1. Why I’m Voting FOR
- We’ve covered about 284 ETH in Nova subsidies so far (86 ETH back in fees vs. 401 ETH in L1 costs – see chart¹).
- Removing the cap means sequencer fees finally match real gas costs, so we’re not hiding the true economics.
- That capital can be put to better use—like targeted grants, dev programs, or new scaling experiments.
¹ Hex Dashboard (“Cumulative Net” curve shows a steeper drop after EIP-4844 in March 2024)
2. Marketing & Strategy Perspective
Ultimately these subsidies were a growth campaign likely created to incentivize teams to come to Arbitrum Nova and spur more on-chain transactions (I assume there was a more specific goal).
I’d love to see how this campaign actually performed and what learnings we can apply to potential subsidies on Orbit. I think there’s a lesson here: treat Nova incentives like any growth campaign—set clear spend → acquire → retain metrics and iterate fast.
Key points:
- Builder acquisition: Which incentives (fee discounts, grants, hackathons) actually drove teams to Nova?
- ROI benchmarks: How much ETH did we spend per new dApp, per incremental TVL, or per transaction?
- Qualitative feedback: As we’ve discussed, I’d love to see direct interviews with early builders to learn why they chose Nova.
Questions for growth/ROI:
- What KPIs (new builder count, active addresses, TVL lift) were we tracking, and what did they show?
- Of those teams who joined, how many eventually moved to Arbitrum One or Orbit, and why?
- Can we share these insights with the DAO to make Orbit-chain incentives more data-driven?