[DIP v1.6] Delegate Incentive Program Results (April 2025)

[SEEDGov]

cp0x

@cp0x

From your point of view, it turns out that it is absolutely unimportant what kind of analysis I personally conducted in order to formulate my assessment of some proposal, and it is only important that someone else gave a link to the study? It’s just that for me 3 out of 10 is an assessment of an opinion, not based on anything, in which case I can still understand such an assessment. Well, and influence is generally unclear how it is determined: I say that this is not the best idea with arguments and if such an initiative is not implemented, then I consider my impact to be equal to 10, and not 1

Honestly, we don’t understand this response. Our point is that your comment does not refer to the research that you later mention in the dispute. We believe there is more depth in the dispute itself than in the disputed comment.

We also haven’t said that the analysis you carried out is not important — quite the opposite, we’re saying that it would have been positive if you had included more details of that analysis in the comment, as it’s not initially possible to determine its detail through that post.

@cp0x

I was the 6th delegate to comment on this proposal, i.e. I was one of the first in the first hours of the proposal being posted. I did not see other delegates asking about the same result,

When you ask “why are you sure that in this case there will not be the same result as last time?” along with the example “Why in the same example about wstETH all the borrowing will not go to another chain when the season ends?” that’s equivalent to asking about long-term sustainability, which is one of the issues of previous incentive programs.

In this sense, that question had already been asked by @pedrob:

@pedrob

What it’s still not clear to me is: why do you believe this model will lead to sustainable growth activity on Arbitrum? What mechanisms are in place to ensure user retention, long-term commitment from potential partners, or other indicators of sustainability?

@cp0x

it turns out that we will depend on the partner, and not say what conditions we need? This is a strange approach, because DAO pays money, and therefore offers its own conditions - we are not bound by any technical limitations in the blockchain - we are free to choose for ourselves how it should work

We agree, but that’s not our approach — it’s Entropy’s. Our point was that, with the proposed structure, it would be difficult to get a response, given that we still don’t know the Distribution Partner.

KlausBrave

@KlausBrave

No other compensation declaration

@SEEDGov

Finally, @KlausBrave, could you confirm that you will not request retroactive compensation from the DAO or any DAO-funded program for the production of these podcasts?

I gather you want to avoid someone being rewarded twice.
Correct I have no plans to submit this for any other compensation.

Exactly, we want to avoid double-spending since Bonus Points are only granted if there has been/will be no financial benefit for the delegate beyond the DIP.

Thanks for the clarification!

@KlausBrave

Timing of attribution of contribution (not impact)

I claim that this award should be allocated for April.

The DIP v1.6 “bible” is silent on any requirement to wait for an external “impact” (e.g. a Paulo post) before awarding Bonus Points for work actually done in a given month.

Exceptional contributions are awarded in the month they’re submitted.

Here, beyond what the Bible says, it’s a matter of applying common sense: a contribution gains significant value from the moment it generates a tangible impact for the DAO. That’s why, on more than one occasion, we waited for initiatives such as Detox proposed by L2Beat to be approved by the DAO (the same applied to the Huddles case proposed by Paulo).

Now, the fragment you quoted says “delegates who have submitted proposals of significant impact to the DAO.” In our opinion, during April, the significant impact that is now manifest had not yet materialized.

@KlausBrave

• In which month are my comments evaluated?

Comments are evaluated in the same month in which they occurred, regardless of whether it is a proposal that then goes to a vote or if it is a thread in a different part of the forum (not a proposal).

Comments are usually not part of the Bonus Points framework. Extraordinary contributions have a different nature than feedback—there are several examples of Bonus Points granted months after an initiative’s kick-off (mentioned above, but not the only ones).

@KlausBrave

How can one attribute bonus points to people putting in effort to SOS, but not causing results as SOS is put into hiatus, also it’s impact was not knowable or measurable within the same month contribution occurred

In this case, even though it wasn’t possible to know the final or total impact, we believe that:

1. The very act of posting a SOS could be seen as a materialized impact in the forum regarding a key discussion.
2. Following each SOS post, there were comments from delegates, which we can consider “impacted” by the submission since there was engagement.
3. Each submission also generated a SOS Discussion Call where delegates participated by asking questions and providing feedback in each case.

@KlausBrave

• ETHBucharest booth - by what metric are you assessing the value of people volunteering? on the effort of hours, or what metric is being used to measure the impact of that contribution?

Do we award effort or impact? there appears to be inconsistent treatment and not a coherent principle of incentive attribution occurring.

Effort and impact. Without those volunteers, the Arbitrum Booth would not have been possible. Naturally, they had an impact through their collaboration.

@KlausBrave

I took courage, risk and work to interview a contrarian voice in the DAO, that already has a social cost. This podcast gave Paulo the time and space to unpack design faults and risks occurring in the DAO. That takes guts. If we don’t incentivize this, by the negative we penalize outlier voices from speaking out even further.
I’ve already had many private DMs of people sharing the podcasts were valuable but won’t risk saying so publicly as the signaling cost of expressing views counter to major voices already in power in the DAO is high.

How do we want to incentivize or penalise speaking truth out going forward?

Lastly as a new entrant to the DIP, this is quite demotivating treatment, when I take initiative and it’s something smaller, new and emergent, I think a smaller bonus say 5 points is actually a motivating response to indicate, hey this is promising keep it up, perhaps target more timely or specific proposals or improve production quality, reach etc, vs the all or nothing approach to recognition: the Blockworks podcast on a bigger account is awarded 10 points and the DAO Watch work is cast as worth zero.

Here we believe there was a misinterpretation of our response:

• We never said that we were not going to incentivize this initiative.
• SEEDGov as PM never takes sides—it’s not our business whether it’s a critical voice or a voice “aligned” with entities such as AF or OCL. We never implied that one or the other is being incentivized or penalized.
• We never said the value is 0, we just disagreed on the timing and needed Paulo’s response to confirm that this podcast had a significant impact on his response. It’s worth noting that this impact was stated by you in your dispute, so there was no way for us to be aware of it when evaluating your April contributions.
• The fact that you find our opinion on the timing for granting points to this initiative demotivating is a pity, considering we specifically mentioned it in the report as a positive initiative in principle, but that we didn’t yet have enough elements to give it a score. This was entirely true at that time, given the reach on social media and the fact that there was only one comment from Paulo mentioning it in the forum. It’s worth clarifying that we don’t usually rely on likes in a comment, especially when most of them come from people involved in the initiative or somehow connected to the delegate in question, or from people we cannot appropriately verify. In the image you can see that of the 8 likes, 1 is yours, another is from CryptoSI, another from Andrei who is linked to Paulo via Proposals.app, and 2 others from people who do not actively participate as delegates in ArbitrumDAO / we don’t have enough references for them.

• That said, only today, May 20th, 2025, SEEDGov can verify the impact that this podcast had on Paulo in a response to the vision posted by AF, which (potentially) can be considered within the Delegates’ Feedback framework. The nature of this situation requires us to first analyze Paulo’s comment (which does not pertain to the month of April) before we can fully assess the broader context. As Program Managers, it would be unfeasible for us to incorporate future events into an analysis of a past month. This is only reasonable when both of the following conditions are met:

  • The update takes place within the first few days of the month.
  • The update does not require extensive analysis.

  Neither condition applies in this case, which is why we kindly ask for your understanding—otherwise, we would be setting a precedent we are not willing to uphold. It’s also important to note that we are currently processing 69 reports per month, and that number continues to grow each month.

In summary, our intention is not to demotivate you, but to be consistent with the decisions we’ve made in the past. We understand you may agree or not, but the reality is that this is a known risk since this proposal was approved, given the subjective nature of Extraordinary Contributions and Delegates’ Feedback.

We hope that now that there is greater clarity regarding the potential inclusion of this initiative for the month of May, you find motivation to continue contributing to Arbitrum DAO. It’s worth mentioning that we’ll be keeping an eye on the growth of the reach of these podcasts.

@KlausBrave

A point of process, I suggest a change that the DIP Bible language states the dispute period be 4 business days.
In this instance this month 2 of the 4 days were on the weekend, and the bulk of the dispute response came as one big comment at the end of this period and at the same time declaring it closed, I don’t think adequate time and process has been provided here.

Thank you for this feedback. In practice, we do usually allow a few extra days when the dispute period overlaps with a weekend. That said, we also want to avoid delaying payments for too long.

Still, we’d like to clarify that the sentence closing the dispute period applies to new disputes only. Any disputes already posted can, of course, continue to be discussed.

danielo

@danielo

Where was even the election posted? It’s not on the list of tally nor snapshot proposals
If we’re going to get completely taken out of any incentive, despite continuous work through the period, joining weekly calls, etc etc. We could have at least been warned, no?

I find two months to be too big a penalty for something that falls outside of the regular UIs

Like tbh, this is very discouraging and makes me feel participating in Arbitrum is too prone to arbitrary decisions

Security Council elections was one of the most important Topics of the ArbitrumDAO during the months of March, April and some days of May.

Member Election Phase started April 12, and it was announced by the Arbitrum Foundation in this Forum Post.

Also, the Arbitrum Foundation Team was really vocal on the importance of the Security Council Elections during the past two months. For example, here you can find the Recording of the March 11, 2025 - Open Discussion of Proposals Governance Call where SC Elections were discussed. Also, there was an overview of the candidates on March 25, 2025 - Open Discussion of Proposals Governance Call (recording here). Process continued and there was also an update on the April 8, 2025 - Open Discussion of Proposals Governance Call.

Also, Arbitrum Foudation team held an AMA with the Security Council Candidates. You can find that record here.

As an important note, SEEDGov as a Program Manager of the DIP also conducted a campaign for the Security Elections. With the objective of having the most amount of VP voting on the first week, we introduced a linear penalty system (similar to the one of the SC Elections) and also announced that those delegates who didn’t vote on the Security Council Elections were not going to be eligible for both April and May incentives (post can be seen here)

We’ve also posted on the Arbitrum Delegates chat two different reminders of the Mandatory Voting:

You can check that, as of today May 20, this message is still pinned in the ‘Delegate Incentive Program’ Chat.

Also, there’s a specific section of the Arbitrum Delegates Chat called ‘Security Council’ where Raam posted regular updates of the matter.

As a final note, the Security Council elections are the most important governance process within ArbitrumDAO, as the signers are responsible for safeguarding one of the Layer 2s with the highest Total Value Locked in the ecosystem. We believe the awareness and outreach efforts carried out by the Arbitrum Foundation and the DAO have been highly valuable, resulting in the election with the highest amount of Voting Power used in the history of the ecosystem. For more information on this, we recommend the Arbitrum DAO Security Council Dashboard by Entropy Advisors

Paulo Fonseca

@paulofonseca

Responding to the questions around the infamous podcast episode

@SEEDGov

@PauloFonseca, are you in a position to confirm that this podcast had a significant influence on the depth and clarity of your later comment?

Sir, yes, sir! Talking it out in this podcast clarified my thinking in my comment. For example, I re-listened to the podcast episode to write my comment on the vision thread.

@KlausBrave

Let’s hear from Paulo. @paulofonseca - can you weigh in on the impact the DAO Watch podcast had on you, the DAO, and its timing? Lets wait for this.

Yes, it had a lot of impact. That’s why I posted just the podcast link in the thread sooner, before I made my full comment above. I think that if I hadn’t done the podcast episode, I probably wouldn’t have made my post.

Thank you for this clarification! It’s very helpful.

@paulofonseca

Well, of course it has impact. It matters a lot if the creation of the new vision proposed by the AF was done in the open and collaboratively, or behind close doors, like this post of mine publicly proves it was.

From the moment the vision was posted without any public debate on the forum, it is implied that there was no open and collaborative development beyond what may have happened behind the scenes.

@paulofonseca

Honestly, this argument doesn’t make sense and is inconsistent with previous scoring. The criteria to decide if a forum post should be awarded under DF or not isn’t “the matter did not warrant going through the usual governance process” since there have been plenty of topics in the past that would never have gone through the usual governance process and were awarded under DF.

We don’t believe it is inconsistent. In past months, it has been clear that both the scoring and the number of comments considered valid are lower for what we may call “secondary” topics compared to discussions that are clearly central to the DAO, such as SOS, the AF Vision, or the DRIP.

@paulofonseca

Even if this is true, for sure this comment of mine deserves a higher score on the Timing rubric, because it was indeed the first one mentioning that argument. The fact that it was scored equally with 3 points out of 10, for Relevance, Depth of Analysis, and Timing, shows that the scoring is not fair, under your own argument.

Timing and Clarity & Communication scores are adjusted relative to Relevance, Depth of Analysis, and Impact on Decision-Making. This is not new and was clarified months ago, as stated in the Bible and here:

@SEEDGov

As you can observe in the notes included in the individual reports of each delegate, the scores for the parameters Timing and Clarity & Communication are adjusted relative to Relevance, Depth of Analysis, and Impact on Decision-Making. This means that it is unlikely for the Timing score to be higher than the Relevance score, for example.

This is justified by the fact that a delegate may be the first to comment, but, if he/she provides low or medium-quality feedback, it makes no sense to assign the maximum Timing score to a comment that contributed little to the discussion. Timing is valuable when the comment is insightful or has a significant impact. The same applies to Clarity & Communication.

In summary, a comment may have the same or a lower score in these two parameters compared to the other criteria in the rubric. This will be better reflected in the February results when the Scoring system transitions to a 0 to 10 scale.

@paulofonseca

Well, it would be crazy not to award me BP this month for ETH Bucharest. April, with the Arbitrum DAO presence at ETH Bucharest, was the month that I put in the most blood, sweat, and tears for Arbitrum DAO ever since I became a delegate in September 2024. Everybody else that was there could tell you that was the case.

And we agree. That’s why we were quite flexible and assigned you the highest aggregated score (45 points) ever granted for a single initiative in the history of the program.

@paulofonseca

That’s precisely why stepping up and doing that work voluntarily, by myself and others, is worth Bonus Points. My dispute was to make the attribution of those bonus points more fair between the delegates rewarded, in relation to what happened on the ground, and you failed to address that in this response.

We don’t believe we failed to address this. As we’ve previously mentioned, the program is trying to fill a gap, which makes it inherently imperfect and means there won’t always be a perfect correlation between the scores assigned to participants and the actual work performed.

@paulofonseca

And also the discrepancies and biases in selecting which comments are considered valid and invalid, as I pointed out previously in this thread.

As we’ve already responded, there are no such discrepancies or biases. All delegates were evaluated equally and under the same criteria.

@paulofonseca

Also, I believe the dispute system was initially designed so that anyone can dispute anyone’s results, even for the sake of overall fidelity and accuracy. That’s why the template for a dispute post includes the username of the targeted delegate, right?

There are two points to clarify here:

1. The template includes a username field as a formal requirement — that doesn’t mean the intention was to enable disputes of other delegates’ scores.
2. Disputing another delegate’s score only made sense when the program was limited to rewarding up to 50 delegates. In that context, if a delegate with TP > 65 were at risk of not being rewarded due to others receiving higher scores, a case could be made for disputing another’s scoring. Given that this scenario is far from the current reality, we don’t believe it’s necessary to allow disputes against other delegates’ scores — especially when JoJo’s score doesn’t prevent you from receiving compensation. If that changes in the future, we’ll be happy to reassess this decision.

@paulofonseca

I suggest updating the DIP Bible and create a new 1.7 version of the program with that change.

Thank you — we’ll take that into consideration.