Delegated Domain Allocation by Questbook

[Saurabh]

Summary

• We propose Arbitrum foundation launch Arbitrum grants program with a budget of $1M spread across 2 quarters to fund a wide variety of teams building apps on top of Arbitrum in a transparent manner. Questbook is leading Compound grants program through delegated domain capital allocation model, a community-run grants program
• We additionally propose that this budget be managed by 4 individuals called Domain Allocators - chosen from the community and by the community. These domain allocators would manage grants for a domain. These domains are strategic areas of focus for which Arbitrum wants to disburse grants
• The performance of each of these domain allocators will be publicly viewable and auditable using rich dashboards. At the end of the quarter, the Arbitrum community can vote to replace, continue domain allocators or increase budgets for each domain allocator.
• We (Questbook.xyz) will help facilitate setting up these domain allocators and provide the tooling to run the grants program in an efficient and transparent way. We have previously set up or currently setting up the grants process for Compound, Polygon, Solana, Celo, and Aave

Motivation

As we continue to experience the depth of the bear market, it is increasingly important for Arbitrum to retain the mindshare of key ecosystem contributors and incentivize builders to build on top of it. Grants program is a great way to attract high-quality builders and grow the ecosystem more quickly. This proposal details the benefit to all the stakeholders involved - token holders, builders and DAO members.

Benefits to Arbitrum

Giving the selected domain allocators the capital and decision-making powers can increase the efficiency of the grants program, without compromising on accountability:

• Individual expertise instead of collective blindspots
• Distributed load instead of committee backlogs
• Accountability instead of diffusion of responsibility

The proposed structure will lead to the following outcomes:

1. Aligned allocation of funds: By leveraging the Delegated Domain Allocator (DDA) model, Arbitrum foundation can ensure that funds are allocated to projects that align with the domain (selected by the Arbitrum community), promoting efficient and effective use of resources. This approach aligns with Arbitrum’s goal of enabling the distribution of grants and empower the community to build and participate in the future of the Arbitrum.
2. Increased transparency: The Delegated Domain Allocator approach provides a clear and transparent process for allocating funds, ensuring stakeholders understand the decision-making process and building community confidence. Questbook, a decentralized grant management platform, provides a transparent space for teams to showcase their backgrounds and experience. In addition, Questbook’s reporting features will allow Arbitrum to quickly generate monthly reports on the allocation of funds, with the details for each grant proposal.
3. Increased accountability: With a dedicated group of stakeholders responsible for allocating funds, the Delegated Domain Allocator approach promotes increased accountability, ensuring that the funds are used effectively and efficiently. Domain allocators can be replaced through a community vote if their performance is not up to the standards accepted by the community.
4. Lower Turnaround Time (TAT): The Delegated Domain Capital Allocation model will help improve proposals’ turnaround time and overall outcomes for the ecosystem. An example of this is Compound who’s already leveraging the DDA model and has a communication TAT of less than 48 hours. The performance of domain allocators will be measured using objectives and key results (OKRs) to ensure goals are achieved efficiently and effectively.

5. High Brand Recognition : The Delegated Domain Allocator model will play a crucial role in boosting developer engagement with Arbitrum, as well as forming strategic partnerships with important ecosystems to jointly fund grants in mutually beneficial areas.

Specification & Implementation

The program structure focuses on having community members as domain allocators. Arbitrum foundation **will be required to set a budget of $1M to be disbursed by 4 domain allocators and for committee compensation. Each domain allocator will be elected by the community. Interested community members can self-nominate themselves to be considered for becoming a domain allocator. The domain allocator for each domain will be selected via a community-wide Snapshot vote. Domain allocators will run their domain on-chain for full transparency. The data and performance across key metrics will be visible to the community in order to evaluate the domain allocator’s performance.

The disbursement of the grant will take place on-chain from a multi-sig wallet for each domain controlled by the program manager & the domain allocator. The domain allocators will approve or reject proposals based on their evaluation. The program manager will then coordinate with the Arbitrum team and the community to ensure that the proposal is aligned with Arbitrum’s roadmap before making the disbursal. The sole purpose of the multi-sig is to make sure capital is not being siphoned. However, the allocators are encouraged to make independent decisions in consultation with the Arbitrum team regarding the approval of the proposal based on their expertise.

The grants committee and the Arbitrum community shall evaluate the performance of each domain and domain allocator using publicly available data. The outcomes could be as follows:

1. Change the domain
2. Change the allocator/program manager
3. Change the budget

Active community members can also initiate a no-confidence motion to initiate a review off-cycle. This can be initiated by one of the active delegates on Snapshot. The program manager can coordinate this, if the situation arises, along with the active community members. The unused funds from every domain will be returned to the treasury at the end of the quarter.

Product Screens

Invite proposals to your grants program

Anyone from the community can view and comment on the proposals

Invite community members to review proposals based on an evaluation rubric

Make milestone-based payouts directly from the multi-sig

Track the performance of the grants program

Arbitrum Grants Committee

The program will consist of

1. A Program Manager
2. 4 Domain Allocators

A Grants SAFE, with 4/6 multi-sig, between the program manager and 4 domain allocators will be setup. We will then have 4 SAFEs for each of the domains with a 2/2 between the program manager and the specific domain allocator.

The funds for the grants program will flow from the treasury into the Grants SAFE. This SAFE will hold the funds related to the grants budget and committee compensation. Funds that will be disbursed to the proposers will reside in the domain-level SAFEs. The program manager will be responsible to update the community about approved proposals and their details through bi-weekly community calls and reports over discord.

We have identified the following domains based on our research and the feedback from the Arbitrum team and community. We invite delegates and community members to self nominate themselves.

Domain	Credentials Needed	Why it is relevant
Gaming	Experience in game development or a deep understanding of Web3 gaming industry.	This will help Arbitrum encourage more developers to create innovative gaming experiences and thus onboard new users to its ecosystem
Developer Tooling on NOVA	Core contributor to Arbitrum and popular L2s in Web 3	This will help Arbitrum build essential infrastructure, tooling for Arbitrum Nova
New Protocol Ideas	Core contributor to Arbitrum protocol	This will encourage more contributors to propose and run experiments for improving the Arbitrum protocol
Education, Community growth and events	Experience in builder community growth and technical bootcamps	This will help Arbitrum attract quality builders through community growth activities such as education courses, bootcamps, hackathons and sponsoring events

Domain Allocator Roles & Responsibilities:

The following will be the roles and responsibilities of the selected domain allocators.

1. Time commitment per week: Maximum of 15 hours per week for the program manager and 10 hours per week for the domain allocator, which might vary based on the number of applications. The program manager will ensure that the workload is evenly distributed
2. Program Manager:
   1. Communication:
      1. Work with the Arbitrum team and the elected domain allocators to create and list out the necessary RFPs
      2. Identify key areas and relevant ecosystem partners who will co-fund grants alongside Arbitrum
      3. Create marketing content for communicating RPFs to the builders
      4. Coordinate between Arbitrum team and the community regarding cohort announcement and funding requirements
      5. Communicate the information regarding approval/rejection of proposals to the Arbitrum community regularly
      6. Attend community calls, actively participate in the community forum, and keep the community updated and take their feedback on the program
      7. Regularly update the progress of the grants program to the Arbitrum community over Discord and community calls
      8. Bi-weekly reporting of key metrics of the grants program and each selected project such as:

Metric	Details
Names and summary of accepted proposals	Total number of proposals that have been accepted by each domain allocator along with the proposal summary
Grant Amount Disbursed	Names of the proposal that have been awarded a grant amount along with the proposal summary and grant amount
Milestone Completion Rate	Each team should have a clear set of milestones and deliverables that they need to achieve. Program manager will share the status on milestone completion for each project
User Engagement	Number of users onboarded by a grantee onto their project
TVL	TVL (if applicable) of selected projects
Project Completion Rates	Number and names of projects who have completed all milestones
Growth in community engagement	Measured by number of followers of the project across different social media platforms, Discord community members
External Funding	Number of projects that have raised follow on capital after getting a grant from Arbitrum

2. Grants Program:

   1. Source good-quality proposals from developer communities
   2. Sign the transactions for the approved projects
   3. Ensure a quick turnaround time for proposers regarding their proposal decision
   4. Coordinate between the domain allocators to ensure that the workload is evenly distributed and take their feedback consistently

3. Domain Allocator:

   1. Review proposals received for their domains based on the rubrics set by the domain allocator
   2. Reject/Approve proposals and coordinate consistently with the program manager
   3. Source applications by reaching out to developer communities in their network
   4. Discuss program improvements with the other domain allocators and program manager during scheduled meetings.

Compensation :

The grant budget will be $1M with $200k for each domain. The committee compensation will be $160K for 4 domain allocators and one program manager for 6 months. Questbook : 5% of all disbursals made through Questbook as product fee. Note that this is the proposed budget. All unused funds from every domain and committee compensation will be returned to the treasury.

| Role | Per hour cost
(USD) | Number hours per week (Total number of hours: 24) | Total |
| — | — | — | — |
| Program Manager | 125 | 15 | 45,000 |
| Domain Allocator | 100 | 10 | 96000 |
| Miscellaneous (including operations cost) | N/A | N/A | 19000 |
| | | Total amount required | 160000 |

P.S

1. We are inviting applications for the domain allocator role for all the domains mentioned above. All interested community members and delegates can apply in the comments section of this post.

Conclusion

What does success look like?

• Objective
  • The prime objective of this model is to have domains that align with Arbitrum’s priorities. This way the contribution of the projects as part of the grants program is directly adding value to the DAO and the token holders.
  • Increase in the number of builders, proposals, and funded projects
  • Number of partners who are co-funding grants alongside Arbitrum in mutually beneficial areas
  • Increase in the homegrown leadership to run grant programs (measured by the number of people running grant programs)
  • Increase in the community members’ participation to keep grant programs accountable (measured by the number of people looking at the dashboard and participating in the program)
  • Diversity in projects being funded across technologies, geographies, and demographics, to name a few. We encourage the community to regularly review the project domains during Abritrum’s community call
  • Increased engagement in builder community’s
    • Discourse
    • Discord, Telegram
    • Social media (Twitter, Reddit)
    • GitHub
• Subjective
  • Improved community involvement in the grants program
  • Strengthened builders’ sentiment towards Abrbitrum
  • Enhanced Abritrum’s brand recognition in builder circles

KPIs

• Each domain allocator is required to work alongside program manager and come up with domain-specific rubrics similar to the following in order to evaluate the proposals. If the identified rubrics are not in line with the domain or Arbitrum’s roadmap, anyone from the community can openly suggest changes or question them on the forum

Score	0	1	2	3	4
Developer Reach	No project developer team. No developer attraction.	No dev team. Small attraction plan (1 to 5 devs).	Yes team dev.	Yes team dev. Small attraction plan (1 to 5 more devs).	Yes team dev. Big attraction plan (+5 more devs).
Developer Commitment	No commitment attraction	Mercenary commitment attraction (stays until benefits end)	Commitment attraction (1 to 3 months )	Commitment attraction (1 year)	Commitment attraction (3 year)
Developer Quality*	Project does not have a reasonable chance to attract high-quality devs	Project has a possibility of attracting high-quality devs	Project has a reasonable possibility of attracting high-quality devs and/or has high-quality devs	Project is likely to attract high-quality devs	Project is highly likely to attract high-quality devs
Likelihood of success	Clear flaw in design that cannot be easily remedied	Difficult to see the project continuing for more than a year	Reasonable chance that the project has intermediate-to-long-term success (+1 Year)	Project is likely to generate long-term, sustainable value for the ecosystem	Project has substantial likelihood to generate long-term, sustainable value for the ecosystem
Grant size	Grant size significantly outweighs projected benefit	Grant size is considerably larger than expected benefit	Grant size is proportional to expected benefit	Expected benefit outweighs grant size	Expected benefit meaningfully exceeds grant size
Team assessment	Team does not substantiate ability to deliver on plan	Team does not show significant ability to deliver on plan	Team shows reasonable ability to deliver on plan	Team shows significant ability to deliver on plan	Team exceeds what is required to deliver on plan
Milestone Assessment	Milestones do not significantly hold proposer accountable	Milestones are unlikely to hold proposer accountable	Milestones are reasonably likely to hold proposer accountable	Milestones are significantly likely to hold proposer accountable	Milestones are very likely to hold proposer accountable
Demo included (binary yes/no)	No demo included		Demo included
Score	-2	-1	0	1	2
Discretionary Factors (comment required)**

• Total number of proposals received, number of proposals received for each domain, number of proposals funded, turn around time to take a decision and for disbursal, milestone and project completion rates
• The program manager will share reports and conduct AMAs once every two weeks to ensure transparency and accountability.
• We welcome any suggestions for additional qualitative or quantitative metrics not included above
• Questbook product is a decentralized on-chain grants orchestration tool. Anyone from the community can view the data and create custom dashboards using the on chain data relevant to Arbitrum Grants Program in a permissionless manner.

Track the performance of the grants program

Anyone from the community can track the number of proposals, funding available for builders for a particular domain, and accepted proposals from the Homepage.

About Questbook:

Questbook’s role in Arbitrum’s Grant Program

• Saurabh from Questbook will be the program manager. Thereafter, the program manager will be elected from the community. Saurabh was previously working very closely with the Program manager of Polygon, where he facilitated the disbursement of approximately $1 million in grants. Saurabh has received a grant from IoTeX to establish their grant program, and he works closely with the Program Manager of Compound Grants Program 2.0. Saurabh has spoken to more than 100 builders and teams over the last 6-8 months and understands what it takes to make a grant program successful - from both program manager and builder perspectives.
• Questbook Grants tool will make sure the workflows are systematic and transparent.

Product Flows

1. Posting a grant - Link
2. Reviewing and Funding Proposals - Link
3. Settings - Link
4. Communicating with Builders - Link
5. Funding Builders - Link

Credentials

• Questbook (YC-W21) is a decentralized grant orchestration tool, currently being used by Compound, Polygon, AAVE, Celo & Solana Ecosystem
• Saurabh from Questbook will be the program manager. Thereafter, the program manager will be elected from the community. Saurabh was previously working very closely with the Program manager of Polygon, where he facilitated the disbursement of approximately $1 million in grants. Saurabh has received a grant from IoTeX to establish their grant program, and he works closely with the Program Manager of Compound Grants Program 2.0. Saurabh has spoken to more than 100 builders and teams over the last 6-8 months and understands what it takes to make a grant program successful - from both program manager and builder perspectives.

Community Buy - in and Next Steps

We welcome any comments on our proposal from the Arbitrum community and would love to seek suggestions/answer any questions.

[DisruptionJoe]

I’d love to see this as a submission in the JokeDAO competition. Very thorough and thoughtful.

On the one hand, I think this is a great proposal which deserves to be considered.

On the other hand, the purpose of the JokeDAO contest is to push the community to consider a pluralistic funding model. I do worry that if this were to be accepted prior to the many other framework proposals, the community might push back against the pluralistic design.

Overall, I would love to see this as one of the ones that get funded, but not considered THE grants program.

[Saurabh]

Thanks for your kind words and thoughtful comments. We appreciate and understand your thoughts regarding the importance of considering other funding approaches and embracing a pluralistic funding model.

As next steps, I’ll be attending the community call to gather more feedback from the community and welcome all community members to participate in the discussion and share their comments.

[jacksanyoda]

(Opinions are my own)
Generally, I’m in favor of the delegated domain allocation structure for a grants program as it maintains the DAO’s authority while ensuring efficiency. In regards to its application to Arbitrum, I’m open to a trial run for with a $1M budget, scaling only if effective. I appreciate Questbook’s effort in this proposal, but I can’t support it in its current form. Here are the changes I’d like to see:

1. Two-phase voting: Proposal approval and Domain Allocator (DA) selection should be separate votes.
2. Reward community feedback on grants: As outlined in the product screen section, I like the idea of community voting on proposals to guide DAs. Although it’s not required for awarding the grants, nor does the DA have to follow the feedback, it’s a useful indicator for DAs. If technologically feasible to track (would need to check with the guestbooks team), I suggest allocating a small percentage (e.g. 1%) of the overall budget to reward members of the Arbitrum community that provide feedback on grant applications.
3. Questbook compensation: The current proposal gives Questbook a 5% fee on total allocated grants, which is acceptable as a platform fee. However, after talking to the Questbooks team, we realized this proposal would establish an agent of guestbooks as the program manager (PM) for the first 6 months as well. This will essentially creates a scenario where Questbook earns nearly 10% of the overall allocation of the budget (45k for PM and 40k for Questbook’s fee). This creates a conflict of interest and sets a bad precedent. While I appreciate the value of having an experienced PM set up the systems and procedures, I suggest a change to address this double-dipping issue. Options include reducing the agent’s tenure (to 3 months) and/or taking the agent’s salary from Questbook’s fee while they serve as the program manager. I’m open to other suggestions as well.

I’d love to hear others’ feedback on these points.

[Saurabh]

Hey Jack, Thanks for the kind words and appreciate your support

1. This is going to be a two-phase voting process. Initially, we wanted the DAs to nominate themselves under this post and then have a snapshot where the community can choose the domain allocators. However, after speaking to the delegates and considering community feedback, once the proposal passes, we will create a separate post where both the community and delegates can nominate themselves for the DA role. Once the nomination period is over, it will go to voting. You can refer to the Arbitrum delegate post .

2. Thanks for acknowledging this it’s one of features of the product. As mentioned in the proposal. The domain allocators will approve or reject proposals based on their evaluation and the domain allocators are encouraged to make independent decisions in consultation with the Arbitrum team regarding the approval of the proposal based on their expertise.

3. Thank you for providing detailed calculations🙏. The 5% that we are asking for is to cover the operational costs of the tool. We would be open to reducing the product disbursal fees to 3% and having Questbook operate as a program manager for 6 months. We believe this would be a win-win for both parties and allow us to continue providing value to Arbitrum community and developers. Please let us know your thoughts on this proposal and if you have any other suggestions or concerns. Thank you for your time and consideration.

We will be posting again on the forum with the new changes mentioned above once the new grant template is live on the discourse.

[jengajojo]

Generally supportive of testing this out but I’d like to see what the community thinks via jokerace that @DisruptionJoe has organized

[KarlaGod]

This is thorough and shows some level of fairness for indie devs and new projects.