danielo
October 2, 2025, 10:37pm
12
I also recommend checking the conclusions from the Arbitrum Ecosystem Pitch day, CastleLabs report, and Domain Allocator season 3 report, which add further meat to this narrative.
Future Plans & Continued Ecosystem Alignment This pilot provided a foundation that can be leveraged in future similar programs with significantly reduced setup costs. We identified what works (pitch training, multi-timezone accessibility, investor outreach) and what needs improvement (earlier pipeline development, event timing considerations, longer conversion tracking periods, etc.). These insights from the pilot, together with the assets we created (investor network, program structure, etc.) can inform more effective future initiatives.
Arbitrum showed a bottleneck in the number of quality early-stage projects, making it unviable to do quarterly pitch days as originally hoped. However, the pitch day supports attracting builders to Arbitrum by offering a supportive environment and investor connections. As such, we recommend a semestral cadence for pitchdays instead of quarterly, while simultaneously investing more in “upstream” programs.
Conclusion: Where the small-team experimentation is (and isn’t)
Our analysis reveals a consistent pattern: metrics of developer momentum (repos, full-time devs, verified contracts) and on‑chain usage (DAU/MAU, throughput, smart accounts) show Base and Solana, outpacing Arbitrum in attracting new builders and users. DevRel initiatives support this narrative: Coinbase‑backed marketing and reward programmes have created strong builder mindshare on Base, while Solana’s IBRL (increase bandwidth, reduce latency) narrative has attracted and built a large developer community. In contrast, Arbitrum’s current DevRel caters more to established DeFi/RWA players than to small, fast‑iterating teams, with even anecdotal stories of builders not able to find support in official channels.
The survey results and hackathon report reinforce that builders prioritise liquidity, distribution and business‑development support over grant size, view Arbitrum primarily as a DeFi chain, and desire structured incubation to help them meet feasibility and sustainability requirements. Most rejected NPAI applications fail on these exact points, unclear milestones, weak feasibility (140 rejections), sustainability gaps (138) and lack of Arbitrum alignment (125) and novel ideas (119).
In practice, alignment and novelty frequently surface inside feasibility critiques; the teams applying usually don’t have a concrete delta or an Arbitrum-specific plan. This pattern matches a pipeline heavy on AI and DeFi and light on payments, decentralized social, and other “mindshare” categories, which are exactly the tracks where small teams on hot chains tend to run fast experiments. Additionally, the RNDAO pilot observed that limited marketing budgets and a hackathon‑first approach attracted low‑commitment teams and that Arbitrum is perceived to have a thinner entrepreneurial community than Base or Solana.
To conclude, it seems that Base’s metrics are growing and outpacing Arbitrum in nearly every facet, with visible spikes around programmatic initiatives (e.g., Onchain Summer). Qualitatively, recent “mindshare” initiatives (e.g., external ecosystem grants like Kalshi’s) have targeted Base and Solana rather than Arbitrum, reinforcing a perception that quick, low-friction experiments have better distribution elsewhere. Meanwhile, Arbitrum continues to land institutional-grade partners (e.g., major DeFi/RWA integrations), which strengthens the top of the stack but does not by itself generate a small-builder on-ramp.
Domain Allocator season 3 report
New Protocols & Ideas — Castle Lab