There’s growing excitement around DeFAI (DeFi + AI) and how it can transform the ecosystem, but should we focus on funding development or driving user adoption for these projects?
I work with several projects on Arbitrum exploring AI-powered DeFi solutions. While development is critical, we should also prioritise marketing support to educate users and scale adoption for existing projects.
Let’s open the discussion: Should Arbitrum grants focus more on marketing or developer support to make DeFAI a success?
Thanks for this—it’s an interesting topic.
I think we can argue that Arbitrum has a fairly robust grants ecosystem that can cater to the funding needs of DeFAI builders or any category of builders at all.
What I think we need more of are alternative forms of builder support that help projects scale and gain traction. This includes assisting projects with things like distribution, marketing support, business development, and other forms of non-financial support that accelerate user growth and adoption.
I don’t think the Arbitrum ecosystem needs another traditional “grants” program that simply allocates funds to projects. Instead, we should aim for holistic, end-to-end support for builders that actually gives them what they really want: users.
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I fully agree. Funding alone isn’t enough. Many projects build great products but struggle with traction due to a lack of marketing and experience. Arbitrum’s grants are strong, but evolving them to include structured marketing and growth initiatives could make a real difference.
I think grant-backed projects should also get GTM support, and we could also spotlight more established projects to boost visibility for the whole ecosystem.
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We recognize the need for Arbitrum to continue being at the forefront of innovation and current trends. Furthermore, as Arbitrum is the home of defi with a vibrant ecosystem we believe that it would be one of the main places for DeFai agents to flourish.
At the same time, we believe that the current undergoing restructuring of the DAO with the MVP and SOS presented are a great time to leverage the learnings from Trailblazers for future grant programs focused on AI.
In our opinions this would be more impactful rather than a self-standing ad-hoc grant. For this reason we invite the author to analyze possible key objectives and results of the grant and consider applying to a SOS.