Just voted FOR on Tally, for the same reasons I outlined during the temp-check: link to forum post.
We vote FOR the proposal on Tally.
We maintain our position made at the Snapshot phase and continue to support the idea of establishing the 2025 events budget for the smooth budgeting process with a clear framework.
I voted ‘FOR’ on the proposal after reading all the documents. I maintain my view, as expressed in the temp check, that as a leading chain, we need to be present at all major events with a significant presence.
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to vote “FOR” on this proposal at the Tally Vote.
Rationale
We voted in favor (without reservations) during the temp check, and since the proposal has not undergone significant changes, we see no reason to alter our voting position.
Here is our prior rationale:
As @web3citizenxyz contributor, voted “FOR” onchain and this is our rationale.
First thing first, we don’t want to be the grumpy agent here, killing the good vibes events! We all want Arbitrum to have a strong presence at major events and more efficient planning. But this proposal is solving a problem by… creating more problems.
The Elephant in the Room: Redundancy
The Arbitrum Foundation already has an events team. They’ve got serious money for this - $5.26M for Events/Marketing/Comms in H1 2024. That’s not pocket change. Instead of working with what we’ve got, this proposal wants to:
- Add more cooks to the kitchen
- Create yet another approval process through Snapshot votes
- Set up new financial hoops with MSS-controlled addresses
- Toss another $1.5M at the problem
And for what? To do basically the same thing the Foundation is already doing.
“But What About Better Planning?”
Sure, the current system has issues with timing and upfront payments. But adding more layers of bureaucracy isn’t the answer. It’s like seeing a traffic jam and deciding the solution is to build another road right on top of the existing one.
We already have:
- Foundation handling big events
- Entity that can manage smaller events
- Existing governance processes
A Better Way Forward
Instead of this complexity sandwich, why don’t we:
- Work on making the Foundation’s event planning more efficient. We’ve full time employee who should focus on create efficient events planning, right?
- Fix the upfront payment bottlenecks in the current system
- Create better ways for the community to give input to the Foundation team
Bottom Line
We’re essentially creating a parallel structure that will need to “coordinate” with the Foundation anyway. This isn’t decentralization - it’s just bureaucracy with extra steps.
We’re voting NO. Not because we don’t support better event planning, but because we want solutions that streamline our operations, not complicate them further.
Let’s fix what we have instead of building a parallel universe.
2 Likes
Where does this information come from?
Are you saying that the previous events we voted for were extra funding and there was money in the Foundation’s budget for them?
Gm, gm 
The results are in for the Establishing a DAO Events Budget for 2025 on-chain proposal.
See how the community voted and more Arbitrum stats:
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting FOR the proposal.
We supported the proposal during temp-check after first discussing it with Entropy and other stakeholders and having some of our feedback incorporated into the proposal. Nothing has changed since to make us change our decision - if anything, we’ve become more convinced after attending Devcon and talking with people there.
Cooperation between the DAO and the Foundation and involvement in each other’s endeavours seem to be increasing —a good example of that being Arbiverse in Bangkok, where the DAO had its own booth and led some workshops — and we want to see more of that going forward.
Going into 2025, we hope the DAO’s events budget will be allocated to more events that uphold this spirit of collaboration between the Foundation, Offchain Labs, and the DAO to create truly ecosystem-wide events.
it comes from page 34 of the Arbitrum Foundation transparency report released 2 months ago and available here
to be more specific, the Arbitrum Foundation spent $5.26M USD from January 1st 2024, to June 30th 2024 (6 months) in “Events,Marketing and Communications”.
4 Likes
Thank you!
I looked carefully, the report is very vague about what the funds were spent on.
It would be good if @Entropy made a request to the @arbitrum.foundation to understand how not to double the costs for 2025.
1 Like
As of this writing, the proposal has officially passed tally and funds have been sent to an Arbitrum Foundation-controlled wallet. The Foundation should be converting the ARB to stables and sending the proceeds to an MSS-controlled address, with the remaining ARB returned to the DAO treasury over the coming week(s).
Entropy had a call with the Foundation’s new events lead and have been in regular talks with the person who holds that same position at OCL to ensure the DAO’s alignment with these entities. They are moving along with their ETH Denver planning and understand that they have the DAO’s support if needed. Entropy, the ADPC, and Disruption Joe will be meeting over the coming weeks to ensure we are all on the same page. We are very pleased to have ”ready to spend” funds to get better deals from SPs, move more nimbly as a DAO, and to provide support to OCL/the Arbitrum Foundation. A dedicated communications thread for Events will be set up in short order.
Thank you to everyone for your support on this proposal!
1 Like
DAOplomats voted FOR this proposal on Tally.
We maintained our support from the temp check to the onchain vote.
I voted in favor on Tally for the reason I mentioned during temp-check:
“Setting aside funds for events helps Arbitrum stay active in the most important crypto spaces, which keeps the community growing and engaged. I also believe that involving the AF and OCL helps unify the community and prevents conflicting events. It really brings people together and keeps everyone on the same page, which makes the Arbitrum community much stronger.”
Hi everyone, here’s our post event writeup on ETHDenver 2025, where we used $400,000 earmarked from the DAO-approved events budget.
ETHDenver 2025 Overview
The Arbitrum Foundation participated with Offchain Labs and Arbitrum DAO in ETH Denver 2025, where as a team, we had over 25 speaking opportunities, from the main stage at the conference to side events. The total footprint encompassed sponsoring 3 side events, hosting 3 Arbitrum owned events and having a booth on the ETH Denver show floor for networking and partnership opportunities.
Results
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Comparatively to last year’s smaller ETH Denver presence, we significantly scaled our impact - owning four distinct activations, including a stronger conference presence. Leveraging both Arbitrum Foundation and DAO funds, we expanded our footprint and delivered more immersive, high-touch experiences.
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Per event, we attracted over 1,000 registrants, with attendance rates averaging 60% - a minimum of 600 participants. In closing, our event footprint was a clear success, enabling the entire Arbitrum Ecosystem to show up creatively, elevate production quality, and continue our strong brand presence. By way of these curated experiences and high-quality activations, we positioned ourselves in a more compelling and memorable way compared to previous years.
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Arbitrum ecosystem’s overall activations resulted in 16.5k engagements, where we enjoyed in-person engagement of 2.3K + attendees across 5 activations, making the event the second most highly engaged event after Devcon 2024, which had 4.2K with 11 activations. Also, the event reached 21.5M unique people, which puts the event at a similar level as ArbiVerse Singapore 2024 in terms of total offline + online brand reach.
Arbitrum Owned Events
February 26: Cross-chain Collider Party
- Initially planned as a night activation to spotlight Arbitrum’s brand refresh, we ultimately pivoted to hosting the Crosschain Collider event with 15 partners aligned with our interoperability narrative. The goal of this event was to bring the Arbitrum community together in an event format that we haven’t done historically, as well as strategically spotlight our interoperability positioning.
February 28: ArbiBurger
- For the third consecutive year at ETH Denver, Arbitrum took over Shake Shack in RiNo and transformed the space with custom interior graphics and offered complimentary burgers, fries, and shakes to attendees. The goal of this event was to continue our annual memorable brand experience and provide a relaxed environment for networking and connection during the hectic conference week.
What we did:
Cross-chain Collider Party:
- On the evening of February 26th, the Arbitrum Foundation hosted the Crosschain Collider party alongside 15 partners to push Arbitrum’s interoperability narrative.
- We worked with the Invisible North agency to bring this event to life.
- We had 638 people in attendance over the course of 4 hours.
- Within the space, we had several activations:
- On-site custom swag printing
- Arbitrum temporary tattoo station
- Photo strip area with panels of our partners’ logos
- After-hours grab-n-go station of snacks imported from Asia
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Programming:
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From 6PM to 7PM, we hosted a VIP invite-only cocktail hour for c-suites, execs, and department leads. This was beneficial as many of them stayed for the duration of the event, allowing attendees to have face time with high-signal folks.
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From 7PM to 10PM, we opened the doors to general admission folks, and the space was quickly filled.
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Verbal feedback was that the event was great - received the comment that “Arbitrum has the best food at their events”.
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ETH Denver Conference:
- From February 27th to March 2nd, we had an Arbitrum booth on the ETH Denver showfloor.
- There were 25k people in attendance, with half of that amount stopping by our booth to snag swag and meet folks from our team:
- Engineers, Product team, Partnerships team, Recruiters, Marketing team, and DAO members.
- As for swag, we gave out:
- Beanies, fanny packs, hand sanitizers, lip balms, deodorant, and stickers.
- We had four tables at the booth:
- MEET (meet our BD and Marketing team)
- AMA (meet our Engineers and Product teams)
- DAO (met governance team from the AF, as well as delegates and contributors from the DAO)
- Swag (collect swag from our BA’s)
- We also had around ~5 talks/workshops from the team at the main conference.
ArbiBurger:
- From 12PM to 6PM on February 28th, Entropy Advisors, the Arbitrum Foundation and Corn hosted the annual ArbiBurger event.
- Corn sponsored the shakes and fries in the event.
- We worked with the Invisible North agency again on this event and had over 600 people stopping by throughout the event.
- At the entrance, we had on-site badge printing to help us identify the attendees.
- We also had a custom POAP mint station for attendees.
- Blackbird provided us with a puck that attendees could tap to be directed to their website.
- We brought back the Arbitrum arcade machines and featured games from Pirate Nation, Captain Laserhawk: The G.A.M.E., The Lost Glitches, and Tollan Worlds.
- Our swag this year was:
- Heavyweight long sleeve shirts that had the Arbitrum logo embroidered on the front and “BULLISH” heat pressed to the sleeve.
- We also gave out “bullish” caps that people really enjoyed.
Social Feedback:
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Budget Breakdown
| Event | Cost | Purpose of Contribution |
|---|---|---|
| CrossChain Collider | $131,416.50 | This contribution, accompanied with Arbitrum Foundation’s contribution, allowed us to secure a high-visibility venue in downtown Denver, hire top-tier event talent, and customize the event environment to elevate attendee experience. We were also able to offer different activations designed to drive engagement, including: on-site swag printing, a temporary tattoo station, a curated bodega featuring Asian imported snacks, and a photo booth station. |
| EthDenver Booth | $131,416.50 | This contribution, accompanied with Arbitrum Foundation’s contribution, enabled us to upgrade from last year’s booth size - a 10x10 to a 20x20. The larger booth footprint and custom booth amplified our brand presence and overall visibility on the show floor. With these additional funds, we also beefed up our merch quantities and offered a range of items including: fanny packs, beanies, hand sanitizers, lip balms, deodorant, gum, and stickers. |
| ArbiBurger | $82,167.00 | This investment enabled Arbitrum to return to Shake Shack for the third year in a row. The funds were used to meet Shake Shack’s food and beverage minimum, produce high-quality custom interior graphics, secure vendors for our gaming activation, procure premium Arbitrum merchandise, implement on-site badge printing, and hire brand ambassadors to support event execution. |
| TOTAL | $400,000 | Overall, the event circuit was a success. Per event, we attracted over 1,000 registrants, with attendance rates averaging 60% - a minimum of 600 participants at each event.The DAO’s generous support allowed us to think bigger, execute at a higher level, and deliver a more memorable experience for ETHDenver attendees compared to previous years. |
5 Likes
This is great, thanks for the breakdown. Can you clarify the costs per event are the absolute cost to run each event or just the component amount paid for from DAO funds?
It would be great to see the absolute costs per event, would you be willing to add a column for this? This information helps other service providers that run events like myself, and delegates have a normative understanding of what real costs it takes to produce high-end events in top-tier cities. As a DAO we can then better assess and judge future events related proposals.
4 Likes
Thanks @Arbitrum for the clear recap and detailed cost breakdown—super useful! Beyond the high participation numbers, is there any insight on the overall impact or ROI these events have generated for Arbitrum?
1 Like
yeah, I was also wondering this. it seems that the total cost of these events was more than the $400k the DAO made available through the Events Budget, and it would be useful to know, at least % wise, how much that $400K covered for the 3 events. @Arbitrum, could you make available a rough percentage of how much of the cost, in %, that $400K USD covered?
1 Like
Congratulations on the success of this proposal! Chones would love to support Arbitrum and any affiliates like Entropy and Blockful, to tap into the FWB ecosystem, by requesting partnership at a multi day side event during FWB Fest, July 31-Aug 3, 2025. Please consider reviewing the partner package and how Arbitrum ecosystem can benefit from this activation, and ofc, let me know if you have any questions. Thank you <3
note: Chones is also working on coordinating a weekend event for crypto and AI founders at LA Tech Week, Oct 16-19, 2025, and would love to collaborate on ways to integrate Arbitrum ecosystem development into that event.
hey @Arbitrum in the @Entropy office hours call last week, Entropy folks said that the Foundation would be soon sharing a summarized update of what was talked about and/or decided on the other ETH Denver Arbitrum event, the Delegate Day organized by Entropy, where allegedly all the big Arbitrum delegates, by voting power, members of the Arbitrum Foundation and @offchainlabs participated for most of the day, on the 26th of February.
More than a month has gone by, could we have a report on what transpired during that private event as it concerns to the Arbitrum DAO?
Thank you!
6 Likes