[Election & Application Thread] Arbitrum D.A.O. (Domain Allocator Offerings) Grant Program

Applications for DAO programs
14

Applicant Information

Background & Skills

Today in DeFi is a DeFi News media and research organization active since DeFi summer 2020. Every day we cover new projects launched as well as upcoming projects, filtering and finding good new projects and upcoming ones.

You can see our news coverage here extended back to 2020, covering thousands of projects.

Our research arm Today in DeFi Research focuses on identifying valuable projects in the industry for investment, farming, or trading purposes.

We look at new projects and ideas every day, filtering out many bad ideas without PMF, scams, and “money grab” projects and teams, then evaluating the better projects and ideas for growth potential, usability, team quality, etc.

Our daily work is almost an exact fit for the filtering and selection of good projects and ideas for Arbittrum.

Besides our media and research, we’ve been active in ArbitrumDAO as delegates,with 100% participation across Snapshot and Tally since September 2024, providing rationale for all our decisions.

Domain Related Experience and Vision

Filtering for Good Projects and Ideas
As a news media we filter dozens of projects, teams and ideas a day before covering them in our newsletter. Our research team then identifies high quality projects, and ideas with growth or trading potential for further research for trading, farming or airdrop opportunities. Example: Introduction to Euler V2

This closely mirrors the work for the New Protocols and Ideas Domain Allocator, whom must filter for good quality project ideas and teams with growth potential and PMF.

Network to help projects grow
Besides this filtering, selection and research process, we also have developed relationships with many DeFi projects and investors, allowing us to not only identify good projects but may let us guide them with the advice or connections to progress their project/idea and make it successful.

Grant related Experience

We’ve previously won a grant from Reserve Protocol for a technical newsletter targeting developers and have other experience applying for grants from Octant and other ecosystems.

As Arbitrum delegates we are experienced in explaining our decisions responsively and clearly, and as newsletter writers and researchers we’re experienced in generating regular reports of our work, as we’d be required to do in this role.

When evaluating projects and ideas, we’d look for:

Path to PMF

The project or idea should have a clear path to Product Market Fit, whether that’s fulfilling an existing use case, or exploring new markets or technologies that could open up new use cases. This helps the long term viability of the project, which should not be continuously dependent on grants. This is not Public Goods Funding.

Qualified and Driven Team

The team involved needs to be capable of executing on its mission, preferably with a history of execution on similar projects or ideas, or relevant skills and experience.

Long Term Oriented Team

Besides qualifications, we’d also look for long term oriented teams, which are aiming to do more than just get a grant, build a MVP, and move on from Arbitrum. There should be a demonstrated history of team members working on long term projects, or working at projects/ companies for significant periods of time rather than hopping from project to project or pushing short term, PnD type of projects.

Mutual Benefit with Arbitrum

The project or idea should benefit from being on Arbitrum, and Arbtirum should benefit from having that project as well.

Clear use of Grant funds

We’d want to see clear layout of how funds will be used, preferably with milestones.

Declaration of Conflict of Interest

We are not involved in any other grant programs or ecosystem DAOs and do not have any other conflict of interest that we’re aware of.

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