Idea for a Direct User Rewards Program

Proposals
1

TLDR: WIP to initiate a simple rewards program that directly airdrops ARB tokens to users. The goal is to create a long-lasting program that continuously reward both new and old Arbitrum users. This proposal is currently still in ideation, so exact details of how this will look is TBD. Please feel free to critique and make any suggestions.

Abstract
25 million ARB tokens airdropped to users that complete the following steps:

  1. Link Twitter Account
  2. Link Wallet Address

ARB tokens will be distributed equally, so for example:

  • 250,000 users sign up, each user gets 100 ARB tokens,
  • 500,000 users sign up, each user gets 50 ARB tokens,
  • 1 million users sign up, each user gets 25 ARB tokens, etc.

Motivation
Recent Arbitrum DAO initiatives have been mainly geared to attracting capital/liquidity (STIP/LTIP) or assisting existing projects (GCP). However, these initiatives have done very little to onboard new users to Arbitrum.

Although not exactly a 1:1 proxy for users, weekly active addresses (WAA) on Arbitrum have largely stagnated over the past year. Solana’s WAA is currently ~5x Arbitrum, and Base’s WAA has eclipsed Arbitrum for the first time ever. New users are arriving to crypto every day, but the vast majority are not choosing Arbitrum.

The best way to onboard users is quite simple: Incentives. Complex farming mechanisms, ‘Build it and they will come,’ and other non-user focused mechanisms do not onboard users. If you want users, you need to directly incentivize the users.

The DAO needs to take immediate action to reemedy this and make Arbitrum a top spot for users.

Rationale -
Offchain Labs and the Arbitrum DAO has done the hard part of making Arbitrum the L2 with the best technology and most liquidity, but now it is time to begin the process of onboarding the next generation of crypto users onto Arbitrum.

The establishment of a rewards program that directly incentivizes users on Arbitrum is perfectly aligned with the Arbitrum community’s mission and values.

Specifications
The pilot program should be extremely basic. Ideally, we want users to take as few as steps as possible to be eligible for the pilot program. The more steps and requirements, the less likely Arbitrum is to onboard new users. To achieve this, I propose that the pilot program should only consist of two steps:

  1. Link Twitter Account
  2. Link Wallet Address

Sybils are obviously a concern, so anti-sybil measures will need to be implemented. Twitter accounts that are (i) Bots or (ii) Less than 1 month old should not be included in the airdrop. Additional anti-sybil measures will likely be needed, so if you have expertise or knowledge on this, please make additional suggestions.

Once sybils have been identified, 25 million ARB will be airdropped equally to the users that successfully attached. There are no strings attached with this ARB, users are free to do as they please with their tokens.

However, being that this is just a pilot program, the goal is for the pilot program to be the first of many airdrop rounds. User behavior will be paramount for inclusion in future rounds. For example:

  • User A receives 100 ARB tokens from the pilot program. User A sells 100 ARB tokens for 150 USDC tokens and then sends the USDC to a centralized exchange. User A is value extractive and should not be eligible for future airdrops.

  • User B receives 100 ARB tokens from the pilot program. User B sells 50 ARB tokens for 75 USDC and then uses the ARB and USDC to provide liquidity on a decentralized exchange. User B is generating economic activity on Arbitrum and should be eligible for future airdrops.

Either the Arbitrum Foundation or a newly established committee should be tasked with collecting data related to the behaviors of users that participated in the pilot program. This data will be utilized to establish criteria for future airdrop rounds, if approved by the DAO.

Steps to Implement
Being that this proposal in its current form is largely just an idea, significant work will be needed on it to make it a reality. If you are large Arbitrum DAO delegate or an active participant that likes this idea, feel free to spearhead the effort into making this idea a reality.

Timeline

  • 2 week user sign-up period for the pilot program
  • 2 week period for Arbitrum Foundation/Committee to identify sybils
  • 1 month+ period to collect user behavior data to serve as foundation for future reward rounds

Overall Cost
25 million ARB

2

@dk3 wants a concentrated thunderbolt (4 same 25M) The OpCo - Scale, Structure, & Synergy and you want a broad rain. If diametrically opposite how to reconcile?

1 Like
3

There are several significant issues with this proposal.

  1. Basically, we want to attract users who don’t have money. How will this help increase the use of Arbitrum? In the same way, this money could be used to increase the liquidity of ARB/USDC; it would be no less useful
  2. Why do you think people will stay with their received tokens? They need an incentive, but now it’s profitable for them to just take their money and go look for others with the same free money. Without the proper incentive, everyone will simply take the free money, which will also have a bad effect on the price of the ARB

The only thing that seems to me to be missing to attract new users now is an approach like that of new networks: more PR projects that already distribute money from Arbitrum grants, but few people know about these projects. You can also try to enter points, like many other networks and projects. It seems to me that we need to think in this direction

1 Like
4

Why not both?

Don’t see how they conflict with one another.

5

  1. Why would this only attract users with no money?

  2. If you read the proposal, I outlined how you would incentivize users to remain on Arbitrum.

6

OK … how about you pull out say 25k ARB for your share of this airdrop?