This is a lousy example, the DAO literally approved them a 250M ARB program and they had a seat on the GCP, if they did not move forward quickly having the funds in the multisig is no longer the DAO’s fault, it is the fault of those involved in the execution of the program. In the end, they left because someone offered them money somewhat faster, which speaks more about Treasure than Arbitrum DAO.
So in this case I would recommend that you open the process to candidates who are willing to do it for a reasonable salary based on the task at hand. Your argument is like the CEO of Apple applying for a job as a manager at a McDonalds branch and pretending to earn the same salary as his previous job.
On the other hand, I am surprised by the absence of any mention of Alex’s failure at Savvy (also a waste of DAO’s funds through STIP/STIP-B) or the multiple complaints (as example this one) about Plurality Labs and their management of the DAO-funded program. It is even more incredible that these cases of failure are presented as a “positive” aspect of Alex and Joe’s background. In the case of PL, they couldn’t even deliver a framework for grants as promised.
In my opinion, this collides with the work being done by Entropy, who are trying to first establish the Mission, Vision, and Purpose of the DAO and then come up with a proposal with more specific objectives for the next 12-24 months. And to be honest, if PL/Joe couldn’t deliver a framework for grants, I don’t think that you can solve a huge problem for the DAO such as outlining objectives and setting budgets for different verticals.
Your reaction to criticism (both now and when you canceled a Snapshot vote because you didn’t get the result you wanted) could be one of the reasons why people choose to create an anonymous profile to tell you things. In any case, this is web3, if someone chooses to be anonymous it shouldn’t matter.
The comparison with Entropy is misplaced because Stylus is not the only initiative they are working on. It was only given as an example in a series of initiatives.
Pretty much everything you listed as problem areas I agree with. I’ve either experienced them myself or have had discussions with builders who echo similar sentiment. It’s unfortunate these issues still exist, as I know it’s been discussed for a while and different attempts have been made to resolve them. I’ve historically been supportive of any initiative that tries to resolve this, as I’ve gotten to the point of ‘throw enough crap to see what sticks’.
You mentioned a monthly governance call… what extra value would this add beyond the bi-weekly calls & monthly call already in place with the DAO?
As a though exercise, what would you have done to prevent this from happening had you been in this role earlier this year (Proposal for Financial Restitution For ArbitrumDAO Grant Winners )? This is just one example, but in my experience some of the roadblocks were seeing aren’t anything the DAO can necessarily control.
I’ll add a brainstormy-type question here: In the event the entire proposal does not pass, is there willingness to fund a smaller amount to get some of the smaller projects accomplished? I can see something like building a Governance Wiki or the Tracking system could add value to the DAO.
I’m glad you have reposted here as I didn’t get to answer on the other thread in time. I’m pretty sure others have similar questions too.
Yes. I think there are reasons they don’t stick. One of the biggest issues is that DAOs lack of a specific scope of work - governance operations - which goes under the radar because it is accounted for in centralized systems.
In corporations, you have strategic work done by executives to set higher level objectives and tactical work done by departments. There is implicit understanding that executives are then accountable for the reception of these objectives. They not only facilitate their own design thinking processes to select the best objectives, they also create rituals and processes they use to help keep the lower levels aligned and on track.
In a DAO, the executive function of setting objectives can be done by consensus vote, but then there isn’t an individual responsible for making these things happen after a collective decision. Even if a budget is funded, it funds the tactical execution, but not the counterparty to the work being done. You may think of it as setting the “R” in a RACI, but there is no one there to be the “A”.
This missing role in decentralized systems is what I (and others) call governance operations. It facilitates processes to help optimize and hold accountable how one level of the system works with another level. It also can help compile the strategic level objectives into tactical initiatives when there isn’t an executive that naturally holds accountability for doing so when the DAO collectively makes a decision.
I do believe that my years of participating in DAOs at the highest levels has shown me insights into what works and what doesn’t. Hopefully, we can make a real impact here by utilizing proper systems and operational design thinking in connection with real experience.
Another benefit of having us full-time is that I like to address problems when we see them. There isn’t just a lack of an alignment system or operating system for the DAO, we don’t even speak the same language. I’ve had multiple conversations where we thought there was overlap because I’m calling something a “pillar” and someone else interprets that as what they think of as North star. However, my intention was to mean a set of funded initiatives that all align to a desired outcome, but it likely would be an outcome that serves the north star vision - if we had one!
If I was being paid full-time, I would write a forum post to spark and steward a discussion to help us ratify a glossary of terms and avoid this problem in the future. Now, I don’t want to say this is a deliverable becuse the important thing is that I’m able to address the most important problems at the right time. When you hire someone at your company, you don’t ask exactly what deliverables they will give at the beginning. You agree to some regular outputs, then judge them based on what they do.
By demanding a set of unknowable deliverables, we sometimes limit what talented people would do.
This is referring to the Monthly GRC that happened yesterday. Three month ago we split it from the bi-weekly proposals call which is now used to talk about upcoming votes. Alex has been stewarding this call unpaid since August. I’ve been helping a bit this last month.
Behind the scenes Alex conducted at least 15 half hour calls with initiatives and likely more time with delegates. We have been refining the call to serve the delegates needs. Yesterday, I think I even heard a compliment from L2 Beat saying the call was exactly what they needed. There is still work to be done though!
What I can say is that Thrive itself had the M1B proposal pass on Tally on 4/2/24, but couldn’t access funds until mid July! However, even with that issue, they delivered most M1B funds 1-4 weeks. They did this by spending funds parntering with the Thrive Impact Foundation, a new Cayman Entity which could help them to compliantly allocate grant funds.
The issue you refer to in M1B wasn’t any one actors fault, there were too many cooks and process dependencies. Thrive couldn’t get validation to payout any individual week until all four of the winners passed KYC. This wasn’t a policy Thrive made. Then at the end there was the list of all remaining payout, which again had to wait until everyone passed KYC to payout. It took some public tweets to execute the payments for everyone who was passed, and then hold the payments for those who weren’t.
While not blaming anyone, I think the record of the discussion on that post shows repeatedly that Thrive was very responsive. Additionally, with M1B program managers, our exit interviews all rated Thrive performance as an 8,9, or 10 on the would they work with us again scale.
Thanks for the thoughtful questions Bob. We’d really appreciate your support.
Hello 404,
Let’s look at your concerns.
We are drafting a response separately to show how minimal, if any, overlap there is to Entropy.
Yes. All managerial and/or operational work does hold this risk, but it isn’t a reason not to do the work imho. Because, I hate micro-management, and have lots of management experience across multiple industries, I am well equipped to avoid this risk.
We are getting feedback on how to structure comp in relation to achieving milestones. However, there are mixed feelings on the operational work having milestones. Some believe this role is more like a hired job, but since there isn’t a role or job description, it requires someone to create it. See my first response to Bob above. Also, this hired role would usually be accountable to a manager or executive, rather than needing to identify a set of SMART goals.
I promise we will clarify these issues before moving forward.
As of now it looks like we will have two “work packages”
Conduct the governance operations role, document it and onboard someone to maintain it.
Act as servant leader to the “one-click” UX package workstream, documenting the role description and designing a fair and effective system for selecting a replacement.
As of now the comp suggestion getting the best responses in private conversations is something that works conceptually like this.
Pay in range of $120k annual for governance operations.
Pay increases upon hitting milestones in the workstream to get to $200k annual range based on success.
Because we are taking such high pay risk based on delivering outcomes, have a bonus structure that ensures “good” pay if everything is achieved. ($300k range)
Payout bonus on a vesting schedule to entice us to stay after this contract expires.
This isn’t finalized, but I’m okay with sharing for feedback at this conceptual level.
Thanks for pointing this out. I didn’t intend for it to be presumptive. Alex and I have been discussing these calls with delegates and this is one of the primary things they have pointed out as being a problem with the calls as they have been done in the past. This isn’t my presumption of what is needed. Additionally, we combined it with a survey yesterday to get better feedback on how to update as it moves forward. We will be posting the survey results with some analysis soon.
Hello OxAlex,
Great question. I think the problem has been that the delegates don’t know when there is an issue to flag. Someone yesterday said “Aren’t the initiatives all posting on the forum?”. The answer is most, but not all. The delegates would have to go an find every update thread once a week to flag a missing post in time to make corrections! Sometimes that post is it’s own thread and others respond to their initial tally. All of this uses valuable time. (Not that I think a missing post is a huge issue)
The problem is that there isn’t a backbone system linking to relevant documentation. This lack of an organizing system costs every active delegate either 1) hours of time looking up posts or worse 2) they don’t keep initiatives accountable until an emergency happens. Some initiatives have been done well, but delegates expected that they would have results many months sooner.
Here are some insights we shared based on this last months work.
We are drafting a response separately to show how minimal, if any, overlap there is to Entropy.
This isn’t a RACI, but it shows the basic non-overlap the way we see it.
Hello Nyx!
Let’s answer some of your questions!
More details are in an answer to Bob above, but we are still negotiating this with some top delegates and foundation to find an acceptable accountability practice. It will likely be similar to how Entropy is being held acountable with regular forum updates and a set of deliverables that are clearly acheived or not. Additionally, we will have to participate in the governance operations setup we are designing to make it easier for delegates to hold us accountable.
Referring to the Governance Wiki - This will have the types of decisions and methods for making them at every level with best practices. For example, every initiative holding a budget has a council of some sort. Should we require role documentation? When should elections use ranked choice? Is an election or hiring better for a specific circumstance?
While some solutions may be ratified, our intention is to make the options known and available with suggestions of norms and best practices. This can also guide controlled experimentation for specific issues we may face.
This call is already happening! See my explanation in an answer above where I discuss the call’s origin story.
This proposal is very very interesting and I believe it is crucial to Arbitrum DAO short term (and potentially long term) success, especially with the current state of the market and landscape as well.
I think everyone resonates with this, the proposal addresses the most important issue that Arbitrum DAO has atm -coordination! Imo there are frictions in the following areas: delegations, governance, DAO “leadership” and “menthorship”, communications, audits, grant giving, events, a low appetite for small-medium sized DAO lead positive sum experimentation
If this proposal can address some of these issues it would be extremely beneficial for the DAO. There is a certain “chaotic” element in Arbitrum DAO governance at the moment and it is not in it’s advantage.
All the items here are very much needed in Arbitrum DAO atm imo, the calls are great for coordinating with more user personas.
Also as a side note, I believe both Joe and Alex have facilitated a lot of extremely beneficial conversations, have pushed their limits and contributed a lot of value to Arbitrum Dao for free**, from STIP to micro-management, from tutoring newbies to adding crucial feedback in important DAO initiatives+ other things that I may not even be aware of. If natural selection has any meaning in DAOs, they should be supported to run this proposal and to continue to help nurture the Arbitrum DAO-with guidance from the DAO ofc. I’m not the best person to comment on the organizational aspects of it tho
I would add that contributors feel they have nothing to add to the conversations that are ongoing because there is no “starting ground” or “refferrence point”
As someone who has been full time working in DAOs since 2020, I find it unbelievable that after over a year, Arbitrum DAO doesn’t have a workstream structure in place, this is the most important thing that this proposal can help solve: workstreams! It’s also a very very complex thing to kickstart workstreams, as they can be both a blessing and a pain. In most DAOs workstreams always get politicized or “captured” one way of the other by a “group” - it is just how humans function and I am speaking from experience, unfortunately I have not contributed to a DAO that has solved “workstreams” in a way that doesn’t waste a lot of capital and human resources.
I strongly believe that if Arbitrum DAO doesn’t want to have those issues it must have mechanisms in place that can make sure these workstreams will not centralize or function without extremely clear missions of ethical principles(that are enforced). The good part is Arbitrum DAO has the resources(people, capital, knowledge) and the tools available today to make these things happen.
Also, extremely curious how the strategic workstreams will be conceptualized and how they will function. Some questions that are on my mind are:
*1. Is this going to be similar to an RFP process or feedback gathering process? *
*2. Will the DAO be able to contribute to the workstreams? * 3. How will contributors for the workstreams recruited?
I support this initiative and believe Alex and Joe are the right people to push something like this forward as they are excelent facilitators and can coordinate with large groups of people in an effective way -which is a prerequisite to the success of a huge effort like this which requires the whole DAOs support and collective intelligence.
A post to clarify our understanding of potential overlap with Entropy.
There is a lot here, so I’ll unpack one by one.
We believe that there is room for more than one entity to deliver strategic proposals to the DAO. We aren’t event claiming territory - this is just one proposal. As dedicated DAO contributors, we’d love to help others bring quality proposals as well.
We believe that guiding key partners through the DAO processes is something everyone takes part in. This isn’t overlap. There is plenty of this to do.
We are supportive of Entropy’s efforts to align the DAO with a Vision Mission and purpose. We are committed to collaborating with OpCo. Even if you thought of Entropy as “CEO of the DAO” (which we don’t and I don’t believe they do either), it takes more than just the CEO to align priorities of all the stakeholders in the ecosystem.
So do I think these overlap, NO. There is plenty of work to be done. I’d prefer if @Entropy would comment if they feel there is overlap by identifying the specific issues if there are any. We’ve done about everything we can to resolve any overlap issues including attending their office hours regularly and participating in a TG chat which has mostly been productive with 2 way feedback.
Here is the list of what we are proposing to do.
Execute governance operations Governance operations happens at every meta-level of organization. At the full DAO level there is oversight & optimization functions and the supporting operational tasks. I haven’t seen an initiative db, governance wiki creation in their proposal. Additionally, they had plenty of time to pick up hosting the monthly GRC call. To me it seems like different work.**
designing better systems For this to overlap without a doubt, it would require Entropy being responsible for designing and optimizing every system the DAO uses. This would be like the mayor being directly responsible for figuring out how the parks department schedules landscaping appointments.
documenting the role and preparing for handoff to OpCo the role doesn’t exist yet. Delegates have specifically pointed us in this direction as a need. We are posturing in the most cooperative way possible to indicate that we will collaborate with a future OpCo. We also aren’t dictating that the OpCo must use our work.**
Strategic workstream design We are working to design a single workstream. Entropy has expressed interest or activated multiple workstreams. No where have I seen designing repeatable and scalable processes for workstream governance in their mandate. However, they will by default be designing their workstream governance. Someone has to evaluate how these different budgets are governed to ensure that it doesn’t become too complex for delegates to understand. Sure, there is overlap, but I’d argue this is healthy overlap - plus we are offering to take on the operational admin part of documenting across efforts.
building governance processes same answer as above
executing governance operations preparing to hand off leadership to a future workstream steward. This is referring to processes internal to a workstream. Unless you’re reading thier offer to do some strategic governance work as “all strategic governance work” this doesn’t overlap based on my assumption that the governance processes their referring to are in relation to the work scopes they have identified like Vision Mission Purpose - basically DAO executive level strategy setting and OpCo.
I don’t understand, is this a reason we shouldn’t do this work?
I wrote an events proposal and handed it to Entropy in an offer to collaborate rather than have my proposal compete with theirs. I did this even though I thought I had a great plan and knew I would likely be needing a role because I was planning to leave Thrive. I did this because it was on their objectives ratified in the Fund Entropy proposal which I supported, and I did not want to overlap. They graciously offered me a spot on the council for the work and support I gave. I don’t think it is a paid role and I didn’t specifically request it. I only asked them to use my name in the proposal and/or offer a position if they felt it would help get it passed, but I had no strings attached to my support.
Yes they are. And we are not.
We’ve offered to be big supporters of this. I like most of the direction they are taking. It is a tough task. We aren’t doing anything that overlaps with this work.
Yes. And they are off to a great start in supporting these initiatives. We believe that initiatives in the DAO should have feedback from multiple parties. I commend the work Entropy is doing, but I think it is safe to say that even they would disagree that they should be the only people providing feedback and guidance to initiatives. (I didn’t check that with them - my assumption entirely!)
I don’t understand. Should everyone on the MSS be unable to work another job? Is my performance on the MSS lacking?
Conclusion
Thanks for your time. I understand how some of this can seem like overlap, but mostly because there are similar needs and roles across many functions and verticals and at many meta-levels of organization. I believe there is plenty of work to do.
We are in a tech market which is leading innovation next to AI, nano-tech, and space exploration. Not only that, we are in a competitive landscape at the edge of EXCELLENCE and INNOVATION. We need to execute and iterate quickly if we want to stay relevant.
I’d also really appreciate clarification from @Entropy if they do feel that we are indeed overlapping. That is the simple way to solve this problem if it even exists.
Just wanted to note thanks for the clarification on the call. That makes sense and I’m for it, I originally was concerned as I thought that this would be in addition to the monthly one. I see the value in it.
As for Thrive, I guess the crux of me bringing that up is asking however if you two think this is something you could have prevented. It sounds like no based on the response? Is that out of scope issue of the project, or some other reason? I say that fully understanding the limitations around KYC items, but as noted with the Delegate / Builder / Contributor problem I think this situation is one of the issues that leads to that. As far as I know, many delegates weren’t aware this was happening and we had builders in this scenario who seem to be (rightfully or wrongly) upset with the experience. I bring up this specifically as it was sort of the example that was actively being discussed and relevant at the time of my post. I have seen other examples of this too so I bring it up not as just a one-off issue.
Apologies if that wasn’t clear, but the goal of the question was more of a “if you were in this role at the time, what would you have done” more so then a “what happened here” summary. For example - would you have proactively contacted Thrive in April so they understood how KYC / grant allocation has to be done to avoid delays like this? Would you have made the DAO aware this was going on, if so at what point? Would the Wikipedia address this type of thing? Would you be objectively fact checking the proposal made in the restitution post that is going to vote? Is this a discussion you’d bring to the DAO for problem resolution in the future? Things like that, if that makes sense.
Edit: I’ll bring up another example, if you’d rather address the same question above but on a different topic since you were involved with the Thrive project. LTIPP Retroactive Grants - LTIPP Retroactive Community Funding - #55 by Bob-Rossi. My thoughts are there, but relevant to this post I think this is another clear example of where the Delegate / Builder / Contributor triangle all left that process ‘frustrated/losing faith/disengaged’. As IMO no retroactive grants were funded not due to quality of work but administrative issues. IF this was active what would you / Alex have done to avoid this?
While I completely support hiring both Alex and Joe to the DAO, and I genuinely struggle to imagine any scenario where this is not a clear win for the DAO to have these two onboard, I think a couple clarifications are needed as to the future incentives of people hired directly by the DAO.
Who would you work for?
Would you be overseeing councils or rather assisting them?
Would you consider that role operations or also BD for Orbit chains?
Excited for this, and I think that one year is a worthwhile trial period. It’s not a major cost to the DAO and I think the upside is good enough to experiment with that. On a per worker basis, this is probably one of the cheapest options available to hire high context people.
I think the roles and functions outlined in this proposal are a fantastic idea to bring some much-needed order and keep tabs on what’s happening in the DAO. From my experience over the past five months, I’ve seen how Joe and Alex are both very active participants, and they seem professional enough to handle these responsibilities.
However, regarding some of the comments made in this proposal, I believe there should be a more detailed justification for their compensation. Providing a clear breakdown of how their compensation is determined would help with transparency and ensure it aligns with industry standards. Maybe even considering performance-based incentives could align their interests more closely with the DAO’s success. Transparency in this area would put everyone’s mind at ease.
I also think it would be fairer to propose several candidates for these roles and have the community vote on them. This would encourage inclusivity and ensure that those in leadership positions have support from all of us. I propose an open nomination process.
Establishing clear accountability and oversight mechanisms would be beneficial too. With regular reports and evaluations on how things are going, we could monitor progress and ensure everything is in order. I do understand Joe’s comment
But a temperature check on main projects and clear follow-up to their development would be very useful for everyone.
Overall, I like this initiative and I think it has a lot of potential to improve the DAO’s operations.
Firstly, we would like to mention that several questions we asked in the previous post were left unanswered, and we believe they remain relevant in this new proposal, especially those concerning compensation.
The proposal mentions designing workstreams, creating a council to oversee DAO-funded proposals, participating in WGs, providing support to several initiatives, and setting goals for the workstreams to guide funding allocation and initiative approvals (this last point sounds quite similar to defining the DAO’s mission, vision, and purpose). Except for the GRC, the initiatives DB, and the Wiki, the rest seem to be tasks for which the DAO has already hired an SP (Entropy) with enough budget for 10 people. This begs the question: do we need 2 more people to cover these items? If the answer is yes, then why not expand the Entropy structure instead of creating an isolated one?
Additionally, considering that the proposal positions your function as a “preliminary step to the OpCo,” how does the release of the RFC OpCo – A DAO-adjacent Entity for Strategy Execution affect this initiative? We ask this because, assuming the OpCo is approved, it could start its setup work in about 60 days, and we see potential duplication of effort in creating structures.
It is also difficult for us to envision a frictionless handoff of any outcomes to the OpCo, as it will be a structure built entirely independently of this initiative, with its objectives and employees.
Firstly, the delegate thread is not a requirement; it’s a suggestion. Secondly, you received a payment from the program in July. However, our main concern is that we haven’t seen your participation in key discussions on the forum. While you have contributed to some discussions in the Telegram group, we would have liked to understand your stance on various topics more deeply to assess your suitability for this role. For instance, out of the last 31 votes, you only engaged in 5 discussions.
Here are a few answers to more questions that have come up. Thanks for the engagement and helping to keep us connected to things brought up on the other post.
Bob Rossi
For the specific problem reference, I don’t think it was preventable in the first season of doing this. During the second season it was solved. The reason I think it wasn’t a “foreseeable” issue is that we had other programs running, that had paid out and didn’t have this issue. Due to the experimental nature of each round having different mechanisms, it wasn’t unforeseeable, but it likely wasn’t a simple oversight error.
I was in the role at that time leading the Thrive/Plurality Labs Arbitrum deployment. The problem was in too many cooks in the kitchen as we had Fractal.ID, the Arbitrum Foundation, and our team along with the program manager. If you look at the responses, anytime Thrive was alerted to the issue, we responded quickly, but we didn’t have the power to just override authority and make payments. Seeing that this was one program with only 15 of 40 grants affected (out of 400+ delivered by Thrive in the last year), I really do believe that our learning and adjustments to make season M1B flawless in that regard was the best we could do. It even cost Thrive a lot of money (not recouped) to do the right thing and make it work better for season M1B.
Personally, I’m mixed on supporting the proposal. Everything was denominated in ARB and the risks were clear, if unexpected. I do want to support it, but I worry that there are many others in the DAO who have had ARB price go down from the Tally or grant date. These grants were also community based voting contest grants without milestones and clear outcomes as a requirement. That was part of the nature of the test. For this reason, I think we should move forward and learn from it - which I believe we have.
I do think that if Alex and I were in the proposed roles, we would have been bringing the issue to the attention of the DAO and delegates earlier and could have pushed for a better result when it was happening.
This is a great example. Yes, we would have clarified the objective for that tranche of funding along the way and worked with the initiative leads to communicate earlier giving the DAO more time to utilize the funds as intended.
NathanVDH
The DAO. The problem with all initiatives is this. In a centralized entity, when strategy is set and secures a budget, the executive is naturally responsible for making sure this translates to outcomes from the tactical functions. In a decentralized system, the strategy and budget are set by the collective - which leaves a gaping hole for accountability. This is what “governance operations” is. Forgive the rudimentary slide image, but maybe this helps
For us, we would be accountable to our council - think of the governance operations as a workstream itself. We will also be accountable to delegates and the DAO. Its not perfect, but if we need to trust some people to bring it to existance, hopefully you can trust us enough to get started.
We would be serving and assisting councils for workstreams. We had an deep convo with delegate advisors about going wide or deep in our strategic function and we’ve landed on the “width” strategy in the slide below.
No, but we will be doing a lot of that by nature of supporting the workstream success.
Juanrah
This is how the structure we’ve finally come to will work. We will be adjusting the post today.
It’s hard to do this for roles that don’t currently exist. If we pass this proposal, it is based on a long time talking directly with delegates, builders, and contributors about the issues in the DAO. We have very high context that doesn’t come from an election process.
Second, do we need 2 more people to cover these items? I think it is health to have more entities than Entropy doing work in the DAO. They aren’t currently doing the things you mentioned, and in reading our reply I think we fairly showcase how we are not duplicating work.
I really appreciate Entropy, but I don’t believe they should be forced to hire us! We believe it is good to create some balance and have others in the DAO funded directly by the DAO.
If we do these jobs well, we will be drafting a role description which could be handed off to the OpCo. They could hire someone for less to maintain the position as opposed to our creating of the position. If we get to work, we are willing to bet that we can create enough value that we will be able to shift roles if that handoff happens sooner than later. And perhaps OpCo would want to hire us… though we aren’t pushing for that either.
We believe that “governance operations” is critical in connecting the strategic functions to tactical functions - and that this happens not only from the DAO to workstream layer, but from workstreams to initiatives.
Entropy is focusing (based on their posts) on the DAO level purpose, vision mission and strategy functions in how it defines high level objectives. We are talking about governance operations which connects the strategic to the tactical and does so at multiple layers. We are also talking about repeatable and scalable processes for quickly setting up workstreams - which is a prerequisite to them setting WORKSTREAM obectives for how they deliver their part which is working towards the DAO level objectives.
Personally, I’d like to see OpCo move forward. I don’t think it will be up and running in 60 days. I’d make a bet that it isn’t doing work other than hiring until Feb 2025 at the earliest. Yes, the happy path for OpCo would be to be setup in about 75 days, but we all know that in a DAO the happy path is rarely what happens!
Do we feel that Arbitrum is in a spot where it can wait for an undefined period of time to begin the work we are suggesting?
We’ve been asked to chime in here several times, so we’re providing general feedback in addition to giving our opinion on where we see the proposed scope overlapping with our current work and mandate.
Overall, having read the proposal several times and hopped on calls with the two initiative leaders (@AlexLumley and @DisruptionJoe), it’s still somewhat unclear to us—and based on the above comments, to others—what all of the exact deliverables would be, with some information potentially having been lost in translation. This seems to stem from the fact that additional complexity keeps getting added through widening the scope, some ad hoc deliverables are being talked about in the comments, and two proposals are now entangled (i.e., the one above and the one-click" U/X Package draft).
We want to begin by making it thoroughly clear that we don’t want to act as a bottleneck for other actors to become contributors or continue their work in the ecosystem. With that out of the way, we’ll only address the high-level deliverables to avoid adding more convolution and an overly lengthy response:
To simplify, we understand this deliverable as oversight of initiatives across the DAO and designing related processes and frameworks. On a high level, this deliverable doesn’t overlap with our scope of work as we aren’t acting as an oversight-related body. A few things we’d like to highlight, however:
Since it’s likely that a notable number of initiatives will be rolled into OpCo (either by hiring internal employees or contracting service providers and contributors), the scope of the reporting work not facilitated by OpCo would likely diminish greatly once the DAO-adjacent entity is operationalized. However, we see this as a synergistic area, particularly since the handover process for initiatives that end up being rolled into OpCo shouldn’t be too challenging.
The current GRCs are already quite lengthy. While we agree that oversight should be an integral part of how the DAO operates, we’d like to highlight the risk of creating more friction than value by adding operational overhead, which could become too much of a burden on contributors, key stakeholders, and delegates. Having said that, we’re confident in the proposal authors’ ability to ensure that such a situation can be avoided.
In our opinion, this is akin to inserting a new operational model into the DAO. When it comes to the framework itself, we see this as a direct overlap with the work we’ve been facilitating with respect to OpCo. The first workstream, “One-Click” U/X Package to Orbit Chain Builders, would fall within the ecosystem support category, which is one of the focus areas OpCo would be mandated to help facilitate if approved. We see a few likely outcomes as a result of this:
OpCo is instructed to absorb the operational model proposed herein, which we expect would be a difficult process. This also means that OpCo’s oversight committee as well as executive-equivalent personnel would be pushed into a system they have no control over, instead of being able to design it from the ground up. We foresee that this would, among other things, restrict the application pool for the aforementioned positions, create internal friction around what authority each relevant party has, and make it challenging to hire suitable candidates.
OpCo is operationalized and the operational model proposed herein is maintained outside of the DAO-adjacent entity. We expect that this would lead to increased complexity due to it being unclear which facilitation method should be leveraged in what situations, unoptimized information flows between the two models, added bureaucracy due to two separate operating models being utilized, and even friction between the two models since they might begin competing over which gets to facilitate a certain initiative.
OpCo is operationalized and the workstream model is wound down. This would naturally be a waste of resources and in the worst-case scenario, leave some contributors stranded.
Diving deeper into the actual execution of the framework, we have some apprehension regarding the initiative leaders’ suitability to spearhead the “One-Click” U/X Package to Orbit Chain Builders and manage 10M ARB worth of capital. To be absolutely clear, we recognize the leaders’ impressive backgrounds and skill sets but think they may not be optimally suited for facilitating an extremely specialized and technical initiative. As an example, Uniswap carried out a cross-chain bridge assessment process to empower the Uniswap community’s decision-making around the use of cross-chain bridges in governance. The assessment was managed and produced by a committee comprising 9 industry-leading members with backgrounds in engineering, research, security, bridges, risk, etc. Simply put, we feel as though the contributors could bring more value to the ecosystem by leveraging their capacity in other areas of the DAO.
The third high-level deliverable seems to be ad hoc, operational tasks related to scaling and refining the workstream model, which is basically identical to one of Entropy’s mandates but applied to the workstreams instead of the overall DAO. We strongly agree with the proposal authors in that Entropy shouldn’t be the only facilitator in this area. Having said that, one of our focus areas is to decrease/limit the DAO’s OpEx. As such, we feel obligated to point out that we are already equipped to perform the aforementioned ad hoc work and could scale our capabilities further if the DAO were to decide to move forward with the operational model proposed by the authors. At the end of the day, the decision is up to delegates, and we’re more than happy to collaborate with the authors within this area if the DAO wants multiple entities working full-time on such deliverables.
We’d also point out that the compensation model (note that we’re addressing the structure rather than focusing on specific numbers); $120K yearly base for gov ops work with a bonus structure based on workstream deliverables which could bring the total comp up to ~$300K (apologies if this is outdated as information is somewhat scattered), might incentivize the proposal authors to overlook some of the gov ops deliverables and put most of their efforts into workstream-related tasks. Continuing on the salary topic, would the proposal authors forego the compensation they are currently receiving from other DAO initiatives, such as the MSS and the DIP, if they were to be hired as full-time contributors? While it’s fair to argue that this work should still be compensated considering that it’s separate from this proposal, receiving full-time compensation in addition to separate payments creates a weird structure in our opinion.
Due to the dual-proposal structure, there is a risk that a majority of the deliverables laid out in this proposal would not be possible in the case that the other proposal isn’t passed. We’ve noticed that the proposal authors have compared this situation to, e.g., “What would have happened if Entropy didn’t pass the Stylus fund?”. We feel as though this comparison is misleading since our main deliverables weren’t/aren’t conditional on passing one single proposal in addition to the one that funded us.
Putting this all together, we agree with Pedro’s comment but don’t see a high risk of overlap on this front:
We believe this to be the most effective way forward, but would additionally like to see an exact, step-by-step plan on how the proposal authors intend to implement the Governance Operations initiative in order to ensure that 1) oversight doesn’t turn into something that prevents contributors from performing at their best; 2) micromanagement doesn’t arise; 3) the proposal authors don’t become the de facto persons who decide whether success was reached or not.
While we understand that the proposal authors have included additional deliverables on top of the gov ops initiative to justify a higher compensation, we feel as though the workstream deliverable and its related ad hoc tasks aren’t the most beneficial route for the DAO to take as they are currently proposed (we may have a biased perspective here due to the overlap with OpCo). Nevertheless, again, we don’t want to act as a blocker for other actors to join the ecosystem or continue their work but will once more highlight that if delegates want to go in the workstream operating model direction, Entropy has the resources to provide assistance in this area.
This is an extremely well crafted response. I really appreciate the time and thoughtfulness put into it.
Separate Issue: Closing This Proposal
Unfortunately, I am not finding a clear path to an opportunity that is:
something the DAO needs
something I’m interested in doing
providing an acceptable pay rate
I do intend to carry on my duties on MSS and as a delegate, but I’m stepping back from full-time working on Arbitrum. My plan is to take a wider view of the web 3 ecosystem to examine other opportunities which have been presented. I still have some valuable ideas that I’ll need to write down and at DevCon I’ll be cohosting the Orbit Builders night. I intend to still do my best to make connections and help whip support for great proposals as a delegate.
I’m encouraging @AlexLumley to continue forward with the part of the proposal that is gaining broad acceptance and will support through that process.
@raam We can consider this proposal closed. Thank you.
Recently, proposals for OpCo are also under discussion. I would like to ask about the specific transition mechanism between OpCo and the DAO. How will a smooth transition of governance to OpCo be ensured? Will it be through training or joint management?
The report mentions remuneration and vesting but does not clarify their structure and timeline. It would be helpful to provide more details, such as whether the vesting period is tied to achieving specific goals.
Additionally, regarding governance training, I think that beyond the incentive program for governance guidance, a dedicated governance training plan for community members could be introduced. A budget could be allocated to appoint a dedicated trainer to guide this process, enhancing the governance capabilities of more participants and contributing to long-term sustainability.
