Entropy Advisors Monthly Update: January 2025

Recap of January

  • The Stylus Sprint Application application period closed on January 13th, followed by a review phase from January 14th to January 26th. Selected teams were announced on January 27th, marking the official start of the Stylus Sprint. Overall, the program saw extraordinary demand, with high-quality submissions far exceeding the availability of the 5M budget, totaling ~32M ARB at the time of applications closing and before final negotiations. With its initial budget, the committee was able to fund 17 applicants; however, there are numerous deserving teams and ideas that the committee was unable to fund due to its constrained budget. Entropy has posted a proposal to request an increase to the committee’s budget so that it can fund an additional 9 recommended applications.
  • An OpCo Community Call was held on January 13th to gather final feedback from the wider community. Following additional discussions with stakeholders and delegates, final edits to the proposal were made on January 22nd, including an increase in the ask from 22M ARB to 30M ARB due to declining market conditions. Updates also included a revised timeline and initial deliverables for the entity’s first twelve months once fully operationalized. The proposal has now been moved to an onchain vote.
  • The ADPC conducted a survey among the DAO’s delegates and contributors to guide the allocation of the remaining funds in the DAO’s 2025 Event Budget. Key findings from the 16 respondents highlighted educational workshops on Arbitrum technologies (Stylus and Orbit) as the top funding priority, followed by delegate gatherings, Arbitrum Days, and hackathons. Small event sponsorships ranked lowest. The survey also identified key outcomes such as proliferating Arbitrum technology, onboarding new builders, and strengthening Arbitrum’s market position. Additionally, Ethereum-native events, Web2-focused events, and Emerging Market events were rated as the most important for DAO participation. These insights aim to help event proposers align their funding requests with DAO priorities.
  • The GMC RFP process opened on January 23rd, and while they will be open on a rolling basis or until all funds have been deployed, the GMC aims to make an allocation recommendation before the end of February, and thus set a soft deadline for submissions for February 3, 2025. The committee has already received dozens of high-quality applications from top-tier protocols. The review process is now underway, and the DAO should expect more updates soon.
  • The Watchdog Program - On January 15th, key refinements were made, including defining fund misuse, clarifying severity scales with examples, adjusting the payout structure, and confirming that reports will be public on a case-by-case basis. The proposal passed on Snapshot with ~148.2M out of 157.4M votes being FOR.
  • Arbitrum Strategic Objective Setting (SOS) passed with ~137.8M out of ~138.4M votes being FOR, meaning that the DAO has ratified the framework to be used to converge on a set of strategic objectives and related key results. The initiation of the objectives-setting process will be pushed back slightly to account for ETHDenver, allowing delegates to incorporate takeaways from the event.
  • Matt presented the DeFi Renaissance Incentive Program (DRIP) on the 12th call of Liquidity Incentives Call. The DRIP is being finalized and although effectively ready for posting, given the sheer number of incentives proposals in the pipeline, the Entropy team is debating the best path forward.
  • Together with @maxlomu, Entropy began formulating a Proof of Concept Proposal for Embracing Chain Abstraction. However, following conversations with OCL, we decided to hand over the initiative to them in order to speed up the timeline, streamline the process, and avoid any overlap. We are following the initiative’s progress closely to monitor its traction once launched, and discussions are ongoing with OCL to determine how the DAO can best amplify the program’s success/create a follow-up structure to the initiative.
  • The team expanded with two new hires in January, with Yotam Harel (Twitter Profile) joining as a Governance Analyst, and Ali Taslimi (Twitter Profile) as a Data Analyst.
  • The Data Team mainly focused on the following aspects in January:
    • ANIME Airdrop Analysis: offering transparency and insights into airdrop claims and their impact on Arbitrum One. As Animechain is set to launch using Orbit technology, ANIME will play a key role in the Arbitrum ecosystem. This dashboard tracks the airdrop and helps build awareness and momentum for Orbit technology and the broader Arbitrum network.
    • Arbitrum DAO Treasury (WIP): One of the key challenges in tracking DAO finances is the fragmented nature of the accounts. Once funds are allocated to dedicated wallets, ongoing spending becomes difficult to monitor. This dashboard aims to address that challenge by aggregating and presenting a clear overview and analysis of the DAO’s treasury. It is part of a broader initiative to analyze Arbitrum DAO’s financials, including insights into income, expenses, and treasury sustainability.
    • Arbitrum DAO Governance Proposals (WIP): Beyond basic metrics like support and opposition votes, this dashboard provides a deeper analysis of voting patterns, participation trends, and proposal categorization, offering a clearer view of how governance decisions and dynamics have evolved over time.

Current Initiatives

  • Stylus Sprint: The committee wrapped up the grading period on January 26th and announced the accepted applicants. Pending an active discussion and subsequent Snapshot vote, another 9 teams may be funded as part of the Stylus Sprint. Now that the grading period has concluded, the committee has turned its attention to monitoring and supporting the applicants as they begin their work. Entropy is also in active discussion with OCL’s marketing team to help promote the Sprint on social media.
  • OpCo: Following a community call and further revisions, the OpCo proposal has moved forward to an onchain vote. Voting began on January 27th and will conclude on ~February 13th, 2025. If passed, Entropy will be ready to initiate and handle the election process for OpCo’s 3 oversight and transparency committee members.
  • Arbitrum DAO 2025 Events Budget: After conversations and planning, the Arbitrum Foundation has decided to utilize the maximum allocation of $400k entirely for its activities at ETHDenver. The funds are being utilized for several initiatives, including a larger booth at the main conference, an Arbitrum community IRL gathering, and a potential DAO delegate meetup. This means that Entropy will not coordinate with the Foundation to have a presence at Bitcoin 2025. Such a decision aligns with the findings of the ADPC’s survey. The DAO currently has $1,044,200 remaining in the Events Budget.
  • Delegate Code of Conduct + Formalizing the DAO’s Operations: No new updates on the Code of Conduct + Formalizing the DAO’s Operations. It will continue to be in effect until May 30th, 2025.
  • Treasury Management v1.2: Both the TMC and GMC are on track to make a recommendation to the DAO, which will be voted on via Snapshot, in the month of February. As members of the GMC, we have hopped on numerous calls with potential applicants to answer questions, and are very happy with the number of high-quality applications that have been submitted.
  • Watchdog Program: Following the program passing on Snapshot, Entropy will turn its attention to creating the necessary materials for the RFP process, begin reaching out to prospective platforms / interested parties, and hopefully come to a decision by the end of February. After a selection for the platform has been made, it will be shared with the DAO and then the program will move forward to an onchain vote.
  • Strategic Objective Setting (SOS): With the proposal passing on January 31st, the second phase of the SOS process will be initiated in February. The second phase will begin with a 14-day notice period, during which announcements will be made across relevant channels, providing details on the objectives matrix submission process, timeline, and guidelines, as well as enabling contributors to submit one-off objectives and related key results for the consideration of those who are looking to create a full-fledged submission. A subsequent 30-day submission period will allow contributors and delegates to propose strategic objectives matrices, after which proposers will receive feedback during a 21-day period, finally having the option to incorporate this feedback during a 14-day revision period. As the final step, one objective matrix will be chosen through a Snapshot vote.
  • DeFi Renaissance Incentive Program (DRIP): Given a high number of upcoming incentives proposals, Entropy has been debating the best path for the DRIP. We will complete the proposal to the best of our ability no matter what. We would like to ensure that our proposal is not seen as competitive if the DAO prefers an alternative proposal. That said we are still targeting posting in Feb.
  • Data: In addition to finalizing the treasury and governance proposals dashboards, the data team is committed to launching more dashboards focused on both the Arbitrum DAO and its broader ecosystem. Our goal is to enhance transparency, provide valuable insights, and empower stakeholders to make more informed governance decisions. Through on-chain dashboards, we also aim to educate the community with advanced analytics, offering deeper visibility into key trends and developments.

Goals for February

Similar to January, Entropy’s top priority is to continue to deliver on the above-mentioned initiatives. A top focus will be coordinating and managing the second phase of the SOS process. Additionally, we plan to produce recommendations both for the GMC and the Watchdog program. If OpCo is approved on Tally, Entropy will be ready to initiate and handle the election process for OpCo’s 3 oversight and transparency committee members.

Entropy’s work on the Stylus Sprint program will continue through February. For that program, our attention will turn towards assisting the AF and OCL marketing teams in amplifying the program and its early successes. We will continue to monitor and manage the Delegate Code of Conduct and 2025 Events Budget initiatives and make updates to the DAO if necessary. We also plan to ship two high-value Dune dashboards, which were explained in depth above, in February that we hope will be valuable tools for Arbitrum Delegates and reflect positively on Arbitrum’s brand. Finally, with the two additional hires made in January, the team now has more total bandwidth to contribute to future proposal ideas and strategic initiatives for the DAO.

Requests from the DAO

Please continue to reach out and pass along requests to Entropy Advisors. Our team is always open to input from DAO members on which problems we should dedicate our efforts towards.

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