After internal reflection, Blockworks has made the difficult decision to begin winding down our active delegate role within the Arbitrum DAO. This was not easy: Arbitrum is one of the most important ecosystems in crypto, and participating in its governance has been both a responsibility and a privilege.
From the beginning of the DAO we did take our role with the utmost responsibility, since the very first discussions around AIP-1 in which we were questioning treasury transparency and the need for participants to have sufficient information with the goal of representing token holders. Our approach has been rewarded in this sense, and today we are the second biggest delegate in Arbitrum.
Beyond voting, we contributed substantive research through the ARDC: incentive program design, STIP and LTIPP performance, sequencer revenue analysis, Timeboost, and DAO accountability. Some findings had direct impact, with our STIP-Bridge analysis identifying fund misuse and saving the DAO 1.7M ARB in total. Others, such as our sequencer revenue work, helped estimate the main revenue driver during the STIP incentive period, showing how the program spent materially more than it directly recouped, while introducing benchmarks and measures that, at the time, were quite innovative in the crypto analytical landscape.
We generally tried to balance support for growth with analytical restraint, pushing back when proposals lacked detail, incentive designs seemed unsustainable, or treasury initiatives introduced unjustified risk.
Stepping back from active delegation is, for Blockworks, a way to align with the current business goals of our organization, and should not be read as a lack of appreciation for Arbitrum nor a bet against the Arbitrum DAO itself. We believe this ecosystem, the DAO, and all contributors have a bright future and will remain at the forefront of the crypto industry going forward, as they have been in the past.
We encourage current delegators to redelegate to active contributors with the bandwidth and context to participate consistently. We remain grateful for the trust placed in us, and we look forward to collaborating with the Arbitrum Foundation, Offchain Labs, and the other Arbitrum Aligned Entities in the future.