I am a little on the fence with this one.
First, I will echo what other delegates have pointed out - overhead is a very large % of the cost and there isn’t (yet, as I’m understanding) a way for Arbitrum to recoup those costs from the project to help alleviate that concern. Contrary to the sticker shock — I do fully believe that the teams have put in effort to cut costs where possible, and this is sort of the nature of paying for this type of experience within the crypto field. I will point out that the DAO at large (presumably, I can’t speak for anyone but myself and my assumptions) would be more open to this if there was any way to cut down costs.
Everything else about the project I see reason to support, it is unfortunate the legal state of Arbitrum does not allow for an easy way to get an ROI on this. I hear the point that this type of thing might be months / a year+ away so it’s better to at least get thing started, and I would agree. However given the cost I think this is taking on a lot of risk for things we are hoping will one day materialize.
That said, I do disagree with others that we should just wait until that is settled. The L2 competition is an equally fast and fierce one. I’d like to see this type of network be setup now, as I fear we may start to get behind other networks if we wait too long. The GCP comes to mind, where a lot of money has been thrown at playing catchup in the gaming space.
Where this gets tough is I would like to see some form of this proposal go forward, but I agree with others the cost is just too high. With that in mind I will vote “For” on tally to indicate support for the project itself, however that comes with a very clear statement that if the cost remains the same (or reductions in cost are inadequate) for the Tally vote I will be voting against at that time.