Hi @Entropy! Thank you very much for this long-awaited proposal.
We believe this approach is on point. From our perspective, incentive programs should be protocol-agnostic, as long as user safety is properly accounted for.
In that regard, we noticed there is a “minimum threshold of security and maturity” required for a protocol to be eligible:
This raises a question: in the event a protocol is excluded, is there any mechanism to appeal or revert that decision? We understand the Season Selection Committee has discretion to exclude, but it is still composed of humans, and errors or oversights may occur. Therefore, there should be a transparent mechanism for an excluded or omitted protocol to request inclusion.
We understand this is just an example, but something that concerns us is that the ARB token is not mentioned at all throughout the proposal. While we’re not suggesting to preset specific goals, part of strengthening the native token involves ensuring deep liquidity.
We suggest initially focusing on ARB + stablecoins + ETH. Greater depth in ARB/stablecoin or ARB/ETH pairs is a win-win for the ecosystem. This is especially relevant when assessing ARB’s risk profile as lending collateral.
As we’ve mentioned in the thread A Vision for the Future of Arbitrum, it not only makes a lot of sense to have Arbitrum Aligned Entities involved in key proposals like this, but it’s also virtually impossible for any other proposer to gain enough consensus to pass a competing incentives proposal. We’ve already seen this play out with ARB Incentives: User Acquisition for dApps & Protocols, where the DAO made it clear that the incentives strategy must come from entities such as OCL, AF, or Entropy.
That said, although the current committee already partially represents the DAO via these entities, we see potential value in incorporating two additional members selected from the current pool of independent DAO contributors. The AAEs could even appoint these two additional members after the proposal is approved.
This aligns with what we outlined in our SOS Submission: If the DAO already has talented contributors, and the main challenge is better coordination, then the best alternative is to ensure that talent is integrated into the execution of proposals.
We emphasize this because, since this is a DAO-funded initiative, delegates will naturally expect some diversity in who holds decision-making power. We believe the structure we’re proposing could help ease those concerns. Otherwise, we risk swinging from a model where initiatives were 100% executed by external contributors to one where execution is entirely in the hands of the AAEs (excluding the two vendors they plan to hire), which could lead to future issues—as @pedrob pointed out:
A good example—one that we believe has been working well—is the Stylus Sprint Committee: there’s a strong mix of contributors (OZ, Jojo, and SEED) and AAEs (Entropy, OCL, and AF) working together, each bringing unique skills to the table for effective proposal execution and having Entropy’s management of task allocation based on each member’s strengths. A similar approach could work here—for example, assigning DAO communications to one of the additional members, thereby reducing the operational load on the AAEs so they can focus on more strategic matters like designing the next seasons.