges in maintaining organisation, highlighted by governance issues such as contributor onboarding and delegate overload. These scenarios highlight areas where DAOs can improve by establishing structured processes for better collaboration and being open to further strengthening against inefficiencies.

Recognising the need for evolution, we focus on excellent DAO participation with robust, defensible analysis of proposals through a structured voting process while simultaneously applying our deep institutional knowledge and strategic governance expertise to offer proactive DAO governance solutions aimed at nurturing the ecosystem for the long term.

Delegate Motivation

As long-term supporters and contributors to Arbitrum DAO, we are well-versed with the Arbitrum ecosystem, its stakeholders, and many of the larger delegates.

Over the course of our involvement in Arbitrum DAO, we have led and supported the following initiatives with dedicated teams:

  1. Uniswap-Arbitrum Grants Program: We led the first cross-ecosystem growth initiative for Arbitrum and Uniswap by leading a 6-month grants program to allocate 1.1 million ARB in grants to projects exclusively advancing the Uniswap-Arbitrum ecosystem. [UAGP Hub]
  2. Service Provider Selection: As part of the Arbitrum DAO Procurement Committee (ADPC) we created a streamlined approach for the procurement of security service providers and set up a fund to subsidize security services for projects on Arbitrum.
  3. Arbitrum RWA Innovation Grants (RWAIG) Program: We established the RWAIG program to support the growth of Arbitrum’s RWA ecosystem, providing 300K ARB worth of grants to RWA products, research, and awareness initiatives building on Arbitrum. [RWAIG Hub]
  4. Arbitrum M&A: We were mandated to develop an M&A strategy for Arbitrum DAO that adds long-term value to the ecosystem. After an 8-week sprint, we produced an outcome report that resulted in two key initiatives being moved forward. [Forum Proposal; Outcome Report]

Core Tenets as Delegates

Areta’s core tenets as delegates are as follows:

  • 100% Voting Participation - we are deeply invested in the ecosystem and our goal is to meaningfully support its direction via thoughtful, educated governance decisions.
  • Independent and Impartial Voting - our voting is strictly informed by critical analysis and years of experience and is not based on bias or external influences.
  • Communication of Voting Rationale - we will communicate the rationale behind our votes through frequent updates to this thread, making us accountable to the community.

We will achieve these core tenets through our unique sources of value as follows:

Structured & Streamlined Voting Process
  • Our team lead adds new proposals to a shared tracker and assigns each incoming proposal to a specific member of the team.
  • For each proposal, we prepare a standard memo summarising the key issues, the black and white hat case (pros and cons), and a recommended decision with accompanying rationale.
  • Each proposal is then peer reviewed by another team member.
  • For complex proposals that require more discussion, we involve more members of the team as necessary to form a joint opinion.
  • We then publish our voting rationale externally on our public forum.

We always try to base our votes on sound, defensible rationale so that we are internally consistent and our voting track record stands up to external critique.

Ecosystem Growth and Expansion to Institutions

Leveraging the Areta network to promote and foster flourishing ecosystems across DAOs. Bringing unprecedented ties to a deep traditional network of corporates, strategics, and investors.

Governance Optimisation

Utilising our expertise to diagnose, analyse, correct, and enhance the effectiveness of DAO governance, ensuring streamlined operations and decision-making, while building up accountability structures.

Areas of Expertise

Having collaborated with industry leaders, Areta’s governance team offers a range of specialized services designed to support protocols and institutions in achieving their strategic goals, including:

  1. Governance Inception & Design: Set-up of key governance elements and structure, and build out tailored functions depending on ecosystem needs. Examples include: Contributor Program for Safe.
  2. Growth & Capital Allocation: Development of capital allocation and optimization strategy, along with innovative grant and contributor program design. Examples include: Uniswap-Arbitrum Grant Program, M&A Strategy for Arbitrum.
  3. DAO Strategic Operations: Design and operation of key executive functions, including leading key initiatives and filling gaps in DAO operations. Examples include: Service Provider Procurement for Arbitrum, RWA Strategy for multiple DAOs.
  4. Professional Delegation: Institutional-grade voting and decision-making, including creation of reporting material for key stakeholders. Examples include: Professional Delegation for Aave, Delegation for zkSync.

Selected Experiences

  • Contributor Efficiency System: Development of Safe DAO Contributor Efficiency System. Read more here.
  • Uniswap-Arbitrum Grant Program: Launch of Cross-Ecosystem Growth Initiative for Uniswap and Arbitrum. Read more here.
  • Operations Trustee: Trustee to dYdX’s Operations Trust. Read more here.
  • Aave Delegate: Incentivized Delegates for the Aave DAO. Read more here.
  • Wind-Down: Led the strategic wind-down of Gro DAO. Read more here.

Conflicts of Interest / Waiver of Liability

Areta currently does not have any material conflicts of interest. We agree to keep the Arbitrum community updated should any conflicts of interest arise. Our work in other DAOs is solely focused on supporting structural projects that are advancing the overall DAO space, are open-sourced across DAOs and will not influence any decision-making.

By delegating to Areta, you acknowledge and agree that Areta will participate on a best efforts basis and will not be liable for any form of damages related to participation in this DAO.

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Proposal: Empowering Early Contributors: The community Arbiter Proposal 2.0

Vote: FOR
Type: On-chain

Rationale: This proposal seeks to allocate 125K ARB to retroactively reward 25 early contributors (i.e., Arbiters) to the Arbitrum ecosystem. We believe that recognising the past work of contributors is crucial to incentivising future contributions and aligning the interests of both contributors and the DAO. Furthermore, a list of these contributors containing an overview of their contributions has been shared with the community for transparency.


Proposal: Extend Tally Support for the Arbitrum DAO

Vote: FOR
Type: On-chain

Rationale: This proposal seeks to allocate $220K in ARB to Tally for the provision of extended technical and research support. We are voting in favour of this proposal because of Tally’s track record as a governance service provider to Arbitrum. The proposal details plans to improve the proposal process, such as highlighting transactions by the Security Council, enabling version tracking of proposals and embedding Forum posts/comments directly on Tally. Tally will also provide a dashboard for tracking delegate activity and conduct research into governance solutions for Arbitrum DAO such as partial delegation and shielded onchain voting. We believe that all these steps will culminate in improving Arbitrum governance, and we are therefore in support. We appreciate the diligent work and support from @Frisson and the rest of the Tally team in Arbitrum.


Proposal: Request for Continuation of the Arbitrum DDA Program Request

Vote: FOR
Type: On-chain

Rationale: This proposal seeks to allocate an additional $4M in ARB for Arbitrum grants via Dedicated Domain Allocation (DDA) by Questbook. The Arbitrum DDA program specializes in allocating rapid and micro grants to help grow the Arbitrum ecosystem across selected verticals. The previous round of the program has proven to be largely successful, approving $912K in grants to 60 projects spread across gaming, protocol ideas, dev tooling and education, community and events. On this basis, we are supporting the extension of this program. We especially believe in @jojo’s quality in steering the effort, having worked with him closely in the Uniswap-Arbitrum Grant program.


Proposal: Double-Down on STIP Success (STIP-Bridge)

Vote: FOR
Type: On-chain

Rationale: This proposal seeks to introduce the STIP Bridge, a grant program aimed at providing 37.5M ARB in incentives to key protocols on Arbitrum, to enable Arbitrum maintain a competitive edge over other L2s. We support the effort to maintain Arbitrum’s market leadership and we believe that keeping these protocols committed to Arbitrum plays a huge role in that regard. We are however interested in receiving feedback on the performance and usage of STIP grants by the selected protocols.


Proposal: Catalyze Gaming Ecosystem Growth on Arbitrum

Vote: FOR
Type: On-chain

Rationale: This proposal seeks to allocate 200M ARB over the course of three years to expand Arbitrum’s web3 gaming ecosystem. We believe that gaming has a very strong potential to catalyze growth and adoption of Arbitrum. Currently, gaming accounts for 30% of the web3 market, with 2.1M daily unique active wallets [1]. While obviously a huge step for the Arbitrum ecosystem, we believe in @Djinn ‘s capabilities to steer this effort. There are still many unknowns and unsolved problems, but focusing our attention on solving them could potentially unlock significant value for the future.


Proposal: Constitutional AIP - Security Council Improvement Proposal

Vote: FOR
Type: On-chain

Rationale: This proposal seeks to upgrade the security council structure by increasing the multisig threshold from 7/12 to 9/12, in order to maintain L2Beat’s “Stage 1” designation. We are supporting this proposal because increasing the threshold improves the decentralization and overall security of Arbitrum.


Proposal: ArbitrumDAO Contribution; Safeguarding Software Developers’ Rights

Vote: FOR
Type: On-chain

Rationale: This proposal seeks to allocate 1M ARB to Coin Center and DeFi Education Fund for the purpose of supporting policy, litigation and advocacy efforts for OSS and Software developers’ rights. We believe that supporting the work of Coin Center and DEF is important to Arbitrum and the overall web3 ecosystem in terms of lobbying efforts, interfacing with policymakers and engaging with regulatory authorities. These are the necessary steps that will drive widespread adoption of DeFi and the development of enabling legal frameworks that allow the industry thrive.


Proposal: [Non-Constitutional] - Subsidy Fund Proposal from the ADPC

Vote: ABSTAIN
Type: On-chain

Rationale: This proposal seeks to establish a sub-committee for administering the Security Subsidy Fund. As an elected member of the Arbitrum DAO Procurement Committee (ADPC), we were responsible for establishing the Security Subsidy Fund. We are therefore abstaining from this vote in order to remain neutral.


Proposal: [Non-Constitutional] Pilot Phase: Arbitrum Ventures Initiative

Vote: FOR
Type: On-chain

Rationale: This proposal seeks to establish the pilot phase of the Arbitrum Venture Initiative (AVI) supporting the efforts of the AVI team with additional research. As we have been conducting a pilot phase for M&A (see outcome report here), we do see the merit in such an initiative. Our outcomes were developed in a way to be reusable for other capital allocation initiatives and do hope the AVI team can make use of these in their research. We hope to see tangible insights coming out of this that help the DAO making an educated decision on benefit of venture for Arbitrum.


Proposal: [Constitutional] ArbOS 31 “Bianca” (Stylus, RIP-7212 Support, Nova Fee Router)

Vote: FOR
Type: On-chain

Rationale: This proposal seeks to activate ArbOS 31 on Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova. Notably, this upgrade will activate Arbitrum Stylus which introduces support for C++ and Rust applications on Arbitrum. Together, Rust and C++ account for >25% of programming language usage by developers. We believe introducing support for these languages will help onboard developers with diverse backgrounds to Arbitrum, further growing the ecosystem. We are therefore in support of this upgrade.


Proposal: Arbitrum Multi-Sig Support Service (MSS)

Vote: FOR
Type: On-chain

Rationale: This proposal seeks to create a Multi-sig Support Service (MSS), comprising 12 DAO-elected multi-sig signers. These signers will be responsible for administering all DAO-funded multi-sigs. We support this proposal, because we see it as a positive step towards streamlining DAO operations by eliminating redundant multi-sig roles and their associated costs. We appreciate the work that has gone into this by @peperonnijoe discovering the uncontrolled spend on this in the DAO and believe this provides a sensible approach to fix this.

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