3 Polls Closing January 23, 2024
Proposal to Establish Arbitrum Research & Development Collective
Summary: This is essentially a resubmission of a failed initiative from November. The key difference is that the service providers are now elected positions rather than being set by the proposal itself.
Recommendation: Vote No. We actually support this proposal conceptually, and our previous opposition was based on the lack of elections for each seat on this body. We vote No now simply because the budgets were outlined in ARB, which has doubled in market price in the interim. This highlights the need for budgets to be denominated in dollars, even if they are paid in ARB. This critique is not unique to this proposal, and is easily amended to provide stable-value budgets that protect against unintended windfalls or impoverishment for those engaged by governance.
Pilot Program Council Elections
Summary: This is the poll to elect the 5 members of the council to run the Long Term Incentive Pilot Program, which is budgeted to distribute approximately $90m of ARB (45m ARB tokens) over a 12-week period.
Recommendation: Vote GFX Labs.
GFX Labs has experience working on and building high-quality grants programs. We have held a seat on the Optimism Grants Council since its inception, which has reviewed 455 grants and awarded grants of more than 11,000,000 OP during our tenure. GFX also has experience working on some smaller and less well-known grants programs.
There are few candidates with experience running large grants programs, and Arbitrum’s “pilot program” is slated to be one of the largest and shortest grants programs in crypto – or perhaps anywhere. It’s vital that experienced candidates staff the council if anything approaching 45m ARB is going to be granted intelligently over 12 weeks.
NB: Included in the Snapshot is a stipulation for applicants not to vote for themselves. This was not in the original proposal. We will make sure our votes are taken off of ourselves prior to close of the poll, though GFX has a relatively small number of votes (331k) and is incapable of affecting the outcome of this poll.
Pilot Program Advisor Elections
Summary: This is the poll to elect the 3 advisors to the Long Term Incentive Pilot Program, which is budgeted to distribute approximately $90m of ARB (45m ARB tokens) over a 12-week period.
Recommendation: Vote Abstain. To our reading, advisors are supposed to assist and to some extent advocate for (via recommendations) grant applicants. Because GFX Labs is also running for a seat on the council for this program, we are abstaining to respect the separation of that role and that of the council members.
2 Polls Closing January 24, 2024
Constitutional AIP - Security Council Improvement Proposal
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support changes to the Security Council structure in order to maintain a Stage 1 rating by the watchdog group, L2Beat.
Recommendation: Vote Increase the L2 timelock delay from 3 days to 8 days. Consultation with L2Beat representatives confirmed that any action beyond no action would preserve the Stage 1 rating. Of the two options – or their combined implementation – increasing the timelock delay seems more decentralizing and making trustless than simply raising the msig threshold, but also less disruptive than doing both.
Experimental Delegates Incentive System
Summary: This proposal creates a 6-month trial incentive program for Arbitrum delegates with >50k ARB voting power. The budget will provide incentives for up to 50 delegates of the 194 eligible, and requires delegates to opt in during a 2-week period following the initiation of this program.
Recommendation: Vote Yes. We have some reservations about some of the scoring categories - in particular the large (30%) bonus category. That being said, there is no incentive system in place now, and this is only a trial with a non-renewing budget.