We’re voting FOR this proposal. GovHack’s proven track record speaks for itself, bringing fresh talent and aligning key players. The $156k price tag is reasonable for the potential impact. Sure, we need to watch our spending, but cutting events like this would be short-sighted. The new format looks solid - let’s give it a shot and see what innovations it sparks for Arbitrum.
2 Likes
I believe it’s a good idea the number of events per year, as it will help strengthening the team by creating a more united community. Also, the inclusive participation through voting by experienced individuals will ensure the right representatives are chosen. I would also like to highlight the importance of broadcasting these events online for those unable to attend and to keep everyone updated on new developments.
1 Like
Just voted in favor of this proposal on Snapshot, mainly due to the reasons already stated above. Sadly, I’ll miss this event as I won’t be going to Devcon this year, but I hope this proposal passes, as I’ve seen firsthand how impactful these kinds of in-person events can be for the ecosystem.
1 Like
Voted For: I am a strong supporter of the GovHack project. I see huge benefits in hosting this kind of event, both for active delegates and for new ones to get more involved in the operations of Arbitrum DAO. Hosting GovHack as a side event during Devcon fits well for most of us. Also, I love to see that the budget for this one is much lower than it was in Brussels.
1 Like
Voted For this proposal
Rationale
- The motivation is valid. Arbitrum is facing severe competition among EVM L2 and needs governance coordination
- The schedule, execution plan, cost breakdown, and KPIs of the event are will defined
Additional notes
- There should be further elaboration on how the participants are selected as the current version fails to specify the selection criteria
- The KPIs should be further specified. The current version merely focuses on the immediate deliverables after the event. There should be more thorough evaluation approach to evaluate the impact
1 Like
We are in support of this highly optimized, leaner version of GovHack, designed to maximize value, particularly for Thailand. The streamlined, 2 and a half day format, combined with a 4-week onramp and afterburner support, should help ensure GovHack v3 balances both time efficiency.
Some questions we had:
- How will the criteria for selecting the 60-80 stakeholders be determined?
- What mechanisms will be put in place to ensure that proposals and decisions made during the event translate into actionable outcomes? More so, what changes/improvements from prior GovHacks will be made? (If any)
5 Likes
"I will vote ‘Abstain’ on this one because I’m not fully convinced about supporting another gov hack this year.
I think the gov hacks in Denver and Brussels were great and are events that should be repeated. However, after 3 months from Brussels, we don’t have any approved proposals on Snapshot that came out of that event.
DAOs are very complex. Gaining context on what’s happening internally, as well as understanding what has been attempted in other DAOs and hasn’t worked, takes a lot of time. It’s not that easy to absorb all that context and translate it into a viable proposal in 24 hours. On top of that, the governance process is also complex, and following up becomes a task with little incentive. I understand that this is exactly what you are trying to address with the online part before and after the event. However, I remain skeptical (as explained below).
I’m not saying it’s not worth trying, and in fact, it should be done to spark ideas that could eventually turn into proposals. However, DAO governance is a niche within a niche, and hosting three of this kind of events per year sounds overly ambitious in terms of expected results.
In case that temp-check is approved, I like the proposed 4-week online before & afterburner and believe it should be a key point of the proposal, where HackHumanity has the responsibility to guide the winners through the process until they have a viable proposal. However, I remain skeptical about its execution due to the timing. The proposal is just being voted on in temp-check, and gathering an audience for an online onboarding that will later attend Devcon is no small challenge that requires marketing. Also, November and December are tough months with the end of the year approaching, and attention tends to be low for this kind of initiatives.
I do agree with this statement:
And that’s why I would fully support a proposal for an Arbitrum DAO Day (similar to what was proposed for Friday the 10th). I also agree with @Frisson that we should seek synergy with the Foundation in organizing these events to avoid fragmenting the audience. Devcon will have many events, and the audience will be split.
Lastly, many thanks to Klaus and the team for putting forward this proposal. I believe this is the right path, and there should be more of these events next year.
2 Likes
GovHack is one of the best examples I’ve seen in the space of a DAO investing in capacity building around governance. Governance is as much of an art as a science and it can take years to develop organisational competencies in effective governance. Add into the fact we’re at the frontier of decentralised governance and it’s clear we need interventions like this to collectively explore the challenges and possibilities.
This has the potential to be something the DAO can shout about in terms of good practice in the future and it’s clear that there is a path to more substantial iterative alignment with wider work and strategic priorities, which will be of deep importance going forward. Strong support from me.
3 Likes
I’m so happy to see this proposal on snapshot! It shows the willing to implement changes based on the previous GovHack and the long-term vision in order to stay competitive with other ecosystems. I thinks that supporting this, is essential for Arbitrum to grow and become stronger. Also, I’m happy to see how the total cost was reduced. I’m fully support this proposal and I voted in favor, I’m excited to see where this goes!
3 Likes
We will vote in support of the GovHack event. Building on the success of past GovHacks—like bringing in new contributors and gathering top delegates, the event introduces a dedicated " Arbitrum core day" to fix issues we’ve noticed, ensuring new participants quickly understand the main goals. With the HackHumanity team’s proven track record and a reasonable budget, we have full confidence in their ability to deliver a high-impact event. While we’re eager to work together on refining how participants prepare for the strategy-focused parts, we believe these details can be fine-tuned in the coming months. As locals in Bangkok, we’re excited to help coordinate and offer our local knowledge to make this event even more efficient and impactful for the ArbitrumDAO community. @KlausBrave Let’s chat soon!
2 Likes
The following reflects the views of the Lampros Labs DAO governance team, composed of @Blueweb, @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR this proposal.
The HackHumanity team has a strong track record with previous GovHack events, so we believe they are well-prepared to conduct another successful event for the Arbitrum community.
The schedule, execution plan, cost breakdown, and KPIs are clear and well thought out. We especially support the Post-Event Follow-up, as the 4-week dedicated follow-up can help move promising proposals forward, bringing long-term value to the DAO. We also acknowledge the significant cost reduction of $156k compared to the previous event, which was $262k. HackHumanity’s approach aligns well with Arbitrum’s goals and should be supported.
We had the same question as PGov raised regarding the criteria for selecting stakeholders. It would be helpful to clarify this to ensure transparency in the selection process.
In hindsight, while the event seems simple, the execution and planning deserve credit. Though there is some concern over hosting three events per year, the benefits of holding this event outweigh the cost of not doing so.
3 Likes
I will vote FOR. GovHack continues to explore and learn from past experiences, and I’m completely sure this one will be valuable for the DAO by bringing in more contributors rather than just proposals.
Of course, I’m happy to help and contribute as much as possible to make it happen.
2 Likes
gm, I voted ABSTAIN to this proposal with this rationale:
- I am directionally supportive of a gov hack initiative, gathering people IRL to discuss the next steps within the DAO is important and effective
- I don’t think the dates are appropriate: asking people to fly in the week before the main event is a strong ask
- The event could be further condensed (1.5/2 days max). The 4 onramp weeks should be able to complete enough pre-work.
- no KPIs have been proposed. There’s no target, just a sense of what we want to measure
Echoing this.
Hey @KlausBrave !
Thanks a lot for putting this proposal together - much appreciated!
At this stage, we’ll be voting against this proposal in its current iterations - some points from our end:
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Initially, we were supporters of GovHack as an idea. However, after two GovHacks in Denver and Brussels (albeit there being a lot of positives), we currently fail to see how we can justify voting in favour of a proposal that spends 150k+ for an event where the proposals emanating therefrom aren’t that high impact in nature. Thusfar and from two GovHacks, in our opinion only the M&A + Event Horizen Proposals were of significant impact (DevRel is yet to be seen re. impact);
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Additionally, we are not in favour of adopting the reasoning of ‘Other DAOs spend millions, let’s do the same as we’re under spending’. We underspend in comparison to others, yet the benefits are disproportionately more optimal (if we were to adopt this methodology, we might as well copy-trade Polkadot’s event strategy - which has naturally resulted in zilch). Other Ecosystems need to spend more because they’re under developed from a contributor-base perspective. It’s not a matter of spending more, but rather, of spending in this right places and in a methodical manner.
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The proposal also assumes that all aspects will proceed smoothly (e.g., securing venues, team confirmations, participant engagement), without much mention of risk mitigation strategies if something goes wrong (do we have alternatives?).
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Additionally, while there is mention of a $10k contingency, it seems minimal given the scope and complexity of the event, especially when compared to previous events with higher budgets. There is no detailed explanation of how the contingency fund will be allocated or managed or what risks would it be applied to if they materialise.
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Additionally, and this ties heavily with my first point, while a 4-week afterburner is included, the details on how promising proposals will be tracked, supported, and integrated into the DAO’s larger strategy are vague. The follow-up process seems underdeveloped for ensuring long-term impact. In our opinion, this has been an issue w/proposals emanating from GovHack in general.
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Also, did we lose the venue? The proposal states that the venue needs a 70% down-payment and is held for 2 weeks - this was on the 4th of September and we haven’t even passed the Snapshot yet.
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Additionally, how will you define ‘core members’ for the core member experience? If a new contributor would like to attend, will we turn him away? GovHack (in my opinion), is supposed to be a place where we are open to anyone.
Hey @Immutablelawyer,
Thanks for the questions I’ll respond point by point.
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GovHack Denver either produced or radically accelerated M&A, Ventures, EventHorizen and STEP, the value of these is high IMO. ROI from innovations like this and DevRelUni which will train 60 new DevRels take months to materialise. Beyond the proposals that went the distance it is a natural occurrence for attrition in the innovation funnel for 25 teams to submit, 5 winners, a few of these to pass and be implemented. Lastly qualitative measures like trust building IRL, DAO education and onboarding, brand visibility are detailed at length in the 2 previous Impact Reports, it is reductionist to only attribute how many proposals passed to the value of GovHack.
Even with these positive outcomes there is huge room to increase value in this format. It requires better definition of vision, strategic priorities, and thus the tracks we focus participants on to come up with solutions. GovHack Core day + 4-week afterburner are designed to address these issues. -
Fair comment, we are agreed on not doing events without good reason. The Foundation has spent 5.6m on events, marketing and communications the last 6 months. This data was offered to educate the DAO on industry norms, and that 150k is a very reasonable spend for what this is.
3 & 4. I have run this twice now in new cities and have a good measure of what it takes to run this kind of event and am able to reduce the contingency, I’ve also done direct local supplier cost research for Bangkok so have a tighter handle on the costs compared with the Brussels proposal where we asked for a larger contingency and then did exact research on costs. I’ve confirmed availability with my team.
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The DAO doesn’t have a larger strategy. The Core/offsite day is an attempt to bring people together to create this. Then tracks can align to this, proposals can align to this and have a better chance of being what the DAO needs for the long term. The 4-weeks afterburner would be weekly workshops like an online version of the Pitstop with expert feedback to teams, sessions with track hosts to increase domain knowledge required to refine their proposals, and lastly directing and matching making teams to either go for a grant where appropriate and which ones, or to undertake the process of going directly to snapshot/tally.
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The date of the message about the Venue was September 18th. Agree this is a key risk with us 6.5 weeks out. If this is to work, we’d need to move to Tally out of band (Thursday batch) to fast track this proposal.
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This is the key differentiator of this GovHack Core vs an Open GovHack, I am open to produce either format based on feedback. If the DAO agrees the need to develop a vision and strategy, then the exact structure of that day will be co-designed in the next 6 weeks, the criteria for who comes will get developed with feedback from community, I don’t want to assert I alone have the answer now on how that works. I envisage it will be a score based on voting power, karma score and a min/max number of people per each bucket of the participant types below to ensure we have adequate diverse representation:
2 Likes
I voted for this proposal. The introduction of Arbitrum Core day makes complete sense in a period where several important studies/analysis are happening within the DAO (treasury management, incentives, etc). Let’s make the best use possible of this time to move things forward.
1 Like
I voted in favour at this stage. Although I won’t be able to attend, I am generally supportive of such events when they make sense. Cutting costs is welcome.
This doesn’t make much sense. Personally losing money on events as an organizer will only damage the working relationship with the DAO in the long run. It would have been better to cut costs, or better plan in advance so this doesn’t happen when contingency does not cover it.
2 Likes
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 AGAINST the proposal in the temperature check.
While we appreciate Klaus’s time and effort put into this, as well as the two prior GovHack proposals, we do not see the need to put together an additional event at this time. The reason why we believe this is because although GovHack in Denver and Brussels were decent, they did not deliver enough value for the DAO relevant to their cost.
That’s not necessarily HackHumanity’s or GovHack’s fault. The DAO might not be at a point/place where the value such events can deliver can be captured and lead to something actionable. The lack of follow-up after the events proved the above point.
Given that, we do not support putting together another event and spending DAO funds simply for the sake of having an event.
1 Like
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to vote “FOR” on this proposal at the Snapshot vote.
Rationale
With successful precedents such as Brussels and Denver, both of which led to the development of various DAO initiatives as a result of the IRL delegates’ meetings, we are excited about the upcoming edition of GovHack.
We would also like to highlight the reduced budget compared to previous events. While part of this reduction is due to the location, it’s noteworthy that the event is still more cost-effective, even with the inclusion of exclusive discussion sessions for delegates and a four-week post-event follow-up.
Before casting our vote on Tally, we would appreciate it if @KlausBrave could provide additional details regarding the venue budget as well as the mechanisms for distributing prizes and scholarships.
1 Like
I will be voting “Abstain”. As someone who does not go to public events, nor participates in hackathons, I’m not sure I have enough context to make an informed vote. I see the positive discussions and projects that rise from them, however I also don’t know if the outcomes are worth the cost.
I’d like to see the outcome of the vote without influence from myself.