Builders' Voices Needed: Shaping the Future of Arbitrum Together

[krst]

DISCLAIMER: This is my personal initiative as an ArbitrumDAO delegate. It’s nothing official and is in no way affiliated with the Arbitrum Foundation or any other official Arbitrum organization.

Builders, we want to hear from you!

We’re currently discussing Strategic Objectives for the next 1-2 years within the ArbitrumDAO, and a common theme is the desire to better support builders in our ecosystem.

However, I’m afraid that I do not clearly understand your actual needs, challenges, and perspectives. I don’t speak with builders often enough. I feel there’s a gap between DAO delegates and builders - and I’d love to bridge it.

I’m inviting all builders in the Arbitrum ecosystem to contribute their voices here. I recognize you’re busy, so participation can be as minimal or extensive as you prefer.

Minimum Commitment: Just 10 minutes to briefly answer these foundational questions:

1. What is one thing where ArbitrumDAO could support your project’s success in Arbitrum?
2. What does success for the Arbitrum ecosystem look like to you in 1-2 years?
3. What does success in Arbitrum look like specifically for your project in 1-2 years?
4. What’s one critical improvement needed in the Arbitrum ecosystem to achieve this success?

If you can spare more time, we’d love additional insights:

5. Give us a brief overview (tl;dr) of your project.
6. Why did you choose Arbitrum? What unique value has the ecosystem provided to your project?
7. What’s your Arbitrum journey been like? What has worked well, and what could’ve been better?
8. Why is your project valuable or impactful for the Arbitrum ecosystem?
9. If your project operates across multiple chains, how does Arbitrum fit into your overall strategy? What are Arbitrum’s strengths from your project’s point of view and where does Arbitrum fall short?

Feel free to respond directly in this thread. If you prefer privacy, message me your responses, and I can anonymize or aggregate them. However, open discussion here will offer maximum visibility and impact.

Also, if you prefer to talk about all those things in an open conversation during a call, let me know - I’ll be happy to set up a dedicated call to discuss your project.

[EzR3aL]

Hey, great initiative and much needed.
But one question I think that is needed and should be added would be
“Whats one thing that you are afraid of for the future of Arbitrum and its competitiveness?”

We should be more critical when talking to devs and builder, as we don’t see that many being active in the DAO and maybe there is a reason.

[cupojoseph]

1. What is one thing where ArbitrumDAO could support your project’s success in Arbitrum?

A. Support and expand security audit support. This is often the highest cost for independent devs to bring a product or experiment to market, especially for those who want to do things right and are building for the long term. Nerite was passed on for security subsidy from the DAO pilot and that was a crushing blow. Luckily Arb foundation helped out but we wouldnt be able to afford to do this without that help.

B. Where is the arbitrum native angel investor network? Other chains are poaching talented devs and projects for $0 just by organizing angels and providing opportunity. There are tons of devs that just need someone to believe in them to build something great. We need to multiply the chances devs meet that person through intentionally creating connections between people in our ecosystem.

2. What does success for the Arbitrum ecosystem look like to you in 1-2 years?
Winning is being #2 on this list. Losing is continuing to fall down it.

3. What does success in Arbitrum look like specifically for your project in 1-2 years?
Nerite being the largest CDP on Arbitrum with over $250M TVL, plus several other novel protocols being built on top of it.

4. What’s one critical improvement needed in the Arbitrum ecosystem to achieve this success?

Builders need a bigger voice in the DAO.

[andreiv]

Great initiative, @krst! Even though you mentioned this is a personal initiative, I appreciate both your and @Sinkas involvement in initiatives like this and the SOS calls during what I consider a critical moment for the DAO.

I’m a co-founder of proposals.app. I’ve been building DAO tooling together with @paulofonseca for the past couple of years, and right now proposals.app is our baby. It was ideated over a very long time, born during the GovHack, initially funded through Questbook, and launched during ETH Bucharest. We chose to do it on Arbitrum because it is the biggest credibly decentralized DAO with real stakes, real control over the protocol, and real governance both technically and socially. Personally, I also consider Arbitrum the most technologically advanced L2 and probably the only one that scales Ethereum properly, and I love the innovation the WASM VM and Stylus bring. Proposals.app is Arbitrum-only and it was Arbitrum-first from the moment we decided to build it because we consider Arbitrum the most fertile ground for developing DAO tooling; since we consider it to be the biggest real DAO out there, it is the best one to iterate with and get feedback from. We consider proposals.app a public good for decentralized governance, and we might decide to support other DAOs in the future because the entire decentralized governance space needs better tools, but that will not change our primary user base, which will probably always be Arbitrum delegates. It is more likely that we will bring the value coming from Arbitrum delegates’ needs and feedback to other DAOs instead of shifting focus away. Arbitrum will always be a first-class citizen of proposals.app, and Arbitrum delegates will always be the users we care about the most.

1. What is one thing where ArbitrumDAO could support your project’s success in Arbitrum?

In short, funding. But I feel the need to elaborate.

Not all projects are the same and not all builders have the same needs. If I were to boil it down in the most condensed way I can, projects fit into two categories: growth and public goods.

I think ArbitrumDAO can do better in helping both of them.

As I see it, the current state of funding is something like this:

Project type	Idea (days/weeks)	MVP (months)	Short term (1-2 years)	Long term (2+ years)
Growth	Hackathon prizes	Questbook	VC investment	PMF, should have some sort of revenue
Public good	Hackathon prizes	Questbook	???	maybe find some revenue stream to maintain a very, very lean team???

It is sometimes controversial and referred to as wasted money, but I think Arbitrum is doing great with funding hackathons right now; maybe it should do it even more. Hackathons are in part for onboarding new builders to Arbitrum, but where I think they shine is prototyping. Many projects the industry relies on started as hackathon projects, and I think that’s not a coincidence; hackathons are an amazing place for ideating and prototyping. I think it would make more sense strategically to market them as such instead of just a hook for building on Arbitrum. I think it would also make more sense to focus on experienced builders instead of trying to attract as many new builders as possible. Either way, these are minor changes. In the grand scheme of things, I think Arbitrum is doing very well covering this for both growth projects and public goods projects; at this stage, there is no real distinction between them.

The Questbook grants were an amazing idea and it was executed exceptionally in our case, and I wholeheartedly say that as a grant recipient. Seeing first-hand the value the program can bring made me decide to run for the elections. Not a lot of feedback here; I think it is well structured to make the hackathon prototypes start to look like real products. We should not lie to ourselves and expect insanely successful PMF products coming out of Questbook, so there’s still a lot of building needed after it.

This is where it gets tricky.

If you’re building a growth-type project, after going through Questbook and building an MVP, if you really believe in your idea and you’re seeing even a hint of good feedback, it’s a good time to raise money. I’m perhaps not familiar enough with the DAO, but I don’t think there’s any space where you can get help with that right now. There are many people with VC connections in here, many angel investors, and many people who even run funds, but there is no structured way to connect all that with builders. A structured way to connect is just one thing the DAO could help with. Public endorsement, for example, or helping the project pick up traction, would probably be very helpful at this stage as well.

If you’re building a public-good-type project, it’s even trickier because you maybe don’t want to raise money (as is our case), or even if you want, you can’t really. Imagine pitching things like revoke.cash to investors; it makes no sense for them to invest unless you start thinking about things like paywalling it, which might go very much against the philosophy of the whole thing. You could come with a proposal to the DAO to continue funding, but that’s not easy at this stage either. You’re still, at most, a very polished MVP; you did not have the time and funds to build a real, proper project, so delegates will have a hard time voting for it unless they can clearly see your vision and strongly align with it. I’m not sure what a good solution to this would look like, but I’m raising the flag that the problem exists.

2. What does success for the Arbitrum ecosystem look like to you in 1-2 years?

Given all the context above, I think the overarching theme for success is that Arbitrum and ArbitrumDAO should act more like an incubator and less like a startup trying to scale. I see this tendency of creating “departments” that “have ownership” over “running things efficiently.” This, to me, a public goods builder, looks like closing a lot of doors. Most of the latest initiatives like GCP, OpCo, and the new vision have the same strategy: form a team of a few very experienced people and they will fix all our problems. In the near future, there doesn’t seem to be any place for experimentation, for grass-roots growth and connection, all in the name of efficiency.

As I see it, a successful future for Arbitrum creates connections instead of closed silos. It recklessly supports and funds ideas that “feel right.” It’s bold, messy, unafraid to own the chaos and messiness decentralized organizations create, and loudly celebrates the successes only it can create. It is the biggest L2 not because it is the most efficiently run organization, but because it is a thriving, dynamic ecosystem buzzing with enthusiasm and ideas. That cannot be replicated easily, and because of that, it is, I think, the only way to be and remain the biggest L2. Arbitrum already has the philosophical roots to do it, as the first L2 that really gave up control to the DAO. It must double down on that vision, not shift away from it.

It’s messy, unclear, and not actionable, I know, but this is the best I can describe the future I would like to see.

3. What does success in Arbitrum look like specifically for your project in 1-2 years?

I have a very specific vision for this.

Success would be if proposals.app is the main governance tool of Arbitrum, we maintain a close relationship with as many delegates as possible - big and small, and there is a continuous feedback loop between their needs and our solutions. Then, one day (as happened a few days ago), proposals.app goes down for some technical reason and we can’t fix it immediately, let’s assume we’re on a long flight. Someone from the DAO is able to spin up their own instance of proposals.app in under an hour, post the link in the delegate chat, and anyone can continue using it.

This specific type of collaboration, coordination, and resilience is what would make me feel like we did a good job.

4. What’s one critical improvement needed in the Arbitrum ecosystem to achieve this success?

I mentioned many initiatives I don’t like, and even if I don’t personally like them and don’t think that’s the way to go, I can see where they are coming from.

Arbitrum, ArbitrumDAO, and Offchain Labs need revenue. The token needs to go up and to the right.

It feels like all these initiatives are trying to make the DAO a revenue stream or, at least, make it spend less. I think that’s picking the wrong battle, and even if everything is executed exceptionally well, it has slim chances. L2s, when it comes to revenue, are racing to the bottom by design, and if they are not breaking outside the L2 bubble, they are doomed.

I think Arbitrum should explore better, bolder, and juicier areas to solve that.

Arbitrum should have its own stablecoins.
Arbitrum should have its own on/off-ramp.
Arbitrum should have its own CEX.
Arbitrum should have its own debit card to pay with crypto.

[kamilgorski]

Hey @krst, thanks for inviting us to reply here!

1. Clear path to funding from the DAO, VCs or whoever makes decisions in Arbitrum: I’ll echo what @andreiv said. There’s no clear path to cooperate with Arbitrum as a public good tool or to run even small deals with the DAO. In our last Snapshot we had multiple sources of feedback (often contradictive) with 67,2m $ARB (60% of all ‘Against’) voting against without even joining the discussion or delivering any feedback at all. We tried to contact them, sometimes even had the feedback promised by a delegate but with no delivery and moving forward without understanding their position is impossible.

2. One of the top 3 ecosystems in DeFi user adoption and revenue (not TVL)

3. Making Arbitrum one of the top 3 ecosystems in terms of DeFi user adoption: Our promise as Patterns is to drive user acquisition to dApps & DeFis. Making Arbitrum achieve that would help us build our app in the right direction and prove the use-case.

4. Faster and more consistent decisions with measurable goals: I feel that decision-making currently is very slow (our proposal took 7 months of discussion) and the overarching goals of Arbitrum are not defined. Whether it’s going to be DAO, OpCo or any other entity defining these - goals should be measurable and widely communicated to the whole community so that all vendors, public good tools and growth projects can align and deliver proposals that fit these goals. These goals should be displayed in bold on the top of the Arbitrum DAO forum

5. Patterns is a web3 CRM for builders of dApps & DeFis to help them improve user acquisition and grow their product. We cooperate with Optimism, Ethereum & Polkadot foundations and many other respected web3 entities.

6. Great DeFi ecosystem where our app can be useful the most.

7. Some delegates and projects are easy to talk with and get feedback from, others are unapproachable.

8. We help dApps & DeFis improve user acquisition that drives sequencer revenues.

9. Arbitrum is the top ecosystem when it comes to DeFis but falls short in decision-making. For comparison - closing a deal in Polkadot took ~1 month, closing a deal in Optimism ~1.5 months. Here after 4 months (7 including earlier discussions) we hardly even know what to improve.

The answers above explain our perspective as Patterns, although we talk directly with dApp & DeFi builders in Arbitrum Ecosystem and they have their own perspectives - we’ve let some of them know about this subject.

Best,
Kamil

[karpatkey]

Really appreciate this initiative @krst

This is a valuable initiative that opens up space for direct builder input, which has been sorely missing in the DAO. Understanding the actual needs and pain points of projects on the ground is essential for shaping a meaningful long-term strategy, and we appreciate you taking the time to facilitate that.

One suggestion: while the format here is intentionally open and conversational (which is great for richer, qualitative input), it does place a fair amount of burden on the projects themselves – finding the thread, drafting a detailed response, or reaching out directly. That means we’re likely to mostly hear from the most engaged and motivated projects, which could limit the diversity and quantity of feedback.

To complement this, we’d suggest creating a simple, structured survey that can be distributed more broadly across the ecosystem. It could focus on key areas like product needs, funding gaps, DAO processes, and overall Arbitrum experience. Even short-form responses would give us a larger sample size to identify patterns, compare verticals, and better prioritise DAO initiatives.

[Gonzacolo]

Hi @Krst,

It’s important that you’re bringing this to the table, we really appreciate it.

While our role can be a bit complex—since we’re both builders and service providers—we still want to share our perspective.

1. What is one thing where ArbitrumDAO could support your project’s success in Arbitrum?

As a Service Provider, it would be extremely valuable to better understand Arbitrum’s needs, we believe that ArbitrumDAO with Foundation and OCL could play a key role in helping identify and validate thouse.
For us, it’s challenging to proactively propose high-impact initiatives without clear feedback loops. If the DAO could help surface these needs and encourage public goods proposals around them, we’d be better positioned to design and deliver value-aligned solutions directly for the community.

2. What does success for the Arbitrum ecosystem look like to you in 1-2 years?

We believe Arbitrum’s long-term success lies in becoming the go-to chain for high-performance protocols and projects. This would naturally lead to a higher market cap, volume and profits, making Arbitrum one of the strongest, most decentralized, and valuable ecosystems in crypto.

3. What does success in Arbitrum look like specifically for your project in 1-2 years?

An Arbitrum win is a WakeUp win. We’ve been building alongside the ecosystem for over a year and a half, consistently taking on more complex challenges. While we could have done more—and tackled more relevant things—point #1 outlines why that’s been difficult.

At the end of the day, success would mean being deeply integrated into the Arbitrum ecosystem—not just through past contributions, but via long-term alignment. Ideally, this looks like dedicating more of our team and engineering resources exclusively to Arbitrum initiatives, having a clearer communication channel for ecosystem needs, and continuing to build high-impact infrastructure such as SDKs, tools, and services that push the ecosystem forward.

4. What’s one critical improvement needed in the Arbitrum ecosystem to achieve this success?

Reducing internal politics and enabling clearer ownership and execution flows would be a game-changer. Assigning capable, value-aligned contributors to lead initiatives with autonomy—combined with a focused roadmap and flexible funding for “must-haves” and “nice-to-haves”—could significantly speed up progress.
Collaboration with experienced service providers or individuals.who’ve already built in the ecosystem is key to this.

5. Give us a brief overview (tl;dr) of your project.

WakeUp Labs is a software development studio based in Argentina, with 12+ top-tier engineers and a track record of over 55 completed projects. We’ve contributed to some of the leading protocols in Web3—such as Arbitrum, ParaSwap, Sovryn, and Starknet—building both public goods and infrastructure across L2s.
Our current work includes improving the Stylus SDK funded by the Stylus Sprint initiative.

6. Why did you choose Arbitrum? What unique value has the ecosystem provided to your project?

We’ve always shared Arbitrum’s commitment to software quality and professionalism. That cultural alignment made Arbitrum a natural choice. Beyond that, Arbitrum’s ecosystem has given us the chance to collaborate on technically challenging and meaningful projects over the past 1.5 years.

7. What’s your Arbitrum journey been like? What has worked well, and what could’ve been better?

Our journey with Arbitrum has been strong and collaborative. We’ve taken on increasingly complex projects, delivering open-source solutions and public goods that address real ecosystem pain points. What could be improved is the process of surfacing and validating these needs. As a service provider, we often operate without clear insight into what the DAO or Core Team sees as a priority, which makes it harder to act proactively.

8. Why is your project valuable or impactful for the Arbitrum ecosystem?

WakeUp is one of the few service providers delivering real software solutions tailored to ecosystem challenges. We’ve consistently contributed open-source work, engaged the community transparently, and taken an active role in shaping the technical landscape. Our current work on Stylus SDK is a strong example—it empowers developers and aligns closely with the future of Arbitrum.

9. If your project operates across multiple chains, how does Arbitrum fit into your overall strategy? What are Arbitrum’s strengths from your project’s point of view and where does Arbitrum fall short?

As service providers, we operate across multiple chains to ensure a healthy flow of opportunities. That said, Arbitrum stands out for its technical maturity, strong developer ecosystem, and high standards. We would welcome the chance to deepen that relationship, potentially through a long-term collaboration model that allows us to commit more exclusively to Arbitrum. However, a clearer structure or path to formalize such partnerships is still lacking—something we believe is worth exploring together.

[bertani]

Agree with the spirit of this proposal.

One suggestion: it would be really valuable to explicitly include feedback from Questbook grant winners, both past and current. These teams have been on the ground building within the ecosystem, and their insights — especially around what worked, what didn’t, and where support can be improved — could provide highly practical perspectives to inform governance and funding priorities going forward. This could be easily done with a survey and the support of the Arbitrum D.A.O. team.

[1a35e1]

Thank you for this open dialogue. One of our supporters brought this thread to our attention, as we have relevant experience to share. Below I have made some broad statements based on operating in DAO governance for 2 years, as well as more specific details of our experience engaging with several Arbitrum-run programs.

1. What is one thing where ArbitrumDAO could support your project’s success in Arbitrum?

What would be helpful for us and other builders, is a concrete list of open challenges that the DAO is actively looking to address. It would also be great to have a more formalised process in which projects can proactively tender and debate their proposals. Currently, many application processes give little opportunity to go deep on technicals, and tend to result in a popularity contest where well-known entities (which have already received funding) get the majority of support simply because of reputation.

I think this is poison to DAOs and the crypto community as a whole. It prevents new participants from making serious contributions because of the way the system is set up, and crypto is supposed to be all about designing systems in a way that enables everyone to participate.

So to answer your question on a very macro level, I would advocate for fundamentally rethinking the evaluation, allocation and accountability of funding initiatives, in the interest of encouraging more successful contributions from more people.

2. What does success for the Arbitrum ecosystem look like to you in 1-2 years?

Given our recent experience with Stylus, we think unlocking on-chain products and protocols that take advantage of what Stylus enables is definitely a north star and we support this as one of Arbitrum’s main goals.

However, as product people, we would also suggest that most dApps are just too complex for the average user, so there should also be a focus on usability and UX design together with the initiatives to promote Stylus adoption.

Therefore, success in our mind would be to see a large number of applications that simply couldn’t be done without Stylus, which are ALSO user friendly and encourage new user adoption.

3. What does success in Arbitrum look like specifically for your project in 1-2 years?

We are a governance research lab with several products, trying to find PMF, so success for us would be largely around adoption of our products within the Aribtrum ecosystem. Success would be:

40% of voters using the Lighthouse Governance native mobile client to participate in Arbitrum decision-making.

Arbitrum DAO making full use of our Dispatch messaging product to deliver secure announcements to Arbitrum participants at scale.

Our open source Signals protocol being leveraged to surface community sentiment and better inform DAO decisions.

4. What’s one critical improvement needed in the Arbitrum ecosystem to achieve this success?

It again comes back to funding and attention (and getting funding seems to be the best way to get attention). Here is an outline of our experience, and we will leave it to you to come to your own conclusions:

In August 2024, after working on our Lighthouse governance tooling for more than a year, we came up with the idea for our new Signals protocol. We wanted to develop it as an open source, public good, specifically tailored to solve many of the issues we had observed in the governance ecosystem.

In November, we were accepted into the Arbitrum x RnDAO Collabtech Hackathon, and we used the opportunity to build the first MVP of signals. Our work won first place in the competition, and we were eager to leverage that visibility to continue working on the project. RnDAO proposed a “Hackathon Continuation Program” which was embraced by the Arbitrum community, so we decided to wait and see what doors would be opened for us.

Ultimately, we were unable to accept RnDAO’s terms for the continuation program, and it seemed like the momentum from the hackathon just stopped.

We next joined the Uniswap Hooks Incubator, and used the opportunity to build another component on top of Signals. In this competition, again, we won the top prize from Arbitrum as well as a prize from Uniswap.

Arbitrum tweeted about us (https://x.com/arbitrum/status/1908251792971894947). We started getting attention for our project, and multiple Arbitrum supporters recommended we apply for the “Arbitrum New Protocols and Ideas 3.0” grant, as it would be perfect for Signals.

Unfortunately, our application was rejected. (You can see our application here: Signals Protocol by Lighthouse Labs)

As you can imagine, we were quite confused and frustrated at simultaneously being acknowledged for our hard work, but also not being supported in taking it to the next level to see what we can achieve. We would hate to see other new builders have a similar experience and give up on Arbitrum altogether.

TL;DR: We won multiple awards from high-profile programs. Our work was acknowledged by industry leaders. We still struggled to receive follow-up support.

So how can we make it better?

• Raise the bar for constructive feedback for funding applicants.
• Provide additional clarity around what should get funded and why.
• De-couple personal preferences in favour of broader DAO-aligned interests.
• Open up channels and processes for feedback and iteration; binary decisions are problematic. (For example, the Questbook response feels very decoupled from industry feedback)

Thanks again for creating this opportunity for us to share!

[Zeptimus]

1- I would love to see ArbitrumDAO implement an RFP model right after SOS is clear. This approach would create clear, structured goals for the ecosystem with specific RFPs that builders can compete for. This targeted funding approach would align builder incentives directly with ecosystem needs and create healthy competition to deliver the best solutions.

2- Success for Arbitrum means doubling down on its DeFi strengths to become the definitive home for the future of finance. By focusing on the intersection of DeFi and RWA, Arbitrum can position itself as the bridge between traditional finance and crypto. I envision Arbitrum becoming the preferred L2 for institutional adoption, with robust infrastructure that meets compliance requirements while maintaining the efficiency advantages of web3. Success means creating an ecosystem where “boomers” and traditional finance participants can easily access DeFi products with familiar interfaces, where safety is a priority, and predictable user experiences.

3- While we haven’t built directly on Arbitrum yet (we recently applied for our first grant), our project aims to significantly reduce the operational overhead for delegates and governance participants. Success for us means developing infrastructure that allows delegates to provide substantial value to the ecosystem without sacrificing time that should be dedicated to their core projects and innovations. We want to create tools that streamline governance participation, automate routine delegate responsibilities, and provide better metrics for measuring delegate contributions. This will ensure that builders can fulfill their delegate duties effectively while continuing to focus on what they do best - building valuable products for the ecosystem.

4- As a builder, what’s holding me back from diving into DeFi development on Arbitrum is the overwhelming responsibility that comes with managing user funds. Arbitrum could create massive value for builders by holding hands in terms of security and compliance.
This would allow us to focus on what we do best - BUIDL - without constantly worrying about the catastrophic consequences of a single mistake when dealing with significant TVL.

If Arbitrum could provide this infrastructure layer that handles the most anxiety-inducing aspects of DeFi development, you’d see an explosion of novel financial applications from builders who currently hesitate due to these barriers.

[Maets23]

Hi. I was asked by @danielo to reply to this topic.

What is one thing where ArbitrumDAO could support your project’s success in Arbitrum?
The main issue SimScore has is understanding the best way to present our proposal to the organization. I have been lurking and posting for about 9 months to better understand your decision processes. I applied to Arbitrum Foundation early on. Unsurprisingly, the proposal was ghosted, being that no one knew who we were. Recently, I;ve put looked at the D.A.O. grant program. However the rubrics don’t suit the SimScore project. Soon, I will post our proposal as a topic. There seems to be no place to propose our solutions that meets materiality.
2. What does success for the Arbitrum ecosystem look like to you in 1-2 years?
Arb price rises steadily and faster than a bucket of like crypto currencies.
3. What does success in Arbitrum look like specifically for your project in 1-2 years?
Arbitrum proposal system has improved proposal quality (leading to higher Arb Value), faster proposal throughput and reduced delegate effort per proposal.
4. What’s one critical improvement needed in the Arbitrum ecosystem to achieve this success?
Decisions don’t seem to be taking advantage of Wisdom of Crowd’s Tech.

5. Give us a brief overview (tl;dr) of your project.
   SimScore is a statistical Consensus app that when combined with constrained AI will automatically edit proposals and provide clear justifications. The SimScore API to be integrated into Discourse…requiring no transition.

6. Why did you choose Arbitrum? What unique value has the ecosystem provided to your project?
   Arbitrum is experimenting with so many cool governance and incentive programs.

7. What’s your Arbitrum journey been like? What has worked well, and what could’ve been better? Labrynth.

8. Why is your project valuable or impactful for the Arbitrum ecosystem?
   Better proposals that clearly align with community feedback and relative delegate VP. Better decisions lead to higher Arb value. In addition the system will be transparent, auditable and deterministic. limiting variability in judgement.

9. If your project operates across multiple chains, how does Arbitrum fit into your overall strategy? What are Arbitrum’s strengths from your project’s point of view and where does Arbitrum fall short? n/a

[7Cedars]

Some quick context.

I became active in this space in September 2024 and am currently developing a role restricted governance protocol: Powers. In November, a first PoC of the protocol came second at the Arbitrum x RnDAO Collabtech Hackathon. (The hackathon where @1a35e1 came first). As with @1a35e1, I ended up not accepting RnDAO’s terms for the continuation program, but decided to further develop the PoC and prepare to apply for grants.

Paulofonseca give me the heads up on this thread and asked if I might want to reply. He did not have any input or review my response. I did read the earlier responses and I think mine ties in with quite a few things mentioned before.

Also, this is my very first post on this forum

1. What is one thing where ArbitrumDAO could support your project’s success in Arbitrum?

I hope you’ll forgive me for mentioning two.
1 - Provide a clear funding infrastructure for builders on Arbitrum. Develop links between hackathons, grants and incubator programs. Also, give clear funding roadmaps for projects that are aimed at public goods or angel funding. It can be implemented in many ways (using an RFP system, maybe in combination with some type of attestation) but the important thing is clarity, coherence and consistency. As a builder, you want to know what the opportunities and risks are.

2 - Facilitate access to human, topic specific, expertise. Connect builders with people who took part in previous grants, allocators, (angel) funders and the like. People who hold/held these roles have very specific knowledge that is often key in the success of projects and that is not available in documentation. As it is now (as far as I can see) 95% of getting in touch with the right people is through person-to-person networking. It is very inefficient and puts a lot of strain on those actors (read delegates) that are publicly visible and get a lot of requests - meaning they often do not reply at all.

Note that both the points also relate to security auditing and compliance (very good remark by @Zeptimus)

2. What does success for the Arbitrum ecosystem look like to you in 1-2 years?

Success for Arbitrum ecosystem means being the go-to chain for developers and users alike. Not because of its strength in one specific area, but because it provides the easiest onboarding, user and developer experiences of the L2 chains; translating in a wider adoption of services and apps deployed on Arbitrum chains.

Having said this, success for me would also lie in less inter-L2 competition. I realise this will need some fundamental reshaping of economic relations between L2s; and between L2s collectively and L1. I realise that Arbitrum DAO has a limited impact on this. But success would be a situation where funding was not constrained by ‘what is the added value for Arbitrum’, because increased TVL on Arbitrum would directly lead to a TVL rise on Base, Optimism and maybe even other L1s. I know we’re not there. And likely not going to get there in 2 years. But one can dream.

3. What does success in Arbitrum look like specifically for your project in 1-2 years?

Briefly, the Powers protocol allows for role restricting rights and responsibilities in DAOs. It’s a bit like the Hats protocol, but on steroids.

Success is to have a financially sustainable setup for developing and maintaining the protocol. To have Arbitrum as a base for a non-profit DAO to develop & audit the protocol and, at the same time, a for-profit consultancy to provide governance solutions to DAOs. The for-profit would give a sizable part of its revenue to the non-profit. It obviously only works if a sufficient amount of organisations use Powers in their governance and bring in enough revenue to fund (a small) number of developers in the two organisations.

This also means that adoption cannot only be among DAOs on Arbitrum, or even just pure DAOs. Success would be the use of the Powers protocol across L2 EVM chains, non-EVM L1s and use by traditional off-chain organisations for their on-chain governance needs.

4. What’s one critical improvement needed in the Arbitrum ecosystem to achieve this success?

Professionalisation.

The Arbitrum ecosystem should revolve less around individuals, and more around roles people have in the community. As a builder it would so much easier if Arbitrum would have a sub-community of builders, of investors, institutional representatives, powers users and, of course, delegates. It would make on-boarding easier, give easy access to relevant and up-to-date information and so on. It is great to see that Arbitrum is actively working on this with its recent proposed governance changes, including creating formal entities (Arbitrum Aligned Entities, OpCo, etc). I think there is a world to win with organising the Arbitrum community internally.

I know from experience that people will only organise if they have an actual stake in a community. Creating these communities will only work if different groups are given actual influence in the community (give former grant recipients a say in an RFP for a developer grant program, for instance, or have previous allocators check on decisions by current allocators). It would mean acknowledging that token based representation is very poor in capturing group specific interests and that some form of role-based representation is necessary for professionalising community relationships.

This is obviously a pet peeve of mine, otherwise I would not have developed a role restricted governance protocol. But putting my project aside, I think that giving builders actual influence (not just a voice) in the community would address many of the issues raised in this thread.

[sinachpat]

1. What is one thing where Arbitrum DAO could support your project’s success in Arbitrum?

DeFi in Arbitrum is growing, currently the space has been saturated by Crypto natives and there’s a need to bring the benefits of this decentralised finance system to others across different other works of life. Thinking about that and the current research we’re doing and building towards which is to understand how to bring the benefits of decentralized finance to freelancers, coaches and consultants making it a part of their toolbox. We would love to see a working group in the Arbitrum DAO focusing on DeFi in Arbitrum, how it works, the different instruments available and the different areas of its application to help onboard more people into web3 without being a crypto degree holder

2. What does success for the Arbitrum ecosystem look like to you in 1-2 years?

Products people across web2, web2.5 and web3 care about being built on and powered by Arbitrum tech stack and development provisions.

3. What does success in Arbitrum look like specifically for your project in 1-2 years?
   The first version of what we’re building at Meetwith will allow freelancers, coaches and consultants to accept stablecoins as payments. And we see this evolving to allow these people to do more with the DeFi stack in Arbitrum allowing them to provide their idle funds as liquidity in Liquidity pools to earn more from them or help them with agents that will manage their idle stablecoins onchain to farm yields for them. There are different directions we can take this to and we are excited about it!

What’s one critical improvement needed in the Arbitrum ecosystem to achieve this success?
I’d like to see working groups for different verticals across Arbitrum like working groups for DeFi, AI Agents, CollabTech etc. This will have a group of people digging deep into these areas and building up a strong products/ventures base across them.

[leuts.eth]

Greetings from Aragon, Ethereum and Arbitrum builders.

1. What is one thing where ArbitrumDAO could support your project’s success in Arbitrum?
Exactly what you are doing now, reach out to projects building on Arbitrum, discover their needs, and hopefully next steps in supporting them.

For us support would be: use or test our products to provide feedback and support with deal flow via connections to projects who might benefit from using it. I don’t need your money, I need money from happy users. Some feedback from me: The Arbitrum DAO thus far is the only chain we are deployed on who has not done this.

2. What does success for the Arbitrum ecosystem look like to you in 1-2 years?

1. Increasing the TAM → bringing new use-cases onto the blockchain
2. Increasing its overall defined OKR’s/KPI’s
3. Supporting the builders on its stack more with non-monetary support.

3. What does success in Arbitrum look like specifically for your project in 1-2 years?

1. Our product offering has been improved by finding and having happy users specifically on Arbitrum

4. What’s one critical improvement needed in the Arbitrum ecosystem to achieve this success?

1. Non-monetary support such as deal flow and feedback

If you can spare more time, we’d love additional insights:

5. Give us a brief overview (tl;dr) of your project.

Aragon allows anyone to launch and manage their onchain organization governing their assets and protocols effectively. Projects can accrue value to their token and use our value accrual toolkit to create a long-term incentive aligned growth flywheel.

Why we are different from our competitors:

1. Modular: Our protocol is modular making it more adaptable, future-proof, secure, and easy to use
2. No-code: Our tools are primarily no-code: you can launch an erc20votes token and an onchain organization in a few clicks in our App
3. Customizeable: you don’t need to only have referendum based governance. On Aragon you can do exactly what the Arbitrum DAO is doing with the AAE → have different bodies govern different permissions in different proposal types.
4. Token Value Accrual: we are the leaders in offering growth flywheel infra. Fully customizeable ve/gauges, choose setups like Curve, Aerodrome, Puffer, Mode, etc.
5. Full-stack services: the only team to invent across the full-vertical stack

6. Why did you choose Arbitrum? What unique value has the ecosystem provided to your project?

We chose Arbitrum because it’s simply put one of the most performant chains with one of the strongest communities.

7. What’s your Arbitrum journey been like? What has worked well, and what could’ve been better?

We received some support when deploying in 2021. Recently we’ve been in touch with Offchain Labs who have been supportive of our direction, mission, and have amplified our new product launches to the Arbitrum ecosystem. Otherwise it has been challenging to get in touch.

8. Why is your project valuable or impactful for the Arbitrum ecosystem?
The best organizations in the world have the best governance with the best long-term incentives. We build the best, most future-proof governance tooling with the most proven token value acrrual framework.

9. If your project operates across multiple chains, how does Arbitrum fit into your overall strategy? What are Arbitrum’s strengths from your project’s point of view and where does Arbitrum fall short?

Arbitrum is one of the few L2’s I expect to “go the mile” and thus it will have one of the most vibrant ecosystems. Every project needs management, governance, and long-term incentive alignment. Whether or not they use tokens or multiple forms of governance inputs is not-important to us as Aragon is agnostic, it’s primitive is permissions. So we look forward to supporting wallets, smart accounts, tokens, digitial identification and whatever else is thrown at us!

[Marcio_FairAI]

Hey

I’m responding on behalf of FairAI, a decentralized AI marketplace for open-source solutions. Our goal is to connect companies that need tailored AI solutions with developers who can build them, all in a transparent, on-chain environment.

Below are our answers to the questions:

1. What is one thing where ArbitrumDAO could support your project’s success in Arbitrum?

We’d love support with access to distribution channels. As first-time founders with technical backgrounds, we have no trouble building innovative solutions — our main challenge is reaching the right users. We believe ArbitrumDAO’s network could help us connect not only with potential partners and early adopters within the ecosystem, but also with relevant players outside of it who could benefit from what we’re building.

2. What does success for the Arbitrum ecosystem look like to you in 1-2 years?

An ecosystem where builders and users are tightly connected, and where new, useful applications can emerge and gain traction without being drowned out by noise. Ideally, Arbitrum becomes the default choice for developers launching new ideas, thanks to a strong community, tooling, and support. At the same time, it allows users outside of Web3 to more easily access applications built in the Arbitrum ecosystem, further evolving the on-ramp structures that exist today.

3. What does success in Arbitrum look like specifically for your project in 1-2 years?

Success for FairAI within Arbitrum means becoming the leading decentralized AI marketplace in the ecosystem. In practice, that looks like a growing number of companies actively using FairAI to request and purchase custom AI solutions, developers consistently earning revenue through the platform, and all payments seamlessly processed on Arbitrum using USDC. We also envision strong integrations with other Arbitrum-native tools and dApps, creating a self-sustaining economy around AI services that brings value and activity to the network.

4. What’s one critical improvement needed in the Arbitrum ecosystem to achieve this success?

A more robust and user-friendly on-ramp infrastructure that lowers the barrier for non-crypto users to interact with Arbitrum-native applications. For FairAI to succeed, we need business users, who may not be crypto-native, to access and transact within the ecosystem easily. That includes smoother fiat-to-Arbitrum flows, identity/authentication standards, and better UX patterns that abstract away Web3 complexity. Improving these areas would not only help our project scale but also make Arbitrum more accessible to the broader tech and enterprise world.

…Give us a brief overview (tl;dr) of your project.

FairAI is a decentralized marketplace where businesses, developers, and AI experts collaborate to solve real-world challenges. It helps businesses digitize their operations and processes in a smarter, faster, and smoother way.

Why did you choose Arbitrum? What unique value has the ecosystem provided to your project?

We chose Arbitrum largely because of our project’s architecture. On the backend, we use Arweave as a storage layer, but we needed payments in stablecoins, as it would not be possible to verify microtransactions in seconds using traditional systems. We also needed to choose one that had a minimally acceptable on-ramp and also followed our ethos of being decentralized, hence the choice for Arbitrum.

What’s your Arbitrum journey been like? What has worked well, and what could’ve been better?

Our journey in the Arbitrum ecosystem has been promising so far. We received a grant from Questbook, which provided important early financial support. We also participated in the Arbitrum CollabTech Hackathon (October 2024), organized by RnDAO, and were one of only four teams selected to continue in the post-hackathon program. This has allowed us to refine and validate our marketplace concept with direct support from the ecosystem, which has been incredibly valuable.

That said, we believe there’s still room for improvement, particularly in access to distribution channels. While funding enables development, visibility is what drives adoption. As mentioned earlier, we also see a broader need across the ecosystem for improved on-ramp infrastructure to support the onboarding of non-crypto-native users better.

Why is your project valuable or impactful for the Arbitrum ecosystem?

FairAI brings real-world use cases to Arbitrum by connecting companies that need AI solutions with developers who can build them. Payments are made in USDC on Arbitrum, which increases on-chain activity and creates real economic flow within the network. This attracts new users, helps showcase Arbitrum’s potential beyond speculation, and contributes directly to the ecosystem’s growth.

[ryanusher]

Great initiative @krst

1. Distribution is the biggest way Arb can support.
   For builders engaging emerging blockchains, a massive benefit is piggybacking off of marketing initiatives and distribution capability of the underlying infrastructure.
   Now, Arb may not be able to do this for every project equally, but for projects offering a totally new value prop, and initiating an sector of the app ecosystem that supports Arb’s differentiation, I think distribution support (frequent co-marketing, support in event sponsorship, etc.) is crucial.

2. Increased volume and TVL

3. Supporting increased volume, and/or benefiting from Arb’s increase in volume.

4. Better structure around distribution support. Dedicated community channels for projects (sort of exists - ie. for Stylus Sprint projects). Dedicated intake forms for projects with upcoming releases/announcements, etc.

5. Fiet Protocol solves illiquidity of local stablecoins by enabling DeFi (AMM) markets that account for real-world off-chain fiat liquidity. Earn yield on bank, CEX, etc. reserves today, settle later.
   The goal is to empower on-chain FX.

6. Arbitrum is our primary chain for settlement. It’s evolving into chain with high liquidity capable of complex applications through Rust.

7. Meeting Arb delegates at EthBucharest, and being invited to speak, is exactly what we’re after re distribution. So far, it’s been quite inviting.

8. Our project aims to grow the stablecoin and FX paradigm on Arbitrum, and even establish Arb as a settlement layer for other chains’ stablecoin ecos.

9. Arb is the primary chain. It conducts settlements and will host our native token. Building on Arb offers a clear multi-year roadmap to an independent chain if we take that route - necessary if we aim to minimise confirmation/finalisation times for cross-chain behaviour.

[precog]

Thanks for initiating this, @krst. It’s rare to see delegates reach out so openly to builders. We appreciate the effort to bridge this gap!

1. What is one thing ArbitrumDAO could do to support your success?

Endorse and experiment with prediction markets as governance primitives.
We’d benefit greatly from DAO-aligned market creation, resolution support (e.g., through L2Beat or community oracles), and small grants for ecosystem-specific markets. A pilot using Precog to forecast protocol KPIs or assess grant ROI could showcase how Arbitrum leads in transparent, data-driven governance.

2. What does success for the Arbitrum ecosystem look like in 1-2 years?

Arbitrum becomes the home for onchain coordination and governance innovation — not just the fastest or cheapest L2, but the most credible neutral ground for DAOs to govern at scale, with frameworks like futarchy, retro funding, and community curation embedded into the ecosystem’s DNA.

3. What does success in Arbitrum look like for Precog?

Precog becomes the default forecasting layer for Arbitrum-native DAOs and public goods. Think:

• Treasury allocations forecasted through markets
• Protocol milestones validated by the community
• A foresight leaderboard surfacing who gets it right and why

4. What’s one critical improvement needed to achieve this?

More experimentation at the DAO level.
The DAO must evolve from grants to being a meta-protocol that funds mechanisms, not just outputs. Supporting futarchy pilots and tooling experiments would unlock new forms of trustless coordination.

5. Why Arbitrum?

Because it’s where credible, experimental governance is possible. The modular stack, mature rollup infra, and DAO treasury setup give us a real shot at testing new experiments with low friction and high upside.

6. What’s worked well?

We’ve had excellent interactions with DAO delegates such as @seedlatam, @bartek, and @griff.

7. What could be better?

There’s some fear around credibility and connection to the traditional world. Right now it seems Arbitrum is a blockchain for “crypto people”.
We think Arbitrum could lean into becoming the “Ethereum for epistemic integrity”, a home for collective intelligence.

8. How is Precog impactful for Arbitrum?

We make $ARB and ecosystem tokens more useful: they become instruments of foresight. Prediction markets are not just games — they are signal-generating engines that DAOs, LPs, and protocols can use to make better decisions. We’re building the rails for that.

Thanks again for creating space for builders to share.

— @0xpetra

[0xAlex]

Thanks for the great initiative @krst, below are some thoughts on behalf of Kleros

1. How can ArbitrumDAO support your project’s success in the Arbitrum ecosystem?

ArbitrumDAO could support Kleros by experimenting with Futarchy, a governance mechanism that could be piloted to allocate grants or incentives. As the oracle securing these markets, Kleros would benefit from such an initiative. See this comment under SEEDGov SOS for more details.

Additionally, Kleros Enterprise is a product focused on real-world use cases, as highlighted in this Forum post for the V2 Beta. We are already collaborating with fintechs, governments, and traditional companies. We would value business development synergies with ArbitrumDAO to explore these opportunities further.

2. What does success for the Arbitrum ecosystem look like in 1-2 years?

In 1-2 years, a successful Arbitrum ecosystem would feature leading DeFi projects with high TVL and robust activity. Allocating grants or incentives through innovative mechanisms like Futarchy to the right projects could help reach this goal.

Moreover, Arbitrum should become a hub for real-world use cases. I appreciate the DAO’s support for the RWA sector, as mentionned here. However, more could be done to encourage traditional companies to integrate processes on the Arbitrum chain, such as resolving disputes in a decentralized manner using Kleros V2’s court system.

3. What does success in Arbitrum look like for Kleros in 1-2 years?

Success for Kleros in Arbitrum entails deep integration with key stakeholders. This includes collaboration with ArbitrumDAO and support from the AAEs for Futarchy use case, adoption of Kleros products like SafeSnap for governance or Escrow for P2P deals, use of Kleros V2’s general decentralized dispute resolution.

4. What’s one critical improvement needed in the Arbitrum ecosystem to achieve this success?

The Arbitrum ecosystem needs to foster a strong culture of innovation, encouraging builders to experiment with novel ideas (Futarchy is just one example among many).

A core strength of Kleros is its commitment to decentralization. Our protocol is governed not by a multisig but by a smart contract, with changes enacted solely through transparent governance. We encourage Arbitrum to continue to uphold this value, attracting builders who share our vision and foster trustless partnerships.

5. Why did you choose Arbitrum? What unique value has the ecosystem provided to your project?

The legacy protocol V1 comes from Ethereum, but for the new Kleros V2, we wanted to provide a cheaper experience to lower dispute fees (impacted by gas prices) without sacrificing security. By choosing an L2 chain over an alt-L1 chain, Kleros V2 inherits the security of Ethereum (Kleros is Ethereum-aligned, even in its Treasury Management). We identified that Arbitrum is ahead with its fraud proof mechanism, making it an obvious choice to be the home chain of our V2.

Another aspect is that Arbitrum is the most decentralized L2, as outlined by the L2Beats Dashboard. The ArbitrumDAO’s genuine control over the chain, rather than reliance on a multisig, aligns with Kleros’ commitment to decentralization as mentioned in the previous question.

6. What’s your Arbitrum journey been like? What has worked well, and what could’ve been better?

Our participation in the LTIPP was a positive experience, and we want to thank @JoJo,@SEEDGov, and @CastleCapital for their leadership as Participant Advisors.

We’ve also engaged in governance, as detailed in my Delegate thread, to keep up and monitor new opportunities.

However, we would have appreciated more support for covering part of the audit costs for a project with a strong track record like ours (as this is a common practice among many L2s). We welcome the recent proposal from the Foundation @Arbitrum and are eager to apply for it, given Kleros V2’s native and exclusive presence on Arbitrum.

On the technical side, we wish more progress could be made toward decreasing the censorship delay (from 24 to 12 or 4 hours) because it is a latency constraint for all optimistic mechanisms built on Arbitrum (cf this discussion with Shotaro, Bartek, and Ed Felten)

7. Why is your project valuable or impactful for the Arbitrum ecosystem?

The Beta version of Kleros V2 is already delivering significant value to Arbitrum, as detailed in this Forum post.

For crypto-native projects, Kleros offers innovative solutions like Futarchy, Constitutional DAOs, on-chain escrow for service providers, and decentralized dispute resolution that can be enforced with smart contracts.

For traditional companies, Kleros allows them to resolve disputes in a fast, cheap, and reliable way. This enables them to be more efficient and start their “blockchain journey” by experimenting with Arbitrum’s capabilities.

8. If your project operates across multiple chains, how does Arbitrum fit into your overall strategy?

Kleros V2 is native and exclusive to Arbitrum, unlike typical DeFi protocols that deploy across multiple chains. Our economic security and utility rely on jurors staking PNK in Kleros Court, which operates solely on Arbitrum. This ensures that Arbitrum captures all staking activity, case volume, and smart contract deployments.

While Kleros Court remains on Arbitrum, we will be able to resolve disputes on other chains like Optimism or Base via a cross-chain bridge. Dispute data from these chains will be bridged to Arbitrum, resolved by Kleros Court V2, and the outcome will be transmitted back to the foreign chain for enforcement. All activity happening on Kleros V2 will directly benefit the Arbitrum ecosystem.

[limes]

1. What is one thing where ArbitrumDAO could support your project’s success in Arbitrum?

Make funding easier for builders with reputation. I’ve built multiple projects like WannaBet, JellyBeans, SafeNotes, and GovScore outside the ecosystem because the upfront cost of getting funded here is too high. SafeNotes and GovScore are designed to increase transparency and accountability across DAOs, infrastructure Arbitrum says it values, but I can’t seem to get funded for them (Just denied on Questbook for SafeNotes). It doesn’t seem as if I’m the only one as the domain I applied for has a 2.7% funding rate.

To be clear: I don’t mind getting denied, the denial note was actually quite in depth. What’s frustrating is how much effort and time it took me to apply while getting encouraged to keep going. I spent a ton of time applying I could’ve spent building. I wish I would have just been told no sooner

2. What does success for the Arbitrum ecosystem look like to you in 1–2 years?

A program or team is in place where people with strong buildier history who want to try new things have funding to do so.

Alternatively, there is a precedent for people who create value see retroactive funding.

3. What does success in Arbitrum look like specifically for your project in 1–2 years?

SafeNotes (or something like it) is widely used to transparently record transactions by Arbitrum DAO-funded teams. We translate raw ledger data into legible insight, allowing us to see what DAO funded teams are spending on.

4. What’s one critical improvement needed in the Arbitrum ecosystem to achieve this success?

Invest in talent, not templates.

---

TL;DR of your project

SafeNotes makes DAO multisig activity legible by letting signers annotate and categorize transactions for the community to see.

Why did you choose Arbitrum?

Because Arbitrum has real DAO activity and real teams. It feels like the ecosystem most in need of strong DAO tooling.

What’s your Arbitrum journey been like?

Mixed. I’ve interacted with some incredibly smart, thoughtful people and also shared multisigs with folks who aren’t sure how to use a wallet.

Why is your project valuable or impactful for the Arbitrum ecosystem?

Without transparency and accountability, DAOs lose legitimacy. SafeNotes makes treasury activity understandable for the public. That’s foundational for trust, and for scaling governance.

If your project operates across multiple chains, how does Arbitrum fit into your strategy?

I want to build on Arbitrum. But historically, I’ve leaned toward ecosystems with clearer retroactive funding or more streamlined grant paths. That’s where I’ve been able to ship.