Overall I agree with the proposal and believe Entropy have been diligent and very positive for the DAO.
A few comments given the significant scale and commitment the proposal requests:
Clearer mandate: great improvement made and continuing to do so would be good
I have called a few times (e.g. here) for AAEs to have more granular mandates to avoid crowding out vendors and other ecosystem partners. I’m glad to see Entropy making significant improvements with this new proposal!
I still think Entropy could do more to socialise their vision and overall strategy. I have found them to be responsive and very willing to answer questions, even from a small delegate like myself, so this is not a critique of them but simply something that can benefit the DAO overall.
Learnings: one more to add
Generally, I have seen a high quality of delivery from Entropy, with one learning opportunity being recognised (the stakeholders’ comms during the GMC) but a second one not: IMO, the facilitation during the SOS was insufficient and I heard similar comments from other stakeholders. The SOS did have significant delegate engagement, but this didn’t seem to have been facilitated by Entropy who was leading the initiative and instead prompted L2Beat to step up and fill some gaps, with the initiative ultimately not (yet?) achieving its goals. Facilitating collective alignment processes between a group that’s part-time, has different weights, and operates across time zones is HARD. However, I believe we could have had a better outcome if Entropy bolstered its facilitation capabilities (or otherwise delegated/contracted some of that work to facilitators more experienced in these types of collective processes).
Arbitrum Alignment: could be improved
I strongly agree with Tamara message here:
My own research in organisation design strongly supports having Arbitrum receive a significant but minority ownership stake in Entropy’s operating company. Without said stake, the DAO risks increasing reliance on consultants who, with every passing year, are in a stronger negotiation position and could be tempted to exploit it. For clarity, this in not a critique of Entropy’s character, but a matter of principled org design and good governance.
Setting up a precedent of the DAO incubating service providers with only time-limited exclusivity is not in the best interest of Arbitrum. While having said ownership provides longterm alignment and sets a wonderful precedent for future AAEs. There’s no reason for this partnership to not continue and for Arbitrum not to benefit from having a DAO operations partner that can become a revenue centre as opposed to a cost centre.
This also removes a duplication of incentives, whereby Arbitrum is giving a very significant success bonus AND also has incubated Entropy from 0 (starting with an AF grant). Ownership in Entropy might lead or not to dividends or even an exit event in the future, but having Arbitrum with a minority stake ensures everyone wins.
Haier is an example of a company that systematically incubates teams and retains partial ownership in them, which has been key to sustaining both entrepreneurial incentives and alignment, allowing Haier to grow into a Fortune 500.
Scope Concerns: early-stage builder support
In the proposal, Entropy mentions
I understand from the above that Entropy plans to lead the DAO efforts in addressing talent attraction and early-stage support for projects in Arbitrum ecosystem - an area we typically call Builder Support. Is this interpretation correct?
If yes, I do wonder if this is an area where Entropy is best positioned to lead compared to the other areas proposed, both from a capability and organizationally. I don’t have a definitive opinion, but I do have some concerns, as the key expertise related are roughly:
- building (entrepreneurial experience)
- talent attraction (growth, marketing, high-level HR)
- investment (angel, pre-seed, CVC)
- incubation (venture studios, accelerators, incubators)
- R&D (applied research, commercialising technologies)
- DevRel (tech support, community building, education programs, hackathons, etc.)
Those are not expertise that the Entropy team has (to the best of my knowledge, please correct me if I’m wrong). I do not question their drive to grow, and they can expand the team, but building these multiple capabilities from 0 or even assessing who has them to recruit is tricky.
Please correct my understanding of what this scope means if I’m misguided!
Overall I thank Entropy for this proposal and they count with my support, I hope after addressing the concerns 