Thank you for bringing this up @BlockworksResearch. I wanted to respond in addition to @moses’s response to give a quick TLDR of Synapse’s STIP grant:
- The original STIP allocation was to enable “slippage-free” bridging, faster and cheaper bridging.
“Slippage-free bridging - 1.5M ARB will be used to support faster and cheaper bridging. Using Synapse’s concentrated liquidity pools and traditional stableswap pools, Synapse’s aim is for any Arbitrum user to bridge up to $5M slippage-free”
Source: [Synapse Protocol] [FINAL][STIP - Round 1]
- Synapse DAO built RFQ bridging. An intent-based architecture that allows relayers to complete bridge transactions. We thought this would be the best architecture to reduce bridging times(from 17 minutes to 15 seconds) and make bridging cheaper.
Sources: https://twitter.com/SynapseProtocol/status/1765107103746662888, can share Dune queries as well.
- Synapse DAO voted on how to break down incentives between bridges and relayers to bootstrap this RFQ ecosystem best and chose to allocate 750k for RFQ relayers who complete bridge transactions and 750k for bridgers.
Source: Snapshot
- By all measures, I’d consider this a massive success, delivering on Synapse’s promises in STIP as much as possible:
- Bridge times fell from 17 mins to 15 seconds
- Slippage free bridging(cost savings for users)
- Over $3B in bridge volume & 60k unique bridges
- We reduced stagnant TVL liquidity, increasing safety for LPs and the Arbitrum ecosystem
Sources for this are above but can also be seen in the bi-weekly updates, for example: Synapse Protocol Bi-Weekly STIP Backfund Updates - #4 by moses
- 750k ARB was distributed to bridgers as fee rebates, and 750k was distributed to RFQ relayers. I asked those relayers if they’d consider delegating their Arb to me which they did. As mentioned in @moses’s reply, I can see how this could be viewed as some sort of “quid-pro-quo” and have since asked them to undelegate or vote themselves. That said, I don’t think it’s against STIP rules; my understanding is the ARB shouldn’t be used by the DAO for governance, but after it’s distributed to relayers, users, LPs, etc, they can use it for governance.
In regards to the 3.3k Arb that was left unused, that was transferred back to the Arbitrum DAO(Arbitrum Transaction Hash (Txhash) Details | Arbiscan). Thank you for pointing this out.
The two concerns raised by @BlockworksResearch are about the unused ARB and the use of ARB in governance.
As mentioned, the unused Arb(3.3k) has been returned.
In regards to the use of Arb in governance, a clarification of the rules here would be helpful. The original STIP proposal says, " Grants are not to be used in DAO governance". Our understanding of this was that Arb tokens given to the respective STIP DAOs shouldn’t be used in governance but once they’ve been distributed, it could be used. Similar to how LPs & traders that received Arb from GMX’s STIP program could use the Arb in governance.
Either way, I see why this could be confusing and have asked the relayers to undelegate. That said, I don’t think this is a breach of STIP rules in the first place, and it certainly wasn’t done with malicious intent.
Would love to hear @BlockworksResearch’s thoughts with more context now and answer any other questions others have on this matter. Appreciate everyone’s diligence on the matter.