GFX Labs Delegate Communication Thread

Governance Delegate Statements
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1 Security Council Election Closing May 3, 2025

Summary: ARB holders may vote for their desired candidates for Security Council. There are six open seats.

Candidates:
Bartek.eth
Michael Lewellen
Hari
OpenZeppelin
Yoav.eth
Certora
Rxpwnz
Jake Nyquist
Fred
Vladislov Yaroshuk
Jack Sanford
MartinGbz
Dennis Stucken

NB: Voting power begins to decay for voters voting after April 19, 2025

Recommendation: Bartek.eth (50%), Michael Lewellen (50%). Historically, GFX Labs has spread its vote amongst as many candidates as open seats. However, Security Council elections tend to end up with heavy representation of auditors, so we have little doubt that several of those candidates will end up selected. In an effort to make our vote more impactful, we are concentrating our votes on the two candidates we feel are absolutely necessary amongst this strong slate of candidates. @Bartek and @michael-oz are the candidates with the combination of both technical and governance knowledge, while also being amongst the most accessible by delegates with questions, concerns, or for discussion.

2 Likes
84

2 Polls Closing May 8, 2025

Approval of STEP 2 Committee’s Preferred Allocations
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they wish to approve the recommended allocations for the second round of the STEP. Proceeds from the sale of 35,000,000 ARB (~$10.65m today) would be deployed in the following proportion:

WisdomTree WTGXX: 30%

Spiko USTBL: 35%
Franklin Templeton FOBXX (BENJI): 35%

Recommendation: Vote For. GFX Labs served on the STEP 2 committee that made these recommendations. More information can be found here.

[Non-consitutional]: Top-up for Hackathon Continuation Program
Summary: Market conditions led to an underfunding of the Hackathon Continuation Program when ARB was liquidated to fund the USD-denominated authorized budget.

This proposal authorizes the transfer of a $89,980 of unused funds from the Season 1 Domain Allocator grants program to the Hackathon Continuation Program to cover this shortfall.

No new funds would be transferred from the governance treasury.

Voting options:
A. only top-up the HCP: top-up the HCP and leftover funds to the DAO
B. yes to both: top-up the HCP and leftover funds to the TMC
C. against: all funds to the DAO (don’t top-up the HCP nor TMC)
D. abstain

Recommendation: Vote Yes to Both. This is a reasonable way to use unutilized funds to cover the shortfall on an already-authorized budget item. As we pointed out on the forum here, governance should work to get a streamlined workflow process to cover these kinds of requests in the future, preferably in a way that combines TMC and STEP assets as available sources of funding.

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1 Poll Closing May 22, 2025

​​The Watchdog: Arbitrum DAO’s Grant Misuse Bounty Program
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders to authorize a bounty program on misuse of funds by those receiving funds from Arbitrum governance. This includes an initial budget of 400,000 ARB, which will pay operating expenses and provide funds for any initial bounties to be claimed without waiting on governance voting to disburse the funds.

This bounty program will be administered on GlobaLeaks.

Recommendation: Vote For. We are skeptical there are levels of documented misuse to make it necessary to transfer 400k ARB in the initial transfer to the Arbitrum Foundation-controlled address. But we also think that having a bounty program in place is a net benefit, and will not vote Against simply on the amount of funds to seed the program, since if they are never used, they will never enter the circulating supply.

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1 Poll Closing May 22, 2025

DeFi Renaissance Incentive Program (DRIP)
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support providing 80,000,000 ARB to a 12-month program focused on providing incentives on specific assets, but not specific protocols.

The committee overseeing DRIP, and with full discretion over its allocations, would consist of Entropy Advisors, Offchain Labs, and the Arbitrum Foundation.

Voters are strongly encouraged to view the full proposal discussion here.

Recommendation: Vote Against. We think the concept of an asset-based incentives program has merit, and is worth trying. However, we cannot vote for the plan under the current version. We would vote in favor if the following pain points are addressed.

Firstly, the oversight committee is not appropriately balanced to account for conflicts of interest. Offchain Labs is a service provider to the Arbitrum Foundation, and only two votes are required to disburse any funds or set policies. Given that the only oversight built into the DRIP program – short of total clawback and defunding – is the committee members checking each other, we think this committee makeup is not setting the program up for success.

Secondly, accountability for past programs is cited as a problem, and Entropy has agreed to take full responsibility as the owner of this program. This is the correct direction, but stops short on important details. It is not clear what failure looks like for this program (each season will have its own targets, which would also be set by the committee). And ultimately, with the current makeup of the committee could in theory never act according to Entropy’s views, and they would still be left accountable simply because they are the only member of the committee that the DAO realistically can hold accountable.

Our suggestions to upgrade this proposal:

  1. Rather than have a committee that makes all decisions, split responsibilities amongst the three members. While they may collectively work to establish the strategic goals of a season, setting the specific targets and deliverables, monitoring or selecting a service provider to monitor, and execution should not all fall to the same parties. This prevents the common problem of “grading your own homework” and prevents falling prey to the temptation of setting low targets that are easily met, grading leniently in order to meet those targets, and having no realistic way to objectively fail that is obvious and not subject to debate.

  2. We recommend replacing either Offchain Labs or the Arbitrum Foundation with another member, since they have a conflict of interest in serving together and would represent a veto-proof bloc of votes that need not take into account the DAO’s only representative in discussions. The current committee is not demonstrably different than simply giving the Foundation the 80,000,000 to implement the program.

  3. Add a requirement that a comprehensive report be provided to governance on the forum for any ended season before another season can begin (even if some data is still being collected and will be updated later). This builds a historical record, and also may help demonstrate to governance that the committee improves over time.

We think this program would be valuable, and appreciate that it is designed to be less biased towards incumbent protocols, which was a common complaint of the previous incentives programs. With the above upgrades to the governance structure of the program, we would cast a vote in favor of this program.

1 Poll Closing May 29, 2025

​​[CONSTITUTIONAL] AIP: ArbOS Version 40 Callisto
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support upgrading Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova ArbOS to Callisto, which supports a number of features in the recent Ethereum Pectra update. There is also a bug fix for Stylus for several calls which may not always reflect current state.

This upgrade has been audited by Trail of Bits.

Code difference can be seen here. Version 40 replaces Version 32.

NB: ArbOS versions do not use sequential numbering.

Recommendation: Vote For. This adds support for several Pectra features and is a bug fix for Stylus. The code was reviewed and audited.

1 Like
87

2 Polls Closing June 5, 2025

Adjust the Voting Power of the Arbitrum Community Pool & Ratify the Agentic Governance Pivot
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support ratifying the changes to Event Horizon’s Arbitrum governance operations (see here for background on the pivot from onboarding users to utilizing AI agents). Event Horizon is currently delegated 7,000,000 ARB from the treasury.

Voters may choose amongst:

A) EH’s pivot will be ratified, but no change to VP will be introduced.
B) the MSS will return the 6,900,000 ARB (7,000,000 minus the 100,000 delegated to Event Horizon) from the respective Safe to the DAO’s treasury.
C) the MSS will return the entire 7,000,000 ARB to the DAO’s treasury.
Abstain

Recommendation: Vote B. Event Horizon has ultimately not met its original goal of onboarding small users to vote with the current delegation, which is much larger than the vast majority of delegates. Event Horizon currently has a top-20 delegation.

We support their experimentation with AI agents in governance, even if we are unsure if it will work. But as Event Horizon shifts into a more experimental mode, the delegation from the public treasury should be sized accordingly. If the Event Horizon experiment shows obvious benefits, delegation can always be added back, but for now, it’s simply too much to leave 7m ARB voting power on a speculative use case.

Wind Down the MSS + Transfer Payment Responsibilities to the Arbitrum Foundation
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support transferring all DAO-owned multisigs to the Arbitrum Foundation from the Multisig Support Services. The MSS budget of 600,000 ARB is likely to be exhausted before the end of the current budget cycle due to poor price performance of ARB.

Recommendation: Vote Against: Continue the MSS. While we acknowledge this would lead to some cost savings, we are worried about the centralization of more and more operations into the Arbitrum Foundation. It is vital that governance retain control over all funds that it realistically can, rather than hand the keys over to the Foundation or any other externally controlled entity. If anything, responsibility should be shifting out of the Foundation and into the DAO and DAO-controlled entities.

It should be noted that Arbitrum’s major competitor, Optimism, which has long been noted as more centralized than Arbitrum, is moving in the other direction by establishing a budget board and incrementally increasing governance control over funding. It’s disappointing to see Arbitrum, traditionally one of the bastions of decentralized, pluralistic governance, steadily moving more and more control under the Arbitrum Foundation.

1 Like
88

1 Poll Closing June 12, 2025

Reallocate Redeemed USDM Funds to STEP 2 Budget
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support reallocating approximately $3.5m that had been invested in USDM into the new allocations recently approved for the STEP 2 budget, which included Wisdomtree, Spiko, and Franklin Templeton tbill fund products.

USDM, which is the yield bearing stablecoin of Mountain Protocol, is winding down following Mountain’s acquisition by Anchorage.

Recommendation: Vote For. GFX Labs served on the STEP 2 committee and voted in favor of this reallocation at the committee level.

1 Poll Closing June 19, 2025

DeFi Renaissance Incentive Program (DRIP)
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support providing 80,000,000 ARB to a 12-month program focused on providing incentives on specific assets, but not specific protocols.

The committee overseeing DRIP, and with full discretion over its allocations, would consist of Entropy Advisors, Offchain Labs, and the Arbitrum Foundation.

Recommendation: Vote Against. We think the concept of an asset-based incentives program has merit, and is worth trying. However, we cannot vote for the plan under the current version. We would vote in favor if the following pain points are addressed.

Firstly, the oversight committee is not appropriately balanced to account for conflicts of interest. Offchain Labs is a service provider to the Arbitrum Foundation, and only two votes are required to disburse any funds or set policies. Given that the only oversight built into the DRIP program – short of total clawback and defunding – is the committee members checking each other, we think this committee makeup is not setting the program up for success.

Secondly, accountability for past programs is cited as a problem, and Entropy has agreed to take full responsibility as the owner of this program. This is the correct direction, but stops short on important details. It is not clear what failure looks like for this program (each season will have its own targets, which would also be set by the committee). And ultimately, with the current makeup of the committee could in theory never act according to Entropy’s views, and they would still be left accountable simply because they are the only member of the committee that the DAO realistically can hold accountable.

Our suggestions to upgrade this proposal:

  1. Rather than have a committee that makes all decisions, split responsibilities amongst the three members. While they may collectively work to establish the strategic goals of a season, setting the specific targets and deliverables, monitoring or selecting a service provider to monitor, and execution should not all fall to the same parties. This prevents the common problem of “grading your own homework” and prevents falling prey to the temptation of setting low targets that are easily met, grading leniently in order to meet those targets, and having no realistic way to objectively fail that is obvious and not subject to debate.
  2. We recommend replacing either Offchain Labs or the Arbitrum Foundation with another member, since they have a conflict of interest in serving together and would represent a veto-proof bloc of votes that need not take into account the DAO’s only representative in discussions. The current committee is not demonstrably different than simply giving the Foundation the 80,000,000 to implement the program.
  3. Add a requirement that a comprehensive report be provided to governance on the forum for any ended season before another season can begin (even if some data is still being collected and will be updated later). This builds a historical record, and also may help demonstrate to governance that the committee improves over time.

We think this program would be valuable, and appreciate that it is designed to be less biased towards incumbent protocols, which was a common complaint of the previous incentives programs. With the above upgrades to the governance structure of the program, we would cast a vote in favor of this program.

1 Like
89

2 Polls Closing June 26, 2025

Arbitrum Treasury Management Council - Consolidating Efforts
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support moving TMC, GMC, and STEP asset allocation management under a unified body consisting of the OpCo, Entropy Advisors, and the OAT (directors of OpCo), with observatory seats for the Arbitrum Foundation and Offchain Labs.

Recommendation: Vote For. While it seems a bit redundant to have OAT and OpCo seemingly performing two separate roles, since one is effectively the board of directors of the other, it makes a lot of sense to consolidate these three programs. It should provide cost savings from ongoing advisory and reporting roles at each program. More importantly, in our view, is that a central group will have a complete view of the DAO-owned, non-ARB assets. The mix of stablecoin, tokenized fund, and ETH assets also mean that someone needs to be positioned to make a decision about which to divest when an expense requires drawing upon these funds, and that is made much easier with this new consolidated council.

Were we to design the program from scratch, we probably would not have included OAT or OpCo at all (since the assets sit legally with the Arbitrum Foundation), and it’s unclear what expertise they bring. But it’s also the case that they can hire consultants where necessary, so we are still in favor of coordinating all three buckets of assets under a single overseer.

[Constitutional] AIP: Remove Cost Cap on Arbitrum Nova
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support ending artificially low transaction costs on Arbitrum Nova, in order to reduce the cost of subsidies from the Arbitrum Foundation.

Recommendation: Vote For. Nova’s value proposition as a low-cost chain is no longer as relevant given current L2 costs. We would also be in favor of establishing a plan now for unwinding Nova if removing the cost cap does not diminish the ongoing expense to support it. Nova has around $25m of total value secured, of which less than $1m is in DeFi.

2 Polls Closing July 3, 2025

[CONSTITUTIONAL] Register the Sky Custom Gateway contracts in the Router
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders to support USDS and sUSDS through a permissioned registration on the gateway router.

Recommendation: Vote For. As we stated when approving something similar for RARI, this process probably could be streamlined to avoid needing a constitutional vote, since this presents little risk and there may be demand from other token issuers in the future.

[Constitutional] AIP: Constitutional Quorum Threshold Reduction
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support changing the constitutional quorum threshold to 4.5% of votable supply (a reduction from 5.0% currently).

Recommendation: Vote For. Quorum has become increasingly harder to reach for constitutional votes. GFX is familiar with similar problems at other DAOs, and a modest (10%) reduction in quorum requirement is appropriate. It should be noted that the percentage of votable supply participating in governance is down to around 5% from 8% a year ago.

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2 Polls Closing July 3, 2025

Audit Committee Technical Expert Elections
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders to fill the Technical Expert seat on the committee overseeing the new Arbitrum Audit Program, which provides subsidized audits to builders on Arbitrum.. After reviewing 68 applicants, the Arbitrum Foundation has selected two candidates it feels are qualified to fill this role

Candidates:
Andrei Andonov
Gustavo Grieco

NB: This is a shielded vote.

Recommendation: Vote Andrei Andonov (50%), Gustavo Grieco (50%). Both candidates have excellent credentials, and would be qualified to serve in this part-time role.

Extend AGV Council Term and Align Future Elections with Operational Cadence
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders to extend the terms of the current Council overseeing the Arbitrum Gaming Venture (previously known as the Gaming Catalyst Program) by approximately 3 months. The new term would conclude on December 31, 2025.

Recommendation: Vote Abstain. GFX Labs is a well-known skeptic of this overall program. We feel incumbents asking to avoid reelection while simultaneously asking for increased compensation strengthens the case for winding down the AGV. However, GFX generally does not want to support ongoing decisions around the AGV at all, since we believe that its continued existence is value destructive to ABR holders. As such, we will vote to Abstain in order to preserve our participation record.

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1 Poll Closing July 11, 2025

Arbitrum Research and Development Collective V2 - Extension
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support exercising the optional six-month extension of the ARDC v2. This six-month extension was included in the original proposal, and would authorize the use of the remaining 52,500 ARB and 865,000 USDC budget for ARDC activities.

NB: This poll allows voters to split their voting power amongst multiple options.

Recommendation: Vote Do Not Extend 100%. As we outlined in November at the initial proposal of the ARDC v2, we view the original ARDC as having value, but do not desire to see it as a permanent group with a standing budget. The mission is not well defined enough to warrant that, regardless of how convenient it can be to have this group sometimes.

Even if we had become convinced otherwise, GFX strongly disliked the provision of an optional extension of a six-month term into a twelve-month term without authorizing new elections. This has proven to be the correct choice, as illustrated by the voting format, which splits voters who wish to see continuation contingent upon new elections from voters who do not wish to see continuation, virtually guaranteeing that the status quo will win this vote.

We view this extension process as unhealthy, and we maintain our previous lukewarm views on the ARDC’s future value relative to the cost, and so we vote our full delegation against the six-month extension.

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3 Polls Closing July 17, 2025

[CONSTITUTIONAL] Register $BORING in the Arbitrum generic-custom gateway
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders to support BORING through a permissioned registration on the gateway router.

Recommendation: Vote For. As we stated when approving something similar for RARI, this process probably could be streamlined to avoid needing a constitutional vote, since this presents little risk and there may be demand from other token issuers in the future.

[[Constitutional] AIP: Update the Upgrade Executors

](https://snapshot.box/#/s:arbitrumfoundation.eth/proposal/0xc08147e229fa642ee7da2e5180f225122b8c517024902f21cdcd02b376179b8d)Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support ​​replacing the Upgrade Executor contracts on Arbitrum One, Arbitrum Nova, and Ethereum mainnet with upgraded versions. The modernized version introduces an additional function that enables the Upgrade Executor to execute an upgrade by directly calling the target contract, rather than indirectly delegate calling an upgrade contract. Future governance actions can be executed more simply and with fewer contract deployments.

Recommendation: Vote For. This will reduce technical complexity. This upgrade has been audited by Trail of Bits.

Entropy Advisors: Exclusively Working with the Arbitrum DAO, Year 2 and Year 3
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support renewing Entropy’s exclusivity and service provider agreement for another 24 months. Maximum possible compensation is 15,000,000 ARB, with 5,000,000 ARB base pay and up to 10,000,000 ARB for meeting KPIs. Voters are strongly encouraged to view the full proposal details here.

Recommendation: Vote For. Maximum spend is $6m in today’s market prices. However, the ARB token has, unfortunately, been down-only most of its lifetime, and Entropy’s base pay has a 3-year vesting period (1-year cliff).

In the wake of recent organizational changes, Entropy was the last entity solely responsible to governance. While it nominally remains so, we want to voice our discomfort with the OpCo being Entropy’s counterparty. The OpCo’s oversight committee includes members of OCL and Arbitrum Foundation, which in our view threatens its independence from those entities and generally defeats the purpose of having OpCo in the first place. Other standing entities, like the gaming venture fund, are similarly entwined with one or more of OCL and AF, have no need of ongoing funding, or both.

This left Entropy as the only permanent body or entity that was reliant upon DAO governance and insulated from influence by OCL and AF. Putting Entropy under OpCo’s supervision (to meet its KPIs for 10m ARB compensation) curtails that independence, and leaves governance with few agents to rely upon and few ways to act if its interests diverge from AF and/or OCL.

However, we think Entropy has done quality work, and will not object to a renewed service agreement, regardless of the poor governance situation Arbitrum currently finds itself in.

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1 Poll Closing July 24, 2025

Updating the Code of Conduct & DAO’s Procedures
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support amending the Code of Conduct and DAO Procedures. Notable changes include reducing enforcement of certain conflict of interest policies, extending shielded voting, and defining a fallback process for winding down an initiative or replacing a vacant elected position (to be used if the program did not define those procedures itself)

Recommendation: Vote For. These changes are primarily clarifying fallback procedures. The one potentially contentious change is the relaxation of self-voting limitations. We find the proposer’s argument convincing that in a world where vote buying services have become real rather than theoretical, there is easy circumvention of any prohibition and it would only serve to put good actors at a disadvantage to the bad in an election or proposal process.

94

2 Polls Closing July 31, 2025

[Constitutional] AIP: Disable Legacy Tether Bridge
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support closing the USDT bridge to Arbitrum One now that most volume has migrated to the USDT0 bridge.

Recommendation: Vote For. This is largely an irrelevant vote, as USDT bridging has now been ceded entirely to 3rd-party bridges (Notably USDT0 and LayerZero). There is almost no USDT still in the canonical USDT bridge whose shutdown is being voted upon, so there is little impact on users and few integrations relay upon it. Users that bridge USDT from mainnet today receive USDT0 on Arbitrum already.

Consolidate Idle USDC to the ATMC’s Stablecoin Balance
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support sweeping idle USDC from two expired and one ongoing budget into the ATMC program, which aims to generate yield off of DAO-owned assets until they are needed to finance governance activities.

Recommendation: Vote For. With the update that this does not revoke the authorized Events Budget, merely shifting where the funding sits, we are in favor.

1 Poll Closing August 7, 2025

Entropy Advisors: Exclusively Working with the Arbitrum DAO, Year 2 and Year 3
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support renewing Entropy’s exclusivity and service provider agreement for another 24 months. Maximum possible compensation is 15,000,000 ARB, with 5,000,000 ARB base pay and up to 10,000,000 ARB for meeting KPIs. Voters are strongly encouraged to view the full proposal details here.

Recommendation: Vote For. Maximum spend is $6m in today’s market prices. However, the ARB token has, unfortunately, been down-only most of its lifetime, and Entropy’s base pay has a 3-year vesting period (1-year cliff).

In the wake of recent organizational changes, Entropy was the last entity solely responsible to governance. While it nominally remains so, we want to voice our discomfort with the OpCo being Entropy’s counterparty. The OpCo’s oversight committee includes members of OCL and Arbitrum Foundation, which in our view threatens its independence from those entities and generally defeats the purpose of having OpCo in the first place. Other standing entities, like the gaming venture fund, are similarly entwined with one or more of OCL and AF, have no need of ongoing funding, or both.

This left Entropy as the only permanent body or entity that was reliant upon DAO governance and insulated from influence by OCL and AF. Putting Entropy under OpCo’s supervision (to meet its KPIs for 10m ARB compensation) curtails that independence, and leaves governance with few agents to rely upon and few ways to act if its interests diverge from AF and/or OCL.

However, we think Entropy has done quality work, and will not object to a renewed service agreement, regardless of the poor governance situation Arbitrum currently finds itself in.

95

**1 Poll Closing August 7, 2025
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[Non-Constitutional] - Updates to the DIP, The Complete 1.7 Version
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support changes to the Delegate Incentive Plan. Changes of note include raising the threshold for compensation to 500,000 ARB delegation (existing eligible delegates below this threshold will be grandfathered in), changes in calculation of participation to avoid a 3-month waiting period for new delegates to become eligible, and affirmative acceptance of various terms like Code of Conduct and DAO Processes (existing eligible delegates will be assumed to have already completed this requirement). The amount of ARB compensation is also adjusted upwards to account for devaluation in ARB since the program’s beginning.

Delegates that are vote-buying/renting services will be removed from eligibility. The DIP administrators are also granted the power to penalize a delegate’s score (for the purposes of calculating compensation) so that they have an enforcement tool that is less severe than expulsion or suspension from the program.

Recommendation: Vote For. While some delegates have found some of these changes to be controversial (e.g. exclusion of vote-buying platforms from compensation or raising the minimum eligibility threshold with regard to delegate size), we do not, generally speaking, share their concern. In particular, raising the delegation threshold makes sense given that it is not a large amount from an economic standpoint – about $200,000.

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1 Poll Closing August 14, 2025
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[CONSTITUTIONAL] Register $BORING in the Arbitrum generic-custom gateway
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders to support BORING through a permissioned registration on the gateway router.

Recommendation: Vote For.As we stated when approving something similar for RARI, this process probably could be streamlined to avoid needing a constitutional vote, since this presents little risk and there may be demand from other token issuers in the future.

96

2 Polls Closing September 4, 2025

[CONSTITUTIONAL] AIP: ArbOS Version 50 Dia
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support upgrading Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova to ArbOS v50 “Dia”.

This upgrade contains some minor bug fixes and support for some features in the upcoming “Fusaka” Ethereum hard fork. EIPs that will be supported include EIP-2537, which was not included in previous ArbOS v40 “Callisto”. A full list of which Fusaka EIPs will be supported and which will not can be found here.

An audit will be conducted and published by Trail of Bits and the upgrade deployed to private and public testnets prior to moving forward to a Tally vote for execution.

Recommendation: Vote For. This vote authorizes finalizing the code base, auditing, and testnet deployment. Pending success of those items, a final vote to execute would also receive our support.

[CONSTITUTIONAL] Remove Cost Cap, Update Executors, Disable Legacy USDT Bridge
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support a bundled proposal of several housekeeping items. These consist of raising gas costs on Arbitrum Nova, simplifying the Upgrade Executor contract workflow, and disabling the obsolete USDT Bridge.

Recommendation: Vote For. These are all expected items that were intended to be implemented. They were bundled due to their uncontroversial nature and the difficulty of passing Constitutional-level proposals.

97

1 Poll Closing October 2, 2025

Transfer 8,500 ETH from the Treasury to ATMC’s ETH Treasury Strategies
Summary: This proposal asks ARB holders if they support transferring 8,500 ETH to be managed by the Arbitrum Treasury Management Council.

Recommendation: Vote Against. As we noted here, the ATMC is underperforming simply holding stETH. Given the increased risk profile and lack of risk premium, we do not support transferring additional funds to the ATMC.

1 Like
98

1 Poll Closing October 16, 2025

[Constitutional] AIP: DVP Quorum
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support changing quorum calculation from a percentage of votable supply to a percentage of delegated ARB. The exact parameters will be finalized at the Tally vote if this vote is successful.

Recommendation: Vote For. Arbitrum, like most DAOs, has struggled with declining voting participation as a percentage of outstanding token supply. In particular, votes that include technical upgrades have had difficulty meeting quorum, since those have a higher quorum requirement. Because ARB controls upgrades to the Arbitrum contracts, it is prudent and advisable to address this immediately.

99

1 Security Council Election With Voting Decay Beginning October 20, 2025

Security Council Election
Summary: The following candidates are running for one of six open seats on the Arbitrum Security Council:

ZachXBT
Cyfrin
Emiliano Bonassi
Gzeon
Gauntlet
Daniel Goldman
Pablo Sabbatella
Griff Green
Wake Up Labs
Blockful
Consensys
Immunefi
Gustavo Grieco

NB: Voters may apportion their votes across multiple candidates.

Recommendation: Vote Consensys (25%), Cyfrin (25%), Pablo Sabbatella (25%), Immunefi (25%). GFX Labs traditionally backs security researchers and organizations for Security Council positions. Additionally, because of the voting format, we are concentrating our votes on candidates we believe need additional support. Other high quality candidates (e.g. Emiliano Bonassi, ZachXBT) are already high on the leaderboard and are unlikely to need our support.

100

1 Poll Closing October 23, 2025

AGV Council Compensation Calibration: Benchmark for Future Council Terms
Summary: This poll asks ARB holders if they support raising the compensation of the AGV Council from $30,000 to $50,000 for most council seats, and from $80,000 to $100,000 for the investment focused council seat. All seats would also be given a 60,000 ARB bonus with a 6-month vesting period.

Recommendation: Vote For. While we are generally skeptical of the work to date of the AGV, we are strong proponents of paying people fairly for ongoing work commitments, and attracting the best possible candidates for the upcoming council elections.

1 Poll Closing October 30, 2025

Transfer 8,500 ETH from the Treasury to ATMC’s ETH Treasury Strategies
Summary: This proposal asks ARB holders if they support transferring 8,500 ETH to be managed by the Arbitrum Treasury Management Council.

Recommendation: Vote For. As we noted here, the ATMC is underperforming simply holding stETH. Given the increased risk profile and lack of risk premium, we did not support transferring additional funds to the ATMC. However, revisions have been made to establish low-risk benchmark yields (stETH, STEP yield, and Aave deposit yield) to discourage underperformance going forward. We view underperformance of these benchmarks as reason to force a change in allocation in the future.