Bringing Native Assets to Arbitrum

General
1

How do we get more assets to natively launch on Arbitrum? What would the steps be to start a collective effort to get the ball rolling?

1 Like
2

A DeFi accelerator / incubator would be able to provide support for project builders at an early stage. Has the foundation ever explored anything like this?

2 Likes
3

To achieve this, we must offer assistance to a team striving to create something with minimal odds of success but permitted to persevere in its development.

For instance, constructing weather derivatives might face initial skepticism but could gain momentum due to heightened awareness of climate change, attracting interest. The tokens issued by such projects will remain native when backed by the DAO from the outset.

Similarly, the DAO can and should explore ambitious projects, providing a platform for native builders to experiment with.

3 Likes
4

Interesting overarching sentiment, @Blueweb:

We must offer assistance to a team striving to create something with minimal odds of success but permitted to persevere in its development.

In my opinion, this is a huge challenge for builders in the space but moreso the incentive structure around protocol innovation feels to be completely backwards. It is far easier for a developer, venture studio, or VC-backed entity to fork and deploy on new chains as opposed to spending 12-18 months focusing on innovation. This is actually one of my biggest concerns of where the space is heading as quite frankly the application layer isn’t developing quick enough as it stands.

You see a handful of mavericks taking on the challenge of protocol innovation, but it feels sparse at best. Perhaps Arbitrum is well-placed to support a shift within these misaligned incentives to support those exploring the potential of the underlying blockchain/rollup.

Some further musings on my side: Beyond a traditional incubator model, the opportunity seems to be in supporting these concept/pre-seed/seed stage projects by leveraging the USPs of the DAO. For example, a Web3 incubator could embrace:

  1. Open/flexible contribution from Web3-native talent.
  2. Arbitrum or protocol tokenomics to create longer term synergies.
  3. Rapid GTM testing via user incentives from the DAO treasury.

This approach would give early-stage projects an edge, and at the same time create early-stage stickiness to the chain through support with human resources and intertwined tokenomics. Perhaps this would lead to an increase in native assets within the Arbitrum ecosystem?

As a starting point you could audit attempts from other ecosystems (Parachains for example) and understand what did and importantly what didn’t work, align Arbitrum DAO stakeholders and form a strategy for said challenge.

3 Likes
5

To align incentives, would some combination of upfront payment plus ARB with some amount of linear vesting be a better way to allocate these grants?

1 Like