Name: Backshotking(Individual)
ENS: backshotking.eth
Areas of interest:
- Public goods funding
- DeFi development on Arbitrum
Please share your stance on overall goals for the DAO:
First and foremost, the purpose of a DAO is to allow for the healthy and decentralized development of the rollup. This vision, of course, can entail many different aspects, from the more technical and security-focused sections of the rollup (which the DAO should have oversight over) to encourage the development of a healthy ecosystem and growth with the ARB token. Every decision the DAO makes should return to the question: â How does this benefit the long-term sustainability and success of not just the ARB token, but also the broader future of rollups?â.
From this question, we can begin exploring different roles that the DAO could assume in the broader Arbitrum ecosystem and the careful balancing act that follows each decision. Some examples include:
- Technical protocol and security upgrades: If arbitral truly wants to be community-owned, they need to have oversight over what the protocol will develop into and all the layers that are part of the Arbitrum ecosystem. However, the average voter will probably not be knowledgeable enough to vote in good faith on whether a development will be fruitful or not. One potential solution that could be explored is a technical subcommittee in charge of overseeing this side of governance, which ultimately might report back to the wider DAO. The DAO is already planning to do this with the Security Council, but this same idea could be implemented in other technical areas.
- Liquidity Mining - While this strategy can assist in the short-term growth and user acquisition of the protocols selected for these campaigns, it should not be seen as a permanent fixture of any protocol. Liquidity mining serves as a great opportunity for someone to get acquainted somewhere new in search of the yield, but if subsidized too long by the Arbitrum DAO, it could lead to an unhealthy subsidy of protocols through unsustainable emissions.
- Grants - While liquidity mining handles growing users and technical committees take the rollup itself, grants are the greatest part of the DAO that will target builders. Grants have to be handled carefully, as they have a degree of social trust needed both from the DAO and the builders. Builders have to be able to demonstrate deliverables for the amount and accountability. Despite the complications, grants will allow for the development of tools and dApps that the space might need, but currently might not be as profitable.
These are just some examples of DAO goals, but of course, there are endless possibilities for what might be handled!
Sample Voting Issue 1 - UniSwap/Flipside Bounty
How would you vote?
For
Delegation of voting power is necessary for any DAO to be able to function efficiently in the long term. Even though it brings a degree of centralization, as long as they do not control an excessive amount of the larger DAO and they have sufficient accountability measures itâs a good initiative.
What amendments would you make to the proposal if any?
- Separate the grants into quarterly distributions: For an allocation as large as 25 Million, I donât believe that it is wise to simply divide it into Year 1 and Year 2. I understand that half of it was going to employing staff so they would rather have the reserve upfront, but considering that the only upside of delivering such amounts once a year is saving some time on transactions and communications, it feels that dividing the allocations into at least quarterly separations wouldâve been wiser.
- Introduce checkpoints across the delegation period: In addition to having a committee handling immediate matters related to the grant, it wouldâve been preferable to also introduce routine votes to ensure that the DAO was still comfortable with such a large allocation. This would have also encouraged the grantee to increase accountability and deliver accountability reports.
How would you approach the tradeoff between the centralization of authority and the ability to get things done?
Effectiveness and decentralization are inevitably inversely proportional. As long as the centralized entities are still ultimately dependent on the DAOs approval, and they operate as transparently as possible, this is a necessary tool for the development of the DAO.
A DAO should consider having centralizing points only when specialists are required to act knowledgeable and quickly, something which the Vox Populi of the DAO might struggle with. The entities to do this should be trusted members of the space of course.
Sample Voting Issue 2 - Rari Hack Reimbursement
Outside the flipping of the vote, how would you choose to handle this situation?
Please elaborate on what instances you believe it is right to refund and which are not.
i.e should parties be reimbursed for an exploit or not? (Please choose one of the below options and then elaborate upon your reasoning)
Split Reimbursement
Hacks and loss of funds are to this day one of the strongest blockers we have from people trusting the space and onboarding onto it. Every time a large draining of protocol contracts occurs, the idea of the Financial Legos gets threatened, as people become less and less willing to risk connecting with other protocols.
For this reason, I believe at least a partial reimbursement is always to be considered when a protocol has decided to cooperate with you. These parties decided to entrust the security of your smart contracts, and their dedication and trust that was placed onto the protocol should be thanked by at least trying to provide some funds back. In the future, this could even be handled with DAO insurance protocols, which are already being developed in the space.
However, I would be hesitant to provide a full reimbursement when the hack has already severely impacted the protocol so badly. If the amount wonât make that much of a difference to the bottom line it makes sense to give a reimbursement, but in this particular case, the double impact of the hack was so severe that this led to one of the first instances of a DAO explicitly closing doors. A full reimbursement, in terms of impact, would be the same as a second equally devastating hack.
TL;DR Provides enough compensation to thank the participants for engaging in the system. Still, while a full reimbursement might help these stakeholders, the impact of this action could lead to the DAO entering a negative death spiral.
Languages I speak and write: By order of preference - English, French
Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interest:
Currently, I am spending most of my time working on the ParaSwap DAO. This means that I will automatically abstain from any discussion that might involve DEX Aggregation, as my opinion will be biased. The positive side of this participation is that ParaSwap is also deployed in Arbitrum, which means that the success of Arbitrum will also positively impact ParaSwap (through increased liquidity sources and volumes), as well as vice versa (by encouraging efficiency and decentralization of liquidity in the roll-up by aggregating all of these together through a single, simple to access interface).
Additionally, I also applied to be a delegate on the Optimism collective, which, although part of the wider Ethereum ecosystem, could be considered a conflict of interest. Currently, I am being allocated ~ 1k OP. In addition to this, ParaSwap has also been selected as one of the Protocol Delegate Scheme recipients, and if necessary, the representative of ParaSwap could be a different DAO member if this is considered a major conflict of interest. I believe that the growth of any decentralized rollup on the Ethereum ecosystem is a net positive for everyone in the space, and I will do my best to lend my knowledge to better the entire space 