Delegate Statement Template

Voting Rationale & Governance Calls Delegate Statements
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982

Rutgers Blockchain Delegate Profile

Information

Areas interested in contributing to:

  • Improving Governance Participation
  • Tooling, Improving protocol decentralization

Introduction:

Hello! We are Rutgers Blockchain Hub, a completely student-run club at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. We maintain an active member-base of students who are active within the crypto space, and conduct their own research in areas such as Defi, Infrastructure, and Governance. The club will be able to assign dedicated members to handle governance proceedings and share both updates and reasoning for our decisions to any token holders who choose to delegate to us their voting power. Intense and rigorous discussion will be had before any vote.

Overall Goals

We are fiercely committed to the tenets of decentralization, fairness, and transparency, and will work to preserve all three. At the same time, we would like to see Arbitrum succeed into the future, and want to encourage both a sustainable and equitable approach to encouraging growth going forward. For specifics about proposals such as liquidity mining, further research would have to be done in regards to the historical effectiveness of such efforts in other DAOs, Arbitrum’s standing in the current market, etc.

Sample Voting Issue 1:

  • For
  • However, we would encourage the amendment be made to the proposal to encourage a split among the committee seats that is more equitable for competitors in the space.
  • We are of the belief that in this situation, the problem is moreso within the centralization of authority on the committee, rather than favoring one service provider over another. Choices between one or another may be essential for the process of achieving goals, but those choices must fairly consider all possible solutions.

Sample Voting Issue 2:

  • Partial Reimbursement
  • Trust in underlying protocols is still one of the biggest problems barring crypto from mainstream adoption. For a decision to be made regarding partial/full reimbursement more information about the financial situation of both the protocol’s users and the protocol itself must be supplied, but we believe that it is essential that users be made at least partially whole, in order to maintain some semblance of trust and credibility.

Languages I speak and write:

English, French, Spanish

Conflicts of Interest:

No contractual obligations/conflicts of interest.

3 Likes
983

As an early Arbitrum user and Ethereum builder, I’m applying to be among Listed Delegates

Name

  • Ermia

Wallet Address or ENS

  • ermia.eth

Tally Profile URL (create a profile here )

What area are you most interested in contributing to? choose up tot two tags:

  • Public Goods funding
  • Gaming development on Arbitrum

Please share your stance on overall goals for the DAO:
Arbitrum DAO would likely focus on supporting and governing the Arbitrum ecosystem. Potential goals for Arbitrum DAO could include:

  1. Decentralization: Encourage community participation in decision-making related to the Arbitrum network’s development, upgrades, and ecosystem growth.
  2. Ecosystem Growth: Support projects and initiatives that drive adoption of the Arbitrum network by developers, users, and businesses.
  3. Security: Ensure the continued security and integrity of the Arbitrum network by funding research, audits, and infrastructure improvements.
  4. Interoperability: Promote collaboration with other Layer 2 and Layer 1 blockchain networks to enhance cross-chain compatibility and user experience.
  5. Education: Foster awareness and understanding of the Arbitrum network and its benefits through educational materials, developer resources, and community outreach.
  6. Financial Incentives: Strategically manage liquidity mining, staking, or other incentive programs to boost network usage and strengthen the ecosystem.
  7. Sustainability: Implement and support initiatives that minimize the environmental impact of the Arbitrum network and contribute to long-term sustainability.

Ultimately, the specific goal(s) of a DAO should be determined through the consensus of its community members, aligned with their shared values and vision for the organization’s future.

My stance on liquidity mining:
A balanced and creative approach is recommended for liquidity mining. I believe it’s required to position Arbitrum at the top of L2 competition by boosting growth and network effects. However, we must consider the disadvantages, such as:

  1. Inflation and token value dilution: Aggressive liquidity mining can lead to excessive token supply, potentially causing inflation and diluting token value
  2. Unsustainable growth: Attracting users solely through incentives may not be sustainable, as they might leave once incentives decrease
  3. Short-termism: Overemphasis on liquidity mining could overshadow long-term value creation, leading to an unstable ecosystem

Answers to Sample Voting Issue 1:

  1. How would you vote?
    Against
  2. Proposals should not be written in a biased manner. A rewriting of the proposal by the same team with active collaboration with other market participants and competitors is recommended.
  3. Grants can be governed differently based on their size. For instance, the DAO can vote to fund and enable micro grant distributors that are more agile. They can be assessed every six months by the DAO who can stop/continue their funding.

Answers to Sample Voting Issue 2:
Split Reimbursement: The best approach involves transparent communication, thorough investigation, and community decision-making. Reimbursement may be considered if it’s technically feasible, aligns with the community’s values, and maintains the ecosystem’s integrity.

Languages I speak and write:
English, Persian, Spanish

Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interest:
I believe that I have no conflicts of interest. I may hold multiple L2 assets now or in the future. However, I’ll do my best to use my votes as the voice of Arbitrum community.

2 Likes
984

Name (organization or individual): Utopia Labs

Wallet Address or ENS: utopiagovernance.eth

Tally Profile URL: Tally | Utopia Labs

What area are you most interested in contributing to?

  • Improving Governance participation
  • Tooling, Improving protocol decentralization

Please share your stance on overall goals for the DAO:
There are several guidelines to how we think about the overall goals, and operating principles for Arbitrum’s DAO:

  • Large capital allocation decisions should run completely on-chain to achieve sufficient decentralization.
  • Grants should have an accountability framework.
  • There should be minimal liquidity mining unless there are certain benchmarks and stop gaps in place, as the goal of Arbitrum should not be to attract mercenary capital inflows/outflows.
  • There should be opportunities for contributors to be able to contribute to Arbitrum’s ecosystem, without needing to necessarily “pay for influence”.
  • Arbitrum should be progressive in regards to governance experiments, as the current status quo for governance can be improved.
  • Disclosure of conflicts of interests should be frequently stated - amongst contributors, investors, council members, delegates, etc.

Sample Voting Issue 1:
Uniswap planned to use Flipside to attract new users to Uniswap through bounties. Although the program outline and funding was fine, the proposal was contentious because it gave Flipside crypto too much control over allocating UNI to bounties and oversight of the entire program.

Prompts to Answer:

  1. How would you vote?
    For

  2. What amendments would you make to the proposal if any?
    To mitigate the risks of centralization of power, we would would propose the following amendments to the proposal:

    • Increase the number of seats on the allocation committee and oversight committee to include other reputable analytics service providers, in addition to Flipside.
    • Define clear guidelines for the allocation of UNI to bounties to ensure that there is transparency and fairness in the process.
    • Include a provision that requires regular reporting to the Uniswap community on the progress and outcomes of the bounty program.

By making these amendments, we can ensure that the proposal is more inclusive, transparent, and accountable.

  1. How would you approach the tradeoff between centralization of authority and the ability to get things done?

We believe that the tradeoff between centralization of authority and the ability to get things done is an important one that should be carefully considered. While some centralization may be necessary to ensure efficient decision-making and execution, it is important to strike a balance between centralization and decentralization to avoid creating a single point of failure or introducing systemic risks. We tend to prefer, or include a model similar to Nouns, or ENS small grants to encourage an environment of a low consensus, high execution oriented environment.

Sample Voting Issue 2:
FEI RARI Hack Reimbursement: In April 2022 Rari was hacked for 80M, a vote was passed to reimburse those affected. Then in May 2022 another vote to refund the Rari hacked was brought forward this time it was not passed.

Prompts to Answer:

  1. Split Reimbursement
  2. Utopia Labs believes that parties affected by an exploit should be reimbursed for their losses. However, we also believe that it is important to carefully consider the circumstances of each case to determine the appropriate level of reimbursement. In the case of the Rari hack, we would support a split reimbursement approach that takes into account the extent of the losses incurred and the impact on the overall health and stability of the system (and to distinguish the clear relationship/ownership rights of Rari/FEI at that point in time). We believe that it is right to refund parties affected by an exploit when the exploit is the result of a systemic vulnerability or failure in the system that was beyond their control. However, it is also important to ensure that the refund process is fair, transparent, and does not create moral hazard or encourage risky behavior. One thing that we would also suggest is to ensure that appropriate, pro-active risk management practices are in place, such as receiving insurance with products like Nexus Mutual.

Languages I speak and write:
English

Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interest:
Utopia Labs is a centralized, venture backed startup that provides payments, bookkeeping, and budgeting software for DAO’s.

2 Likes
985

Name (organization or individual) : Olawale Daniel (individual)

Wallet Address or ENS : 0x1f86AcD504a5eC1dcD89c62b859653CfCD5ac812

What area are you most interested in contributing to?

  • Social capital for Arbitrum
  • Public goods funding via grants and others
  • De-Fi development on Arbitrum
  • NFT deployment on Arbitrum
  • Improving Governance participation
  • Supporting infrastructural development on Arbitrum chain

Please share your stance on overall goals for the DAO:
After going through all the DAO goals and objectives, I can say I agree with what I have read so far. As much as there’s always room for improvement, I look forward to a community with the most advanced thinking personnels on earth.

Sample Voting Issue 1:

  1. Against
  2. The voting power should be balanced.
  3. I support equal distribution. However, attention must be shifted towards an equal and fear and healthy where active participants in the DAO are well compensated with perks that enables further actions in the DAO. Having an active and strong DAO participation will enable an healthy and effective environment for growing the community.

Sample Voting Issue 2:

  1. Split Reimbursement
    Based on contribution, parties involvement, and available funds to be disbursed. Perhaps reimbursing with vesting.

Languages I speak and write:

English, Yoruba, French (partially)

Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interest:

I don’t have any. I am happy with what I have seen so far.

2 Likes
986

Name: Martins (Individual)

ENS: tatamartins.eth

Tally : Tally | tatamartins.eth

Areas of interest:

  • Public goods funding
  • DeFi development on Arbitrum

Please share your stance on overall goals for the DAO:

  • Helping DAO to allow a more healthy and decentralised environment for development.

Sample Voting Issue 1:

  1. Against
  2. No amendments, just cancel it.
  3. Interesting tweet talks about this (https://twitter.com/bitfalls/status/1620470410121986049?s=20); anyway i this this approach need to be seen one by one depending on the project, but in general I would agree with a centralized authority because studied and have in mind the path and of course always listening the community. This allow also a faster decision making. Step by step, meanwhile the community take “serious” the project should start to get more involved in the authority driving the new decisions.

Sample Voting Issue 2:
It depends who pay for the the reimbursement. If this were a case of introducing a self-executable on-chain transfer block on the hacked amount and re-minting into the damaged parties’ accounts, I would consider to vote yes. If the tokenholders and other participants were to pay for this I would say no.

Languages I speak and write:

  • English;
  • Italian;
  • German.

Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interest:

  • I also applied to be a delegate on the Optimism collective. People delegated me around 1.5k OP. I don’t consider it a conflict of interest but i wanted be transparent. I help on the whole Ethereum ecosystem.
3 Likes
987

Name : Cryptocafe

ENS : bartoncreek.ens

My Tally profile URL: Tally | bartoncreek.eth

Areas of interest :
The 2 areas I want to contribute to the most: Tooling, Improving protocol decentralization and DeFi development on Arbitrum

Please share your stance on overall goals for the DAO:
Regarding liquidity mining, I think it should not be aggressive or we will attract yield farmers who only see a short term opportunity to join the ecosystem.

Liquidity mining should complement a service, not replace it.

A user who really needs to borrow money on a protocol like AAVE will do so, with or without an incentive.

The incentive should not replace the value proposition of the product and remain an incentive.

The aim of the DAO is to guide the ecosystem towards mass adoption.

Users should therefore feel secure in bridging their assets to the ecosystem.

The projects that the DAO grants, should not have any problems that could undermine the confidence of the users.

Sample Voting Issue 1 - UniSwap/Flipside Bounty
Regarding Uniswap and Flipside, I would have voted against.

Centralization of power is never a good thing. Even if it is difficult to find a compromise and even if it takes time, it is important to find a solution in favour of decentralisation.

I would have worked for Flipside to give up some of its power. 1 out of 7 seats on the allocation committee seems to be enough for me.

I would have proposed that another actor, independent of Flipside, take this seat on the allocation committee. 2 analytics service providers can work together, right?

Sample Voting Issue 2 - Rari Hack Reinbursement
In the case of an exploit, I would advocate a fractional reimbursement with the protocol revenues.

Of course, funds recovery is not excluded and should be considered.

It is also possible, as in the case of Euler recently. For this to happen, the DAO must act quickly to discuss with the hacker and, if necessary, with the centralized platforms to blacklist all the addresses involved.

This requires seamless coordination.

However, I think that even if an exploit is always possible, the protocols must imperatively carry out several security audits with different recognised entities like Immunefi.

I think it is fair to reimburse users who are victims of an exploit, as long as they thought they were investing in a secure protocol, i.e. one that has performed security audits.

The risks of the investment should be stated on the site and users should be informed of these risks.

On the other hand, if the protocol is not audited and the user was aware of the risks, a non-refund should be considered.

Languages I speak and write:
I am fluent in English, and my mother tongue is French

Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interest:
I will work in the interest of the community and I have no conflict of interest.

In my opinion, a DAO can’t only be about leading people in the crypto ecosystem, who might be approached too closely by certain entities seeking to take control over governance.

I want to help the project going forward and make it stronger and more resistant to censorship. I will work in the sole interest of keeping the project in the hands of the community.

1 Like
988

Name (organization or individual)

Victor Aguiar

Wallet Address or ENS

0x9C27C44bB44AcD821988aDB98Eace380853dAF6d

Tally Profile URL:

What area are you most interested in contributing to?

  • NFT development on Arbitrum
  • Improving Governance participation

Please share your stance on overall goals for the DAO:

  • I do not care about liquidity mining. Just build stuff that people NEED instead.

Sample Voting Issue 1:

  1. For
  2. No amendments, just cancel it altogether.
  3. Initial equal and fair distribution between active participants, proving more power for useful for DAO actions. Strong DAO participants will be able to keep DAO healthy.

Sample Voting Issue 2:
In this situation, there are multiple parties which share the responsibilities for the loss of funds, hence a split re-imbursement will be ideal

Languages I speak and write:

  • English, Portuguese.

Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interest:

  • no conflicts of interest
1 Like
989

Name: francom

Early Arbitrum user and was fortunate enough to be a judge for their first ever hackathon in DevCon.

Address/ENS: Francom.eth

Tally:here

Areas of interest for contribution:

  • Defi development on Arbitrum
  • Improving Governance participation

Overall goals for the DAO

The DAO’s purpose is to guide Arbitrum’s products and treasury towards further decentralization while continuing to take the lead in scaling Ethereum’s ecosystem and capabilities.

Sample Voting Issue 1:

  • While Flipside is a well-respected governance group, I am inclined towards fostering greater diversity to decentralize committees.
  • 3/7 seats on the allocation committee sounds like much.
  • A challenge in DAO is balancing decentralization and efficiency.

Recommendation:

  • I would vote against this proposal and propose that at least one more service provider is contacted to quote the same scope of work and pricing to see optimize capital expenditures.
  • Additionally, I would give Flipside 2/7 seats to try and balance efficiency with a more diverse committee with penalties for committee members that do not participate actively and in a timely manner.

Sample Voting Issue 2:

My thoughts regarding DAO treasuries reimbursing hacks are that it depends on further context. If this move would bankrupt the DAO then the answer is obviously no. If there are insurance proceeds from a policy covering hacks then it would be very prudent to reimburse the hack victims.

Languages I speak and write:

English and Spanish.

Disclosure of Conflict of Interest:

Currently a delegate for Hop DAO and OP token holder.

1 Like
990

Name: Kris Is

Wallet: Kris.eth

Tally: Kris.eth

Most interested in:

  • Public Goods funding
  • Improving Governance participation

Overall goals for the DAO

Next to its core mission - supporting Arbitrum in becoming one of key drivers of Ethereum scaling - the DAO serves as the main driver of transparent, fair and legitimate decisions for the entire network, and can and should become an inspiration for other big players within the space, and the wider ecosystem. To truly empower people we need to fund the infrastructure that will support communities in the long run, and go beyond the short-term scarcity mindset, I think Arbitrum has a key role to play here and I would love to contribute this with my own experience and skillset. Personally I am very interested to focus on the Public Goods funding side of things, as this has been my key focus for the past six years, initially as communications lead at Giveth, and after this at the Commons Stack, which I co-founded.

In our current economic model public goods are always underfunded, and I’m happy to see Arbitrum immediately emphasizes this topic in the above post. Creating sustainable funding models is the essential foundation we need in our new economic models, if we want to truly build a better world.

The past two years I have been leading DAO Operations at Gitcoin, combining this with my role as Gitcoin Steward. So as a Delegate for Arbitrum I’d love to use my insights coming from this and previous roles, both on the topics of public goods funding, as well as learnings in the governance area.

Sample voting issue 1:

  1. Vote: Against
  2. Amendments: I would propose to break up the proposal into smaller chunks (milestones/phases) to diminish the risks. Next to this we should really step away from pure yes/no voting. Quadratic funding is one option to get a clearer signal, but the outline above also shows that we need to invest heavily in other mechanisms and incentivizing stewards to show up and get truly informed. The way decisions currently often get made are pretty scary.
  3. Tradeoff: See above. Let’s show Arbitrum can do better by investing enough in governance mechanism innovation and experimentation.

Sample voting issue 2:

Split reimbursement: This was a tough situation. I think in situations of exploits people should be reimbursed as much as possible, if the project itself could have easily prevented this through audits and good opsec. But hey, in crypto things are never this straightforward, and this is still very much the wild wild west. Tl;dr is that if promises are made, ethically speaking the DAO should stick with these, without endangering the existence of the DAO itself. So in this case a percentage-based reimbursement would probably have made sense, not doing this to protect short term interests surely damaged the long term reputation.

Languages:

  • Dutch (primary fluency)
  • English (full professional proficiency)
  • French ((full professional proficiency)
  • German (professional proficiency)
  • Spanish (elementary proficiency)

Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interest:
I am working at Gitcoin and actively participating in its governance (as a Steward and contributor). I do not see this as a conflict interest as I only see possible collaborations here. I possess some Optimism from the airdrop and am not planning on selling this any time soon, as we need All The Scaling. No one in this space truly ‘competes’, as Griff mentioned above: “we are not competing against each other but cooperating in the fight against traditional financial systems and banks.”

2 Likes
991

Name TekkeR03
Wallet Address 0xFC3B790239854227AD45801414424f403F36C92f Tally | 0xFC3B...C92f

Please share your stance on overall goals for the DAO:
The main goal should be sustainable progress of Arbitrum, hence aggressive liquidity mining or any kind of incentives to boost liquidity or chain activity should be done only after analyzing the long term impact. I would rather focus on supporting developers to build dapps on Arbitrum which will organically increase liquidity and activity.

  • DeFi development on Arbitrum
  • NFT development on Arbitrum

Sample Voting Issue 1:
Against
Sample Voting Issue 2:
Full Reimbursement

Languages I speak and write:
English

2 Likes
992

Name: unzmn - twitter
0xD45005C45b8b6cBF642CB480A87e2C9e412B724E
Unzmn

What area are you most interested in contributing to? NFTs and DeFi development on Arbitrum

Sample Voting Issue 1:

How would you vote?
For

What amendments would you make to the proposal if any?
I would suggest reducing the control given to Flipside over the allocation of UNI bounties and increasing the involvement of other analytics service providers to ensure a more decentralized approach.

How would you approach the tradeoff between centralization of authority and the ability to get things done?
I believe that decentralization is important for promoting fairness and inclusivity in decision-making processes. However, I also recognize that there may be situations where centralization is necessary to achieve specific goals efficiently. In such cases, I would prioritize finding a balance between centralization and decentralization that aligns with the overall goals of the DAO and promotes fairness.

Sample Voting Issue 2:

Outside the flipping of the vote, how would you choose to handle this situation?
I believe that parties affected by an exploit should be reimbursed. Therefore, I would support full reimbursement for the parties affected by the Rari hack.

Please elaborate on what instances you believe it is right to refund and which are not.
I believe that refunds should be provided to parties affected by an exploit in cases where the exploit was not due to the negligence of the party affected. However, refunds should not be provided in cases where the exploit was caused by the party’s negligence or malicious intent.

Languages I speak and write: English

Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interest: I do not have any conflicts of interest that would prevent me from using my best judgment to operate in the best interests of advancing the Arbitrum ecosystem.

1 Like
993

404 DAO and Blockchain at Georgia Tech Delegate Profile

Introduction:

Name: 404 DAO & Blockchain at Georgia Tech
Wallet Address or ENS: governance.404-dao.eth (0xE93D59CC0bcECFD4ac204827eF67c5266079E2b5)
Website: 404 DAO, Blockchain at GT
Twitter: @404DAO & @Blockchain_GT
Tally Profile

Overview:

Hello everyone! We are 404 DAO, a non-profit born out of Blockchain at Georgia Tech with the mission to provide web3 education and opportunities in Atlanta and Southeast. Blockchain at GT is a student-led blockchain organization at Georgia Tech and currently has over 40 active members.

Blockchain at GT has four main committees: Governance, Non-Technical (primarily research), Technical (primarily Solidity development), and Macro (Encourage discussion at meetings and inform members on crypto news). The club also leads a Crypto 101 course for new members, hosts multiple social and speaker events each semester, and is an official partner for Web3 ATL, the largest web3 conference and hackathon in Atlanta.

404 DAO is committed to transparency; everything involved in our governance decisions will be recorded and displayed on this notion page.

Areas Interested In:

  • Ecosystem Development (Defi, NFTs, Gaming)
  • Public Goods Funding

Overall goals for the DAO:

The goal of the Arbitrum DAO is to facilitate the success of the Arbitrum network as the leading Layer 2 scaling solution through rigorous analysis and discussion to enforce the principles of Web3 – namely: decentralization, censorship-resistance, trustless execution, and community ownership and participation. We believe the DAO should prioritize the following objectives in the support of the aforementioned goal:

  • Ensure the critical infrastructure and technical mechanisms are developed to enhance user experience, security, and decentralization.
  • Support the existing projects and protocols that contributed to Arbitrum’s initial success while also incentivizing new users to build on the protocol.
  • Take a conservative approach to incentivize activity. Compared to its competitors, Arbitrum waited to launch a token. 404 DAO believes that implementing thoughtful and well-detailed requirements for grants and incentive programs is crucial to ensuring Arbitrum doesn’t become reliant on subsidized activity.

Sample Voting Issue 1: Flipside & Uniswap

  1. Against

  2. Overall there is a major conflict of interest issue with Flipside being the main vendor, manager of funds, and a near majority on the allocation committee. Additionally, we believe that the oversight committee should remain entirely independent and Flipside, Dune, and Leshner should not have a seat. Additionally, given the pace of change in crypto, we feel that semi-annual check-ins are prudent for the DAO in order to reevaluate the engagement. These initiatives should be monitored closely in order to effectively support the mission of the DAO.

  3. We view the idea of decentralization to be of utmost importance, however, speed and diligence are also necessary for DAO operations. We believe that the Arbitrum DAO should outline what kinds of decisions should be brought to a DAO vote to minimize unnecessary governance activities. We envision elected representatives or trusted committees as a model that maximizes the DAO’s execution without requiring a significant tradeoff in terms of decentralization.

Sample Voting Issue 2: Rari

Given this specific example with Rari, we feel that full reimbursement would have been the correct decision. Based on the precedent set by the Rari team by reimbursing a similar reentrancy hack back in 2021, as long as the reimbursement did not impose a threat to the going concern of the protocol then a full reimbursement should be made. There is also ample evidence that showed the ability of the protocol to reimburse every hack victim, redeem FEI at peg, and still have PCV left over to continue operations.

However, the Rari hack and subsequent actions of the team make for one of the most complex governance cases in recent history, and we would not suggest full reimbursement as the solution for future hacks. In general, the 404 DAO team believes that partial reimbursement for hacks is the best way forward as long as it doesn’t jeopardize the future of the protocol. It is our view that users accept some level of smart contract risk and loss, and that the DAO must work in the best interest of the DAO/protocol and not individual users. We believe the DAO should set out best practices and courses of action in the event of a hack ahead of time in order to better prepare for such an event.

Languages I (we) speak and write:

English, members of Blockchain GT speak Spanish, Polish, & Vietnamese

Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interest:

404 DAO is also a delegate for Optimism, which could be considered a conflict of interest. Currently, we hold voting power for 1M OP tokens. However, as a team, we believe in the future of Ethereum and the importance of scalability in achieving mass adoption. Both Optimism and Arbitrum are core pieces of infrastructure necessary to make this vision a reality. By being involved in governance discussions for both protocols, the 404 DAO team can aggregate best practices for growth and contribute in a more effective way. If there is a proposal where the 404 DAO team deems a conflict of interest exists, we will abstain from the vote.

7 Likes
Proposal: Arbitrum Grants DAO
What is (Re)delegation Week? (+Application thread)
994

Name (organization or individual) : Mark Mak

Wallet Address or ENS : 0xB052E8baA57C85c35722d4ad7c3AAdD40f520370

Tally Profile URL (create a profile here ) Tally | mcflynft.eth

What area are you most interested in contributing to? choose up to two tags:

  • DeFi development on Arbitrum
  • NFT development on Arbitrum

Please share your stance on overall goals for the DAO:
eg — how aggressive should we be in liquidity mining, what is the goal of the DAO?
The overall goals of the DAO of Arbitrum are to create a decentralized, community-driven governance model that ensures the long-term success and sustainability of the Arbitrum network. By empowering community members to participate in governance decisions and incentivizing their contributions, the DAO seeks to foster collaboration, innovation, and growth in the network. This approach aligns with the broader vision of decentralized finance and blockchain technology, which aims to create more transparent, secure, and accessible financial systems that benefit individuals and communities. As such, the DAO of Arbitrum plays a crucial role in advancing the adoption and evolution of blockchain technology and contributing to the emergence of a more equitable and inclusive global economy.

Sample Voting Issue 1:

  • Uniswap planned to use Flipside to attract new users to Uniswap through bounties. Although the program outline and funding was fine, the proposal was contentious because it gave Flipside crypto too much control over allocating UNI to bounties and oversight of the entire program.
  • For instance, Flipside had 3/7 seats on the allocation committee and 1/3 seats on the Oversight committee. There was also concern since none of the other analytics service providers were involved in the proposal.
  • This proposal flew under the radar but at the 11th hour got very heated. Large votes from university clubs supported the proposal since they would get a seat on the allocation committee. However, Dune and Leshner spoke up about the issue because of the centralization of power and favor of one service provider.

Prompts to Answer:

  1. How would you vote?
    For
  2. What amendments would you make to the proposal if any?
    No more amendments
  3. How would you approach the tradeoff between centralization of authority and the ability to get things done?
    Balancing centralization and efficiency is complex, but prioritizing decentralization, transparency, and fairness while involving diverse stakeholders can help. Clear criteria and oversight mechanisms can prevent power concentration, while recognizing that some centralization may be necessary. The key is to balance the competing demands of efficiency and decentralization through a collaborative and nuanced approach that prioritizes transparency, fairness, and accountability.

Sample Voting Issue 2:

Prompts to Answer:

Outside the flipping of the vote, how would you choose to handle this situation?
i.e should parties be reimbursed for an exploit or not? (Please choose one of the below options and then elaborate upon your reasoning)
No Reimbursement. Because the reason the vote was not passed may depend on the situation change in that period of time, so it need to obey the decision of the vote.

Languages I speak and write: Chinese, English

Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interest:
Diversity of opinions is critical to making progress and determining the future direction of the
Arbitrum ecosystem. We recognize and celebrate the fact that delegates will have diverse views and we both encourage and anticipate good-faith debates in the governance process. That being said, it’s critical that all featured delegates are operating with Arbitrum’s best interest in mind, so please affirm that you don’t have any conflicts of interest that would prevent you from using your best judgement to operate in the best interests of advancing the Arbitrum ecosystem.

1 Like
995

Name (organization or individual)

  • Lydia Labs

Wallet Address or ENS

  • 0x9d6175a10784ddfde07e4d73846dc6ea2b42df5a

Tally Profile URL

What area are you most interested in contributing to? choose up to two tags:

  • NFT Development
  • DeFi Development

Please share your stance on overall goals for the DAO:

The DAO’s “northstar” should be to unite all stakeholders within the ecosystem behind a common mission and vision. Most governance systems, regardless of checks and balances, would be inefficient without a clearly defined goal in mind from the start. Having a community with misaligned expectations will just lead to further problems down the road, especially when it comes to public funding.

As for deciding on specific proposals, a supermajority voting system is a must. While this may lead to less approvals, it ensures that anything approved is less contentious versus a simple majority. On the decentralization spectrum, we like the idea of centralized-leaning decision makers (i.e. a multi-sig) with decentralized veto power using stake & time weighted voting (i.e. veTokens).

Our general stance on funding initiatives is to support lower-risk proposals by primarily supporting teams with a proven track record of open-source development. This garners more trust in the team and increases the probability of successful execution. Funding proposals should generally give autonomy to the team receiving them on how to best incentivize their user base (i.e. does not necessarily need to be liquidity mining, as that mostly applies to an AMM).

Sample Voting Issue 1: Uniswap

  • Uniswap planned to use Flipside to attract new users to Uniswap through bounties. Although the program outline and funding was fine, the proposal was contentious because it gave Flipside crypto too much control over allocating UNI to bounties and oversight of the entire program.
  • For instance, Flipside had 3/7 seats on the allocation committee and 1/3 seats on the Oversight committee. There was also concern since none of the other analytics service providers were involved in the proposal.
  • This proposal flew under the radar but at the 11th hour got very heated. Large votes from university clubs supported the proposal since they would get a seat on the allocation committee. However, Dune and Leshner spoke up about the issue because of the centralization of power and favor of one service provider.

1. How would you vote?

  • Against

2. What amendments would you make to the proposal if any?

There are structural amendments to the proposal that we think would increase the accountability of Flipside as well as reduce the overall risk of program failure.

First, there should be more regular evaluations by the Oversight committee of the Allocation committee’s decisions and the progress of the program KPIs. An annual review is too long to intervene if a program like the one being proposed is performing poorly. We would suggest a quarterly review by the Oversight Committee.

Second, there should be no conflict of interests between the Allocation committee and the Oversight committee. Our team is fine with the composition of the Allocation committee, as the Flipside members likely have the most insight into which participants are truly the best candidates to receive the bounties. However, there should not be a Flipside member on the Oversight committee. There is too much incentive for the Flipside member to approve additional funding for the program regardless of its success.

Finally, the program’s funding appears excessive compared to the benefits for the Uniswap protocol. Although the money comes from yield farming profits, it’s still a cost to the Treasury. Additionally, allocating $1M to a team that distributes $1M worth of bounties is not a scalable strategy.

3. How would you approach the tradeoff between centralization of authority and the ability to get things done?

This tradeoff is very prominent in our industry when it comes to DAO governance. Voter apathy and lack of an educated voter base is a genuine problem. For these reasons we tend to support a Representative Democracy approach using delegates and/or committees. This allows for more efficient decision making while still accounting for community opinions.

Sample Voting Issue 2: Rari

Full Reimbursement - parties should be fully compensated after an exploit if the protocol (i.e. DAO Fund) has enough funds to do so. There is no circumstance we’ve considered in which a protocol with enough funding to reimburse users should not do so. Additionally, if the application is critical to the user base of the network/blockchain itself, the core team/foundation should heavily consider reimbursement strategies to retain as many users as possible.

Languages I speak and write:

  • English, Chinese, Vietnamese

Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interest:

Diversity of opinions is critical to making progress and determining the future direction of the
Arbitrum ecosystem. We recognize and celebrate the fact that delegates will have diverse views and we both encourage and anticipate good-faith debates in the governance process. That being said, it’s critical that all featured delegates are operating with Arbitrum’s best interest in mind, so please affirm that you don’t have any conflicts of interest that would prevent you from using your best judgement to operate in the best interests of advancing the Arbitrum ecosystem.

  • Lydia Labs has no conflicts of interest
1 Like
996

Name: Sameer (Individual)

ENS: 3quest.eth

Tally: Tally | ytocin.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 decentralised 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 encouraging the development of a healthy ecosystem and growth with the ARB token. Basically, every decision the DAO makes should return to the question: ’ How does this benefit the long-term sustainability and success of not just the ARB token, but also the broader future of rollups?’ .

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 for each decision. Some examples include:

  • Technical protocol and security upgrades: If arbitrum truly wants to be community owned, they need to have an 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 for the short-term growth and user acquisition on 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 subsidised 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 handle 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 more possibilities on what might be handled!

997

Organization: Princeton Blockchain Club

Wallet Address: arb1:0x18BF1a97744539a348304E9d266aAc7d446a1582

ENS: PrincetonBC.eth

Tally Profile URL: Carl’s Tally: Tally | Carl Zielinski (carlz.eth)

Twitter: @ pton_blockchain

Website: crypto.princeton.edu

Final Writeup By: @ CarlZielinski on Twitter

Introduction:

The Princeton Blockchain Club (PBC) is Princeton University’s largest student-run blockchain hub, featuring over 200 undergrads, grads, and alums interested in the frontier of Web3. We focus on educating students and the general public about blockchain tech, supporting up-and-coming Web3 devs on campus, connecting students with top crypto founders and investors, and more recently, participating in on-chain governance.

What area are you most interested in contributing to? choose up to two tags:

  • DeFi development on Arbitrum
  • Improving Governance participation

Please share your stance on overall goals for the DAO:

We’d like to ensure that the DAO is sustainable, and that Arbitrum continues to grow and be a key player in the overall Ethereum ecosystem. We believe in the core principles of decentralization (especially as critique around Ethereum L2 centralization increases), advancing innovative governance systems, interoperability, and transparency.

Please share your stance on issues that were raised previously, in other communities, as described below:

Voting Issue 1 (Uniswap Flipside):

  • For or Against?
    • We would choose to vote against the Community-Enabled Analytics proposal. Although University clubs, such as ours, would’ve benefited by gaining 2 seats on the Allocation Committee, it would’ve been in the community’s best interest for the proposal to go back to the drawing board (or canceled, which is what ended up happening).
  • What amendments would you make to the proposal, if any?
    • Flipside would’ve received $93,750 a month to operate the program, in addition to having significant votes on both the Allocation Committee and Oversight Committee. Although it’s reasonable for Flipside to have a significant (though not a majority) number of votes on the Allocation Committee for the sake of efficiency, having the party being overseen also have a vote on its own Oversight Committee isn’t right. Furthermore, one of the three Oversight Committee votes was held by Nic Carter, whose venture capital firm was also an investor in Flipside. We’d for sure amend the proposal by having the Oversight Committee be run by reputable Uniswap DAO members that were independent of both Flipside and other analytics companies in order to have this system of checks and balances be as fair as possible.
    • However, perhaps the proposal’s more fundamental problem was how it favored a single analytics provider, ignoring the wider range of providers at the time. Dune Analytics suggested that a new proposal be made that was service provider neutral, which is what we’d likely push for as well.
  • How would you approach the tradeoff between centralization of authority and the ability to get things done?
    • It’s important for DAOs to maintain a balance between these two. Although having every single action be up for a DAO-wide vote is tempting for decentralization maximalists, it’s worth delegating some tasks for the sake of efficiency. As long as the process is transparent and the DAO can take action if groups aren’t acting in its best interest, this can be a fine tradeoff to make in some circumstances.

Voting Issue 2 (FEI RARI):

  • Outside of flipping the vote, how would you choose to handle this situation? (Full reimbursement, no reimbursement, or split reimbursement?)
    • We believe that full reimbursement would be the correct decision in the Rari hack. A faster reimbursement would’ve also helped reduce the fallout of the hack, as the extended back-and-forth about reimbursement helped lead to the fall of groups like Babylon Finance.
    • The length of time that the Rari reimbursement decision dragged on should’ve been minimized, as it was the subject of significant confusion and suffering. Discussing a framework for how the DAO should act in such a situation beforehand is crucial, in addition to having adequate coverage in case of a hack.

Languages we speak and write: English, Mandarin, Spanish

Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interest:

Offchain Labs has history with Princeton University, as Ed Felten is a professor emeritus, and both Steven Goldfeder and Harry Kalodner did their PhDs here.

Our sponsor list is located here for those interested: Princeton Blockchain Club

Besides that, there should be no other potential conflicts of interest.

3 Likes
998

Name: marian (Individual)

Wallet Address: 0x31B5aBcF044049daa96cDC387a44747a48a0ac62

Tally Profile URL:
[Tally | maiste.eth] (https://Tally)

What area are you most interested in contributing to?

I am most interested in DeFi Developement on Arbitrum and Gaming Development on Arbitrum

Sample Voting Issue 1:
Issue Overview

  • Uniswap planned to use Flipside to attract new users to Uniswap through bounties. Although the program outline and funding was fine, the proposal was contentious because it gave Flipside crypto too much control over allocating UNI to bounties and oversight of the entire program.
  • For instance, Flipside had 3/7 seats on the allocation committee and 1/3 seats on the Oversight committee. There was also concern since none of the other analytics service providers were involved in the proposal.
  • This proposal flew under the radar but at the 11th hour got very heated. Large votes from university clubs supported the proposal since they would get a seat on the allocation committee. However, Dune and Leshner spoke up about the issue because of the centralization of power and favor of one service provider.

Prompts to Answer:

1. How would you vote?

I would have voted against it

2. What amendments would you make to the proposal if any?

It is clear that the proposal openned the door for exploitation, therefore
I would implement a system where the maximum allocation would be something like 1/7 of the seats for the Allocation committee and 1/3 Max seats for the Oversight committee.

3. How would you approach the tradeoff between centralization of authority and the ability to get things done?

Its a fine line, while centralization allows for a quicker course of action and a quicker way of doing things it should never be prioritized against decentralization. Decentralization is essential for the functioning of a DAO and therefore its inefficiency is sometimes justified

Sample Voting Issue 2:
Issue Overview:
Overview Link 1
Overview Link 2

FEI RARI Hack Reimbursement: In April 2022 Rari was hacked for 80M, a vote was passed to reimburse those affected. Then in May 2022 another vote to refund the Rari hacked was brought forward this time it was not passed.

Prompts to Answer:

Outside the flipping of the vote, how would you choose to handle this situation?
i.e should parties be reimbursed for an exploit or not? (Please choose one of the below options and then elaborate upon your reasoning)

  1. Full Reimbursement
  2. No Reimbursement
  3. Split Reimbursement
    Please elaborate on what instances you believe it is right to refund and which are not.

In my opinion I would issue a Split Reimbursement to all parties effected. While users should not have to suffer losses due to a protocol being hacked, we agree that the position of the DAO would be weakened if a full reimbursement would be issued. I would provide a partial reimbursement big enough for users as possible and complete the reimbursement in the case that the police is able to get the stolen funds.

Languages I speak and write: I am a native spanish speaker and can speak French, Italian and English fluently.

Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interest: No.

1 Like
999

Name : Cypher (Individual)
ENS : cyphersoul.eth
Tally : @cypher

Areas of Interest (Where I could bring in more Value) :

  • Defi development, NFT development and Gaming development are the areas that am most interested in contributing to. As I’m more of an artist, designer and a DeFi farmer personally. These are the areas I’m more strong at and thus could bring in more value too.

-My stance on the overall goals for the DAO :
As far as the most interesting thing to me is that the goals of the DAO are closely connected with gaming, NFT, and DeFi development. The DAO aims to create a scalable, secure, and usable platform for developers to build and deploy their applications, including games, NFT marketplaces, and DeFi protocols. By improving the scalability of the Arbitrum platform, the DAO can enable high-throughput gaming and DeFi applications to run smoothly on the platform. By prioritizing security, the DAO can create a trusted and safe environment for developers to build NFT marketplaces and other applications that require secure transactions. Finally, by prioritizing usability, the DAO can make it easier for developers to build on the platform, which can help to drive adoption and growth in the ecosystem. Ultimately, the goals of the Arbitrum DAO are closely aligned with the goals of developers in the gaming, NFT, and DeFi spaces, which can help to drive innovation and growth in these rapidly evolving areas of the blockchain industry.

Sample Voting Issue 1: Uniswap Flipside Bounty
-1. How would you vote?
I would Vote FOR.
Its indeed true that, most of the protocol governance are not truly decentralized in the sense of the voting power each shares. And it takes time to get evenly distributed and thus becomes more decentralized. But the thing here is how advantageous a single service provider was and that triggered the manipulation of the proposal.

-2. What amendments would you make to the proposal if any?
Being a lumpsum amount, the period of distribution could be extended.
And also the DAO could put out proposals on to recheck the previous proposals impact.

-3. How would you approach the tradeoff between centralization of authority and the ability to get things done?
The DAO mechanism itself works on a collective consensus but sometimes the centralization do kick in. To solve this, I would recommend something like proof of HONOUR like badge attached to each of the voters DID, which increases in rating on the basis of participation in governance activities in the DAO. And this proof of HONOUR rating must be also weighed along with token voting power.

-Sample Voting Issue 2: Rari hack reimbursement

  • Outside the flipping of the vote, how would you choose to handle this situation? i.e should parties be reimbursed for an exploit or not?
    I would prefer a FULL Reimbursement, as being a platform who collects fees for the product they sell, they are ofcourse obliged to be responsible for the losses of their customers in case of a hack.

Languages I speak : English, Malayalam,
Languages I write : English, Hindi, Malayalam

Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interes:
I’m confident that I don’t have any conflict of interest.

1 Like
1000

Name: litocoen (Individual)

ENS: lito.eth

Tally:

Areas of interest:

  • DeFi development on Arbitrum
  • Public goods funding

Please share your stance on overall goals for the DAO:
Beyond the obvious goal of continuing to improve the technology underlying Arbitrum chains, I believe the DAO’s main task should be focusing on ecosystem development. In crypto more than anywhere else, ecosystems have network effects. The more useful new applications are being built on Arbitrum chains, the more existing applications benefit. Both from the influx of new users entering the ecosystem as well as new integration possibilities and B2B partnerships.

Attracting these projects and builders to Arbitrum and making sure existing applications flourish will be paramount in the months and years to come. As the ecosystem scales, the core team alone will be overwhelmed by this task and this is where the Arbitrum community can come together and help in an unbiased and transparent way.

I think targeted liquidity mining can be highly effective at bootstrapping new apps & protocols the DAO feels optimistic about and would like to see succeed. However, it will be important to define clear guidelines and goals to avoid the DAO treasury becoming a slush fund.

For
I thought the proposal suggested a clever way to fund itself through yield generating activities on Uniswap. Getting quality external contributors involved is the best path for a DAO to scale operations.

It is impossible to make everyone happy and include every analytics provider just to have a balance of power. A DAO, just like a company, wants to see results and not 5 different analytics companies overseeing a committee with the typical in-fighting that this would result in.

The DAO has to choose the best people for a job and ignore the voices that have a clear conflict of interest (in this case e.g Dune or related VC’s).

What amendments would you make to the proposal if any?

  • I think a diverse committee of individuals is often better than selecting a single company or service provider for an initiative like this to make sure there are enough checks and balances.
  • Starting small and nimble is often better and less controversial than requesting $25m at the first go. People are mistrusting so it’s better to request a small amount, deliver results and work your way up.

Split payment
I think a split payment would have been the best path forward here. On the one hand I think retail investors in DeFi and DAO’s shouldn’t assume that just because a DAO is well capitalized, there’s a 100% money-back guarantee in case of a hack. On the other hand, the DAO (unless it plans to wind down operations after the hack) needs to have sufficient funds to have a credible shot at continuing its activities, which includes developing a new protocol, legal fees, payroll etc. So it’s very much a case by case thing and context matters as well. In the case of Fei, it seems like the core team had previously made promises to make users whole. In general, I think it’s in the best interest of a DAO to make users whole to the best extent possible without overly stretching its financial capabilities.

Languages I speak and write: German, English, French and Spanish

Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interest: I am a minor delegate in the Optimism DAO but consider myself a supporter of all rollup teams. I am also a delegate in the Safe DAO and plan to become more involved in the Instadapp DAO.

2 Likes
1001

We have been following Arbitrum for a long time, and we would like to help you develop it. We would very much like to get the role of delegate.

StakeMe helps web 3.0 projects to test their product, increase the number of participants in the tesnet, and provide the most efficient development support with dedicated tools.

Introduction

  • Address: 0xf92B10C4dEBFb64d3a0e78c1a044c678b3c37Da8
  • Twitter: @stakeme_pro
  • Personal Website: stakeme.pro

Our developers are now actively creating a new self-written explorer exploreme.pro/ (Statistically about 1,500 visits per day), we initially support Cosmos, but we can integrate other blockchains as well.

Areas of interest

  • Tooling, Improving protocol decentralization
  • Supporting Infrastructure
  • DeFi development on Arbitrum
    Please share your stance on overall goals for the DAO:
    The overall goals of a DAO will depend on the specific context and purpose of the organization. Generally speaking, a DAO is designed to be a decentralized and autonomous entity that operates on a blockchain or other decentralized platform. Its members can collectively make decisions, allocate resources, and execute actions without the need for a centralized authority.
    Ultimately, the goals of a DAO will depend on the needs and objectives of its members. By providing a decentralized and autonomous platform for decision-making and resource allocation, a DAO can facilitate collaboration and innovation while promoting transparency and accountability.

Sample Voting Issue 1:

1 Like