Thank you for this valuable initiative. As active participants in the ArbitrumDAO, both as delegates and builders, we appreciate the effort to bridge the gap and directly solicit feedback from those on the ground.
What is one thing where ArbitrumDAO could support your project’s success in Arbitrum?
The most significant support ArbitrumDAO could provide is twofold, focusing on both funding mechanisms and strategic direction for public goods and DAO tooling.
Firstly, as we’ve highlighted, it’s to diversify grant funding models beyond the current Questbook structure. While Questbook is valuable, for us it predominantly supports projects with clear B2C revenue models (as we were rejected from the most recent round). This model isn’t always a fit for essential DAO tooling and public goods projects like ours, which provide more collective value but often lack a straightforward user-pays model. Establishing dedicated funding tracks, such as a ‘Service Provider Pool’ or a ‘Public Goods Funding Program,’ would be a major step forward. These would cater to projects delivering foundational value to the ecosystem, ensuring crucial infrastructure can be sustainably developed.
Secondly, and in direct complement to improved funding, it would be immensely valuable for service providers and public goods builders like Curia Lab to have greater clarity on the specific, evolving needs and strategic priorities of the ArbitrumDAO itself. If the DAO, perhaps in collaboration with the Foundation and OCL, could play a more active role in articulating, validating, and regularly communicating these ecosystem requirements , it would significantly enhance our ability to deliver impactful solutions.
Currently, it can be challenging to proactively design and propose the most high-impact initiatives without clear, ongoing feedback loops from the DAO regarding its most pressing challenges or desired capabilities. By surfacing these identified needs and actively encouraging proposals for public goods or services that address them , the DAO would empower builders like us to develop more targeted, value-aligned solutions. This would create a more synergistic relationship where our development efforts are directly responsive to the community’s most critical requirements, maximizing the utility of both our work and any allocated funding.
What does success for the Arbitrum ecosystem look like to you in 1-2 years?
Success for the Arbitrum ecosystem in 1-2 years, from our perspective, means it’s recognized not just for its leading L2 technology, but as the gold standard for transparent, effective, and highly participatory decentralized governance. We envision an ecosystem where decision-making is demonstrably data-informed due to accessible analytics, delegate accountability is high and easily verifiable, and community trust in the DAO’s processes is exceptionally strong. This environment would naturally attract even more high-quality projects and talent, fostering a virtuous cycle of growth and innovation built on robust governance.
What does success in Arbitrum look like specifically for your project in 1-2 years?
Success for Curia Lab in Arbitrum in 1-2 years would see our governance analytics & data infrastructure and other data-driven tools widely adopted and integrated into the daily workflows of Arbitrum delegates, token holders, and the broader community. We aim for our tools to be considered essential, go-to infrastructure for understanding, participating in, and evaluating Arbitrum governance. Measurable impacts would include more informed debates, higher quality proposals citing our data, and a generally healthier, more transparent governance lifecycle. Being recognized as a key, long-term contributor in enhancing Arbitrum’s governance framework would be a significant measure of success.
What’s one critical improvement needed in the Arbitrum ecosystem to achieve this success?
Beyond diversified funding mechanism and clearer articulation of needs, a critical improvement would be establishing clearer pathways for the DAO to formally acknowledge, integrate, and actively champion valuable public goods or DAO-specific tooling. This could involve creating frameworks for “DAO-endorsed tools” or even processes where the DAO can commission specific analytics or tools it identifies as strategically important. This creates a demand-side pull, ensuring that useful tools aren’t just built in isolation but are actively adopted, maintained, and evolved for the ecosystem’s collective benefit, fostering a more collaborative relationship between builders of public goods and the DAO itself.
Why did you choose Arbitrum? What unique value has the ecosystem provided to your project?
We specifically chose Arbitrum for several key reasons that align perfectly with our mission. Firstly, ArbitrumDAO exhibits one of the highest governance cadences among all DAOs , providing a rich and dynamic environment for developing and testing governance tools. Secondly, there’s a palpable delegate culture within Arbitrum that genuinely values data-driven insights and transparency.
Furthermore, Arbitrum is pioneering several governance initiatives that resonate deeply with our work. Programs like the delegate incentive program , which aims for a more accurate and fair reward system, and explorations into enhanced participation tracking and qualitative delegate feedback evaluation , all signal a commitment to high governance standards. These initiatives create a fertile ground for tools like ours that specialize in providing clarity and analytics for complex governance processes. This environment not only demands but also appreciates the sophisticated data products we built, making Arbitrum an ideal ecosystem for us to contribute to and grow within.
What’s your Arbitrum journey been like? What has worked well, and what could’ve been better?
Our Arbitrum journey has been multifaceted and deeply engaging. We initially joined the Arbitrum DAO as a delegate right from its inception. Through active participation, we identified a clear need and came up with an idea for the Arbitrum governance analytics platform. We even drafted an initial proposal to the DAO (which you can find here).
The overall sentiment for our initial analytics idea was positive, with feedback indicating its value to the DAO. However, it was suggested that it didn’t perfectly fit existing initiatives at the time and that we should explore applying to the Questbook grant program. We took that advice, applied, and were successfully funded to build the governance analytics platform. Beyond just the dashboard, under this grant, we also committed to making sense of the data by publishing detailed monthly governance analytics reports for the past six months.
- The feedback on these reports was great, and some of the insights sparked valuable discussions, for instance, within the Arbitrum delegate Telegram group. The open nature of the forum for sharing insights and the general receptiveness from many delegates and community members to engage with the insights has certainly worked well and been very encouraging.
After the initial grant funding period concluded, our plan was to further double down on this work and build out a distinctly new layer of analytics focusing on off-chain governance activity , specifically within the Arbitrum Forum; encompassing delegate-level metrics, behavioral patterns, and identity anchoring. We believe this is a crucial next step for comprehensive governance understanding.
This is where our experience highlights what could be better. Our subsequent proposal to continue and expand this work was unfortunately rejected by Questbook, with the feedback citing a “Limited sustainability path” and “Incremental scope” (stating the proposal extended an existing deliverable rather than introducing a novel protocol or Arbitrum-specific breakthrough expected in that domain).
This experience, while part of the building process, underscores the challenges we mentioned earlier regarding funding for projects that are iterative, foundational, or public-good oriented. While we understand the criteria, it can be difficult for projects providing ongoing value and seeking to build upon successful foundations to find continued support if they don’t fit a narrow definition of “novelty” or have an immediate, direct revenue model. It reinforces the need for more diverse funding mechanisms and clearer pathways for supporting the evolution of essential DAO tooling and services.
Why is your project valuable or impactful for the Arbitrum ecosystem?
Our tools directly address the core needs of a healthy, scalable, and trusted DAO:
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Transparency: We make complex on-chain governance data (like voting patterns, proposal history) and off-chain data (like forum sentiment and participation) easily understandable and accessible. More uniquely, we are pioneering the analysis of off-chain governance activity, specifically within the Arbitrum Forum, as a distinct new layer of analytics.
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Accountability: Our analytics provide clear, objective insights into delegate participation, forum interaction, and overall governance engagement. We go significantly beyond simple data scraping by aggregating and interpreting identity and behavior across both on-chain and off-chain activities. For instance, our “Forum Score” creates a reputation layer by combining multiple source of data and signals to profile delegate engagement, feeding into a broader “Delegate Score” that maps overall contribution and influence.
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Informed Decision-Making: We equip all stakeholders – from individual token holders to the most active delegates – with the comprehensive data needed to make better, more strategic governance choices.
By enhancing these foundational aspects, Curia Lab contributes to a more robust, resilient, and trusted ArbitrumDAO. This, in turn, strengthens the entire Arbitrum ecosystem by fostering greater confidence and more effective governance, which are crucial for long-term sustainability and growth. Our existing ArbitrumDAO governance analytics and report is a concrete example, already providing value by insights to the governance dynamics.
We’re excited about the future of Arbitrum and eager to continue contributing to its success with data-driven insights and tools. Thank you again for opening this important dialogue.