JoJo Delegate Communication Thread

[JoJo]

JoJo Delegate Communication Thread

Delegate address: 0x4f685b29514eed0c9d929386e86d9cd81981118b

Delegate ENS Address: jojothecow.eth

Forum Usernames: @jojo

Voting Activity: Tally & Snapshot

Twitter: jojo17568

Big fan of iterating imperfectly and fast, especially in a world, crypto, in which we go at fast speed light. Cow engineer, doing risk analysis and models at Jones DAO, helping in Arbitrum governance as much as I can. You might have seen me in a few grants program, such as the LTIPP, the Questbook “New protocols and ideas” domain, and the Uniswap Arbitrum Grant Program. Yes, I like helping protocols grow in Arbitrum a lot.

Note: this thread will encompass only my personal voting reasons, and does not represent the opinions of any protocol or entity that I might be part of, partner with or contribute in any form. Remember, I’m just a cow.

[JoJo]

May 2024 voting

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Snapshot votings

GovHack at ETH CC (Brussels)

Vote: For

@JoJo

Voting “for” on this on snapshot.

I wasn’t in Denver, I plan to be in Brussel, and I have only heard good thing about govHack.

Team here has the challenge of putting up the org of a big event in less than 2 and a half month: realistically, they will need funds asap to start paying vendors and suppliers.

Voting for, and hope that a couple of days after snapshot is over goes directly to tally, for the sake of proper execution.

Several people were also able to testify about budget being rightly sized for this type of event, which was my main concern (and the main concern of others).

Grant Request - Curve Finance

Vote: For

@JoJo

Voting a strong “for” on this proposal.

• curve = really important part of DeFi
• proposal = fair for the DAO thanks to the personal commitment of the founder, regardless of the outcome
• incentives on top of a service, crvusd, that is highly appreciated and has demonstrated PMF.

Also, if this passes, it would be basically one of a kind: an incentive proposal outside of any framework program. Which is something that we need to collectively do as a dao.

All LTIP proposals voted after counci’s feedback: Buffer, Sushi, Synthetix, Clipper, DODO, Tradao, Deri protocol, Yearn, Bedrock, D2 Finance, Rage trade, CVI.Finance, ACryptoS, Smilee, Connext

Vote: Abstain

Since I was one of the advisor involved in the LTIPP program, I decided to abstain to maintain neutrality on all protocols who resubmitted after the council’s feedback.*

Proposal for Approval of DeDaub as the ADPC Security Advisor

Vote: For

@JoJo

Voting “for” on onboarding DeDaub as security consultant

• price is reasonable
• there is the need of a technical consultant that knows both the topic and is engaged in the market, so understand rates and other relevant issues
• appreciate that ADPC has money in their pocket but is still asking the DAO to use it.

On people asking “can we get other SME / alternative”. I totally understand where this comes from, and I undertand is the first thought one could have. But I think we should detach a bit from this type of thinking that, at this point, is a bit encapsulated.
If we elect a committee, and we assigne a budget, we should trust that committee. Micromanaging the committee instead is only detrimental, drags the discussion toward how to do stuff instead of effective doing stuff, kills the purpose of having a committee in the first place cause if they have to ask to the dao for everything at that point why were they even elected?

Pilot Phase: M&A for Arbitrum DAO

Vote: For

@JoJo

As we said and spoke about for almost 2 months now the whole program is complex in term of solving specific legal questions and unlocking new possibilities, unexplored for this dao, that will require a certain capital.

At this point, the pilot program can likely be what the DAO needs to understand how it would work in practice, without having too much of an hard commitment in the short term for funds and also workload. Excited to see where this initiative will be going

@JoJo

Based on my response above, voting “for” on snapshot.

• The whole initiative has a merit
• We are solving for how to buy stuff, legal approach, ownership and so on
• in any business you don’t want to reinvent the wheel every day, sometimes you just go out there and buy what you need
• while I have a lot of trust and faith in both bernard, sid and areta, I understand the concerns of the DAO and i think the pilot program is effectively a very good answer to understanding how this will pan out at scale plus what we can all expect.

All STIP Addendum challenged proposals: Umami, Dolomite, Thetanuts, OpenOcean, Angle, Socket, Furucombo, Stake DAO, Savvy, Thales, Boost, Gains, KyberSwap, Tide, Sanko, Solv, Stargate, MUX

Vote: Abstain

As for the LTIPP, since I was one of the advisor involved in the STIP Brdige program, I decided to abstain to maintain neutrality on all protocols who went to vote either because they were challenged or because they posted a late application.*

Arbitrum Multi-sig Support Service (MSS)

Vote: For

@JoJo

After some thoughts, decided to vote “for”, including the reporting implementation.

I want to clarify a few things here.

• inclusion of monthly report: it is a bit costly to be honest. But it makes a lot of sense to have data reporting on the txs executed, is the only way to really keep track of what the dao is doing
• performances of signers: this should likely be included in the above report. With no judgment, just as data. Knowing how many tx were created and signed by each signer. It will be clear, over time, if there are outliers that never take part to the program or not, and at least the dao will be able in a future election to know who should not be re elected
• i agree with users above stating that 12 months is not the standard time for these roles in the dao. To me tho, is not a detail significant enough to vote it down or even to change the proposal: a multisig should be something quite mechanic, quite reliable, quite boring. It can make sense to effectively have a 1y mandate on this (and potentially also on other boring, mechanic, reliable roles that we will need in future).

But, this is not necessarily an endorsement on a tally vote.
Initially i thought it would be hell cause signers would need to be able to create txs for all programs. And while this seems trivial for people outside of multisig world, is definitely not (ie: txs for a group of people, but excluding one that didn’t kyc yet; tx that is partially paid in fixed amount of arb, and variable amount of arb cause payment is in usd equivalent at the time of the tx itself; same as before, but with the usd value that has to be on a 30day moving average; etc).
Then, luckily, @dk3 educated me on the delegation feature that will allow external people to post a transactions in the safe for signers to sign. But I also understand there could effectively be issues, especially because not all programs are equal (ie: the delegate incentive program is one if the highest lift in term of number of transactions, variability of payout, problems with kyc and timing).

Regardless of the chosen solution, we need to address the above cases with a plan that will have to be integrated in every program using the MSS, in a way that scales and either allows one of the program main stakeholder to post transactions, or provide a way for a chair/signer to more actively participate to the single program. Which means, necessarily, a bigger overhead in time and costs. The latter solution also means finding a consensus mechanism between participants (=signers for that program) to choose the designated one. Either randomly, by internal election, they all fight in a room, but there is going to be one member who will effectively be paid more and also have more responsibility and will need to invest more time talking with someone from the program. If it’s the chair I am not sure. But in general, my suggestion for programs in which there is the need of scalability without effectively knowing the final size of labour needed (ltipp anyone?), should be to think about both a fixed comp, and the one proposed above is to me good enough, but also a potentially variable one tied to the number of programs one should interface with. Would dare to say, potentially even further specialise this component between programs with low amount and variance of transactions and high amount of txs or heterogeneous ones.
Hope the suggestion helps.

Streamlining the LTIPP Bounties

Vote: For

@JoJo

Voting “for” on this proposal. There is indeed the need of a more agile management of this mini internal funds. And tbh this also applies in general to others as well, more thoughts on this after all votings is over.

But, in general

• necessary to allow council to be able to leverage funds to effectively answer questions that might arise
• necessary to allow council to be able to leverage funds to effectively answer needs that might arise
• totally agreeing with @Tenzent here: if any selected entity is part of the council, advisors or others contributors of LTIPP, there has to be a very good reason on why 1) the question was posed 2) the answer has to be provided specifically by that entity

Kwenta x Perennial: Arbitrum Onboarding Incentives

Vote: For

@JoJo

I am voting For on this proposal.

I am intrigued by the shared mechanism of two protocols, and I personally love incentive mechanism aimed to acquire/retain users in other chains. The quest for kwenta users in other chains is good (and i suggest the team to put a cutoff to wallets right before this mechanism was published). For the fee rebate, would suggest, if it was not done yet, to align to other perp protocol to have a 75% rebate and not an 80%. Seems like there is a general consensus on this number for this asset class; the leftover 5% of the 36% (so, 1.8% of the total or 34200 arb) can likely be allocated to quests or LP, or potentially be used as wildcard for other initiatives still allocated to users.
There is overall a net benefit for Kwenta to be here, and the fact that the proposal is outside the framework of stip, ltipp and others should not stop us from moving forward good initiatives, in the same way it happened with curve a couple of weeks ago.

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Tally votings

Double-Down on STIP Successes (STIP-Bridge)

Vote: For

Confirming snapshot vote, which I report here for completeness

@JoJo

I am voting yes for this proposal.
I wrote the reasoning publicly on twitter 10 days ago. This is what I firmly believe right now.

(from here)

I also understand the questions of some who are saying: why we should double down on stip if we can’t measure it yet. Why don’t we wait for the ltip to iterate on that. Etcetera. I get it. These are all valid concerns.
But, to me, the above is valid: we can’t stop right now. And also, if we REALLY want to know what success looks like, we would need to all sit down at a table, for a few days, and just discuss what we want to achieve in arbitrum in the next 6 months, 2 years, 5 years. Which is something realistically not doable in a DAO and that is usually what a board + a ceo do in the corporate world. What I mean is that while there is a merit in knowing what metric grew and what didn’t, metrics are just that: metrics. They don’t define necessarily on a 1:1 relationship success.

Lastly, i think that crypto AND the ethereum world AND the L2 world are in a specific phase (at least for another few years): growth. Which means, it could make sense to target generic metrics (users, tvl, volume) as proxy of a pathway to greatness, which is what we should generically pursue regardless of specifics.

NOTE: i obviously have also a biased interest here in voting yes, since i work for Jones DAO. For what it matters I would have voted yes even if i was working in a mc donald tho.

GovHack at ETH CC (Brussels)

Vote: For

Confirming snapshot vote

Grant Request - Curve Finance

Vote: For

Confirming snapshot vote

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*note: in future I might reserve the right to vote in a non neutral way, opposite of what I did in STIP Bridge and LTIPP, in programs in which I am directly involved. This because, after what has so far been happening with situations like the one of Synapse, we just can’t be sure that others will speak when there is, indeed, the necessity to.

[JoJo]

June 2024 voting

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Snapshot votings

Set up a Sub-Committee for the Security Services Subsidy Fund

Vote: For

@JoJo

Contrary to most here, i am voting in favour of this proposal.

Yes, there is definitely the merit in saying that ADPC should pursue this goal with their own current means.

But the way this is shaping is that it will be basically the equivalent of a grant program: from a protocol standpoint, applying to get money for incentives, or for audits, or to pay operation is quite similar. The end result, to me, could be the same of every grant programs we already had: an underestimation of the demand we will have (remember stip in which we had 2 rounds and we overbooked the first by 50%; ltip, that was about potentially 80 protocols with 60m available, and we ended up with 180 protocols asking for 160m).

I don’t think the adpc has the necessary manpower to do it. And in case the program will be overbooked (which i don’t think will happen), they current mix might not be the one with the best capabilities to discern who should and should not get the security grant.

AIP: Nova Fee Router Proposal (ArbOS 30)

Vote: For

@JoJo

No reason to vote against this. Having funds being sent in a permissionless way to the dao treasury instead of having to vote for it should be a trivial decision.
Voting for.

AIP: Activate Stylus and Enable Next-Gen WebAssembly Smart Contracts (ArbOS 30)

Vote: For

@JoJo

Stylus is the way to move forward and to onboard the next 1 gazzillion devs.

I am just a cow, and even I know C++. No reason to vote against, knowing that OCL will go for the robust path of testing and auditing that so far has guaranteed the success of arbitrum tech wise.

Decise “for” on Stylus.

AIP: Support RIP-7212 for Account Abstraction Wallets (ArbOS 30)

Vote: For

@JoJo

Not only account abstraction is needed, we also need to keep up the pace with competition. As @Bob-Rossi said above, no brainer vote tbh.
Voting for.

[NON-CONSTITUTIONAL] Pilot Phase: Arbitrum Ventures Initiative

Vote: Abstain

@JoJo

I am voting ABSTAIN on this proposal.

I really like the idea. We should pursue the venture investment thesis for our DAO. We are in a phase of our industry mature enough in which this is doable.

Just, I think this pilot phase as it is doesn’t make too much sense.

If I read both the current AVI proposal that has been published in snapshot just a couple of days ago, compared to the tally m&a proposal already approved , this is what we can read.

• In the M&A proposal we have: value upside analysis […], Assessment […], Facilitating interactions across the DAO […] strategic analyses of target areas […], Integration options […]
• In the AVI proposal we have: The outcome of this pilot proposal is to produce a detailed investment thesis, market consultation findings, community engagement feedback, strategic recommendations, and an operational plan.

This clearly shows for the AVI initiative not only very similar deliverable of the M&A, but also a very similar semantic, without the specificity (not reported here but available in tally ) of the specific, different field: ventur capitalism. Amost a 1:1 overlap, up to the point in which in the AVI initiative there is also the willingness to have an IRL event much as in the m&a initiative that will participate to GovHack at EthCC.
The above is especially true when i read about new initiatives such as Elixir which adds a lot of detail to the venture considerations, despite being a younger one.
And speaking about Elixir, another thing to consider, which could be secondary but worth some reflection, is how AVI proposes to “funding and oversee” eventually initiatives like this one and others in venture capitalism, without really providing any meaningful detail.

Don’t get me wrong: i am ok in AVI going for a pilot phase, I am ok with it doing also an IRL event, much as m&a. The fact that the structure is a copy carbon can likely mean that the pilot phase for this type of initiatives should be structured this way.

But to me it just seems strange that the outcome is exactly framed in the same way as the m&a activity without the same specificity for its specific field - being in the venture capitalist industry -.
If I also look at the cost being double, $99k, compared to the $52k of m&a, it raises even more doubts for me.

I don’t know if the proposal will go through or not. My hope is that, if it goes through, the above will be addressed before tally at least.

Let me reiterate again: I think this is a good idea for our dao, and i think there are differences compared to m&a and, partially, with gcp. I just think we need to better tailor the initiative.

Finally, just to be crystal clear and shred any doubt: i have actively participated to the m&a working group, but i am not currently part of areta which is leading that initiative. So I am relative neutral to this, and giving opinion mostly from the standpoint of an arbitrum builder looking at the future of arbitrum. Yes, let’s do venture, but let’s do it in the right way.

Election of STEP Program Manager

Vote: Steakhouse, 100% allocation

@JoJo

Voting for Steakhouse, with my full allocation.

After reviewing their application, they have the experience tied to the oversight of Maker which can’t be discounted; while other applicants, like avantgrade, are for sure strong candidates as well, to me the above is the key fact for my personal decision process.
On the cost: while, at first glance, steakhouse is technically the highest one in cost, is also the only entity providing a fixed costs regardless of the amount of protocols to oversee. Which means it might not be the most costly option; and, tbh, even if it was, I would gladly pay a delta of 50k out of a 50M program for proper oversight (1% more).

AIP: BoLD - permissionless validation for Arbitrum

Vote: For

@JoJo

Voting in favour of this temp check, relying to also the technical opinion of Delphi here. No point in gating the upgrade of the protocol in general.

I want to thank other delegates for sharing more technical details on the design choices behind this system (re: @RikaGoldberg mentioning usage of confiscated funds, @swmartin about a potential divergence of viability if there is a big divergence in future of eth price compared to arb, and @PGov for the request of breakdown of funds distribution). Most if not all of this are takes likely outside the comprehensive skillset of a lot of users, and reading them helps understanding potential pitfalls for the future.

AIP: Funds to bootstrap the first BoLD validator - Bond sentiment.

Vote: For

@JoJo

Voting in favour of funding the first BoLD validator and making the foundation run it. We need at least one honest validator, and to be honest we can’t find a better aligned stakeholder than the foundation to do it. Having them running it, with even the caveat as per the proposal that we will be able to claw back funds, is the safest scenario i can think about for now for our ecosystem.

AIP: Funds to bootstrap the first BoLD validator - Operational cost sentiment.

Vote: For

@JoJo

Finally, voting in favour of funding the operational costs for the BoLD validator run by the foundation. The proposal makes imho a good breakdown on the cost related (3% of the 3600 eth for 3 years, so 432 eth, plus the buffer of 68, + 400 eth for gas costs to post and challenge + 500 eth for service fees). Up the point a simple cow is able to understand it. Also foundation won’t take service fees from this.

As a final note, we likely want to keep a tab on all of these numbers and more in relation to the discussion we are having about using the sequencer revenue. While I don’t think is written anywhere, my educated guess is that we will take the eth from there indeed (if not and I missed something feel free to correct me). We finally got an excuse to use them i g

Vote: For

Pilot Stage – Treasury Backed Vaults research and development

Vote: Against

@JoJo

For the reasons I stated above, I have to unfortunately vote Against this proposals.
I will just quote my previous post for the motivation, and add something as a follow up.

@JoJo

I was a bit surprised when this popped up on snapshot today. This proposal was brought to life just 1 week ago in the forum, and there are several unanswered questions from several folks.

First, I’ll report my opinion, already shared privately, and then a considerations on the proposal.

I see 2 scenarios here:

1. we create a vault for which we establish a cap. Let’s say is 50M stables. And we back it up with 500m arb between collateral and reserve, meaning arb has to go to 0.10$ to get liquidated. We have something that let us get $50m in liquidity, but this amount is basically 1 incentive program for us. All of this by using half a billion arb. Feels like the amount received is too small to have an impact, and so is not that important considering we would have to put on stake half a billy of arb to do so.
2. we decide to use the vault, with a certain cap tied to the arb price, over time. Which means, while w allocate 300-400m arb between collateral and reserve, we found ourself with arb going to 10$. We now a 4B collateral we can borrow against. And we still borrow 1:10 ratio so we borrow 400m. That is a meaningful amount.

Let’s not consider scenario 1, because to me scenario 1 is not likely important nor worth the effort. Let’s only consider scenario 2, with whatever degree of numbers you want (amount of arb, price of arb, amount we borrow), keeping in mind tho that we want numbers that have an impact, so we are on the high end of the barbell.

Whatever amount you have as collateral. Whatever amount you have in the reserve. Whatever amount you borrow. You now have a target on your back.
You have a series of number which, summed with depth of liquidity of dexes and cexes, can be put in a spreadsheet to calculate how much capital you need to liquidatate that position.
This could be economically viable, or not. But the moment in which it becomes viable, trust me someone will exploit it.

I want to state that

1. this is obviously my personal view
2. I am being pessimistic here
3. I am also realistic tho.

And this was my take on the product. I also reflected upon it, chatting with proposers, and agreed that, for sure, we can do researches on this.

Which takes me to the second big surprise that I have: why are we packing the research with the product? Shouldn’t we first just research if this is viable, or if we are just falling in a crv type of scenario, with the difference that mitch can pick up the phone, his trezor, send money around, gather collateral and manage risk and we, as a dao, are as slow as a crippled elephant?

I thank a lot the author for the numerous answers. We discussed about a research being important in this topic, re: can we effectively create a vault in which DAO can deposits ARB and borrow against them?
I don’t see anything wrong in the research. I personally think the answer of such a research will, likely, be a big sounding no, but I am happy to be proven wrong. All the risks I stated above I think are here, and what has happened to curve just show that a target will be hit at some point. What I am seeing as a problem here is that the research here is tied to development of such product. And I don’t see why the two should be packaged together.

I would more gladly see something like

• we have a separate, proper research on lending risk for an arbi tailored vault, exclusive property of the DAO
• open dollar can eventually be an advisor in this research (but not the main player: we will go into a trust me bro situation, in which the proponent has all incentive to have a study that reassures the dao without necessarily having a critic eye on the risk per se)
• we analyse the research, and if it’s positive in saying “yes risk can be managed” and the dao wants to move forward, we then build the vault. And then Open Dollar can indeed implement and manage it.

I am pretty sure the whole team has done a lot of work here, as well as I am sure they have no bad intentions, nor they are a malicious actor. Just, I think the risk is too high in general, and one way to derisk is to have first the research and then, if any, the product.

[Non-Constitutional] Betting on Builders: Infinite Launchpad Proposal

Vote: Against

@JoJo

I voted against the proposal.

I am getting familiar over time to what danielo is doing with RnDao.

What I like about him is that he is taking a path I would never take, with an approach I would never had. And at this point I am old enough to understand that even if I don’t agree with something or with a specific mission doesn’t mean there is no value behind, or that it can’t be pursued in ways outside my personal framework.
What is he after, and how, is something I support. And I am also trying to give him a bit of a hand in this sense, starting with the questbook grant for collabberry.

But the current proposal imho just doesn’t properly work. I echo the opinions of, generally, too much overhead costs. This solves either through cost cutting, or increase the amount of capital requested to distributed, and I am not sure what is the right way here.
I am also a bit conflicted on the merge of the initiatives of RnDao, EVM capital and Outlier Venture, that in my understanding initially were separated. I understand how joining forces could be seen as a winning strategy, also how a joint force can be “easier” to manage for the dao in term of voting, but I am not sold on this, sorry. We have different teams, different personalities, and different scopes.

I also want to highlight that my vote, is not a vote against the matter per se; i am willing to support the proposal the moment in which is reworked (because, I think it can be reworked), and be addressed for the following

• overhead costs → either we lower the costs directly, or we start with an initial smaller phase and a second phase, larger than the one proposed, so overhead is not that big if phase 1 is succesfull
• clear scope between the 3 ventures, and properly understand if they have to run in tandem vs solo
• (in general) clear scope on targets, what we want to accomplish etc.

ArbitrumHub Evolution: The Next Step in Streamlining Information Access and Raising Awareness for Arbitrum DAO

Vote: Against

@JoJo

Have to vote against this one.

Arbitrum hub is an awesome site. The news from Angela, are super helpful.
I just don’t see the budget of these being almost half a million dollars for 6 months, sorry.

I don’t specifically know the current rate about hosting, running certain services and so on; for what is worth, I think the price of the weekly news is kinda ok-ish, maybe a tad high (6k per month). Biggest problem is the hub management.

I think 0x_Buidler should not give up on this tho, the site is useful, the whole set of service is useful, just coming back to the dao with a better cost plan could do the trick.

Multisig Support Service (MSS) Elections

Vote: 0x_ultra, defipm, cattin, Sinkas, Frisson, Griff, CastleCapital, AbdullahUmar, Matt_StableLab, juanbug, AlexLumley, memyself

@JoJo

I am voting for the following 12 people, in no precise order, for the Arbitrum Multi Sig.

• 0x_ultra: works for me at Jones, arbitrum builder, he is sooo security oriented, great fit
• defipm: another arbi builder, dopex/stryk, another great fit
• cattin: work with him in questbook, not only he is a great delegate but he is currently managing the delegate incentive program and the transactions from that msig which is a nightmare
• Sinkas: I was so glad when I saw his candidacy. With l2beat he is doing a GREAT job, and in the same way we are seeing krz going solo as dao advocate, I would really love to see sinkas contributing on his personal behalf to the dao
• Frisson: one of the strongest partners of Arbitrum through Tally, he is really aligned with the Dao, always around, and tries to make our life easier through new Tally features
• Griff: he is not only a big delegate, but also a delegate that tends to have some time an independent voice. Likely, the multisig would benefit from his perception, despite this not being specifically a council type of job
• CastleCapital: I have had the pleasure to work with @Atomist in LTIPP/STIP.b as advisors, I know how oriented they are to details. I want to see them more involved in the dao day to day operations

@JoJo

• AbdullahUmar: while AranaDigital is a “new” delegate in arbitrum, I have been knowing AbdullahUmar for a while thorugh the UAGP program. He is quite grounded, has ton of experience through Uniswap (both in msig and op in general), so he is a great fit as well
• Matt_StableLab: same as for castlecap, we have been working together in the incentive program, and I like how he works
• juanbug / PGov: I have always liked pgov as delegate, and started to know juan better lately, he would be a great fit here
• AlexLumley: not only he is another arbitrum builder in Savvy, he is also always around giving a hand and crafting proposals for the Dao.
• Me myself of course

I’m quite excited for this election tbh, putting together these many good contributors and delegates is only possible in a program like this one. As i said initially, is gonna be fun

EDIT (something got lost in copy pasting message in 2 posts). There are a lot of good folks listed here, more than the 12 that will be elected imho. While I could have voted for more, I decided to stick to only the 12 I would like to see in this program. This doesn’t mean that others are not endorsed, is just a personal preference, and I really hope to keep seeing some of these and others names more involved in operational programs like this one for the dao. Is all about trust, and trust is something that you build over time and should be rewarded by roles like the above

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Tally votings

Front-end interface to force transaction inclusion during sequencer downtime

Vote: For

Confirming snapshot vote, which i report here for completeness:

@JoJo

This, provided in a way that is user friendly, is a good value add. In time of peril (aka: when everything pumps or dumps) nothing work usually, so alternative routes are needed. Voting for on this proposal.

Pilot Phase: M&A for Arbitrum DAO

Vote: For

Confirming snapshot vote

Catalyze Gaming Ecosystem Growth on Arbitrum

Vote: For
Confirming snapshot vote, which I will report here for convenience

@JoJo

I am voting “for” for this proposal.

Reason is simple. Despite is imperfect on some mechanics, and there is a huge amount of money at stake, I think we need it like oxygen in Arbitrum.
Games take time, and we need to act now. This doesn’t mean spending in a way that doesn’t give a ROI to the ecosystem. But crypto as a whole is still in a growth phase, and gaming in crypto even more. Makes a lot of sense to allocate a good chunk of resources to this. Otherwise we will just be left behind.

Will also add what I wrote in the comment of Tally.

Despite some stuff have changed (specifically: comp from 10 to 25M and the initiative from 2 to 3 years, so effectively considering that around 6M are about marketing+legal+misc we effectively have an overhead of “only” 3M, which is on the VERY HIGH END of a carry, not here present, of 20%), I don’t think this 3M out of 200M is worth killing the initiative. I still believe games are underserved in crypto and this is a big asymmetric bet.

Constitutional AIP - Security Council Improvement Proposal

Vote: For
At the time I didn’t vote in Snapshot. Regardless of this, the idea to improve the amount of signers will give us the flexibility to go back if/when this is going to be needed; since the other msig is already a 9/12, it doesn’t effectively change that much to increase threshold of the second.

ArbitrumDAO Contribution; Safeguarding Software Developers’ Rights

Vote: For

Confirming snapshot vote (even if at the time i voted for 1.5M, definitely supporting still at 1M)

Kwenta x Perennial: Arbitrum Onboarding Incentives

Vote: For

Confirming snapshot vote

[JoJo]

July 2024 voting

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Snapshot votings

Approval of STEP committee recommendations

Vote: For

@JoJo

Voting “for” on this proposal.

This is the natural evolution of several months work, experimental but also important in size, that we need for our treasury.

As i told devansh in other channels, what i don’t like is the fact that the trimming from the initial 17 projects to the current 6 has not been publicly motivated. While I can understand some issues in disclosing details on unreleased products, the space would likely benefit most in understanding why a protocol was selected, and why another was not. I strongly suggest, for a potential next iteration of this, to change this specific course of action.

Improving Predictability in Arbitrum DAO’s Operations

Vote: Favour (predictability only, predictability + approval, abstain, against)

@JoJo

Voting in favour of predicability only.

We need a way for people to know when they will have to do their job (yes, doing this has the responsibilities of a job knowing the consequence of certain votes; and also has for some compensation attached).

I don’t currently fancy having delegates having to approve it to go to snapshot, because I don’t think we are at a point in which votes are spread enough in enough active delegates. While the numbers might seems to point so, we already have a good amount of non active ones. Likely this will translate in pinging some high vote and usually very active candidates to push for the publication.
Would like to see this option (approval), if fails, to be reconsidered in 6 months, after a) we have more data on this b) we have had redelegation weeks and other initiatives that might help toward this goal c) other initiatives that could further reinforce the governance strength we have in arbi.

Cheers!

Pilot for a Questbook Jumpstart fund for problem definition and DAO improvement

Vote: Abstain

@JoJo

Gonna vote abstain on this danielo.

Again, we spoke about it: as posted before, i firmly believe the bulk of a payment on a proposal in a stream like this should come mostly through the confirmation of a snapshot voting. I don’t see this being less than 50%, because 10 or even 20-25% would be a “nice bonus” on top of the work. If at least 50%, if not more, is instead tied to the success of it (and here to me success = approval from the dao = “for” vote), the proposers would work toward this goal, from the foundation of the problem.

I see your point about failure = lesson learned, so still valuable. I can see that, but in this specific stream to me we should push for the other side of the coin, a succesful proposal more than anything.

Furucombo’s Misuse of Funds

Vote: For - Ban Furucombo from the Arb

@JoJo

Voting in favour of banning furucombo here.

Would like to provide also some more color to this beside what has been already stated above.

All the stakeholders here (foundation, organizers of stip/ltip, council/advisors, protocols) to their best to create program that have an impact and are fair and trasparent. To do so, there is A LOT of work from everyone, including protocols who take time to devise proper mechanisms to distribute incentives and implement them, prepare biweekly report, create dashboard to have precise data analysis etcetera.
Not complying is simply inadmissible considering the effort that everybody puts in these programs.

Change Arbitrum Expansion Program to allow deployments of new Orbit chains on any blockchain

Vote: For

@JoJo

Voting FOR on this initiative.

One of the biggest strong point of Arbitrum is the tech stack, and we should leverage it as much as we can.

While some, as we discussed in calls, believe we should keep it more focused on the Eth world, there is a pragmatic consideration to do: if we don’t do it, someone else will. And, likely, we are going in a world in which every dapp might just have his own chain; how big could be the network effect of having Arbitrum tech being the engine of 90% of the L2s and L3s in the world?

Still think we need to refine a bit the proposal. Specifically, we need to be able to monitor and analyse returns over time from specific chains, to understand where the effort should be put BD wise. We need to also understand the cost that offchain labs might have in term of supporting all of these chains, and in general manage the economy at scale. There is also potentially a merit in being able at some point to revise the numbers proposed above (10%) accordingly to business needs.

Finally, since this won’t happen in a short period, the more we go “outside” of the ethereum world, the more we should be aware of the possibility to just have a sentiment checks to understand if we are still going in a direction that is aligned with the vision of the dao.

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Tally votings

Subsidy Fund Proposal from the ADPC

Vote: For
Confirming my previous snapshot vote

Pilot Phase: Arbitrum Ventures Initiative

Vote: For

@JoJo

Changed my stance in Tally, and voted “for” for this initiative. I think Lino and his team were able, between snapshot and tally, to address some of the concerns above; the program consolidated and the live presentation in Bruxelles was quite convincing. Curious to see the end result of this first pilot program, not only for the deliverable per se, but also to better understand how the team wants to work on this topic.

[JoJo]

August 2024 voting

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Snapshot votings

Gaming Catalyst Program (GCP) Council Voting

Vote: CJ, David Bolger, Coinflip, equal weights

@JoJo

I’m placing my chips on the following candidates:

1. coinflip: doesn’t need to many presentation, it is likely one of the best figure for oversight on behalf of the DAO in one of the most novel and important initiative we have spinned up in Arbitrum
2. DavidBolger: not only deal with gaming partnership, he is part of Offchain Labs. One of the biggest perk of this choice imho is that we get Offchain closes to our DAO activity
3. CJ.Bzdewka: his experience in private equity and him being part of governance of Treasure makes him the perfect candidate with the perfect mix of skillset.

Few notes: there are A LOT of good candidates here, was quite hard to nail down a choice and was only possible since I have followed closely these candidates. My main choices are about introducing the “dao” element in the GCP election, since the 2 already nominated (Andrew Green and Tim Chang) have strong Growth And Venture experience.

Entropy Advisors: Exclusively Working With Arbitrum DAO

Vote: For

@JoJo

For the reasons above, and all the reasons i posted previously, I am voting “for” on this proposal.

I can see why some, like GFXlabs, can really focus on the overall cost, and tries to cut it through a shorter mandate + wave of exclusivity. It can make sense, from their point of view, and I am glad we also have in the debate voices that can bring a different opinion on the table.

But personally, in this vote, I am focusing on the cost we will face as a DAO of not having a leadership role, even if temporary, in a pivotal moment for our ecosystem in which we are moving toward even more important initiative.
In the last few months, and at EthCC, entropy has shown how they can effectively cover that leadership role. It doesn’t mean that they will have to do it always and in perpetuity; I actually hope they will be the enabled who gives us the tool to have other entities able to lead (some) initiatives.

But again, not having them, here and now, not having them help in the next few months, will likely cost us way more than the amount they are asking here to give a 1y exclusivity deal to our DAO.

ARB Staking: Unlock ARB Utility and Align Governance

Vote: For

@JoJo

I’m voting “for” on this proposal.

As stated before, I really praise Frisson for being able to put together this many conflicting feedbacks together: he was able to find the perfect solution by saying: we build the skeleton, let’s make the dao fill it (amount of rewards, source of rewards, active delegate definitions etc).
I think this will be an initial powerful signal for markets, and also a way to increase governance. While the 2 don’t necessary belong together, I am personally fine with that.

BUT, I have a big caveat to this: we need to create a definition of active delegates that doesn’t hinder protocol representations. One of the potential byproduct of certain parameters could be, for example, that users might redelegate from protocols to others just because the protocols are active, but not as much for the metrics of the program, to allow users to get the yield. This can happen because for example they don’t comment too much on the forum, or don’t vote all proposals.
While we want to obviously incentivise the participation of protocols in governance, we also have to remember that the main job of protocols is making arbitrum a great place for users through developing dapps and other stuff. Let’s avoid to kill the representation they currently have.

To be more detailed, this is the current situation.

The current top 4 delegates, making a total of more than 60M votes (or between 33 to 50% of the average amount of votes we have in each proposals) are from non protocol type of entity.
And don’t get me wrong: l2beat, gauntlet, olimpio, wintermute, they are all great delegates well aligned with arbitrum. But we can’t imho create a system that would lower even more protocols’ representation in our governance. It would be a bad outcome.

Transparency and Standardized Metrics for Orbit Chains

Vote: Against

@JoJo

I am voting “Against” this initiative.

Nothing wrong with it as a general idea, I appreciate the intent, but I would like first to elaborate on what AlexLumley posted:

@AlexLumley

Why is this Orbit chain data so important for the DAO? I don’t understand why it is important for the DAO to have this data? Will this cause more people to switch to the Arbitrum techstack? Will it improve our Orbit chain incentive programs? Simply having “data” is not enough, it needs to go towards our business objectives.

While I think this could be valuable data, I don’t think it would be valuable now, at least not until orbit chains take a big market share. As a consequences, it feels like the current tools and info instruments we have now to evaluate tvl, data, txs, are more than enough for something that will be (hopefully) extremely important in future, but not prominent in the short term.
Adding to that, the fact that davidgarcia just posted that the Foundation is finalizing agreements to index and distribute data to me is just a confirmation that is too soon for this initiative. We could be easily see more dashboard and services like this born after data is available, with different costs, different use cases and different outcomes

ArbitrumDAO Governance Analytics Dashboard

Vote: For

@JoJo

I am voting “FOR” on this proposal.

I share the concern of gauntlet and maxlomu about potential overlap with other initiatives; but, I will be honest, this is also the reason why we should likely have another source of truth about delegation, voting, activity and all things related to arbitrum governance. The delegate incentive program is becoming a key part of all the DAO, and @seedlatam could potentially see how there could be an integration with this new platform, or even suggest some tailored development to have quality of life upgrade. At the same time, we have live on snapshot the vote about staking arb from Tally. I easily see the potential opposition from some parties, concerned about current karma implementation, and a call for a second source of truth, or just an alternative to their system. And nothing against karma here on my side: just, if delegation and forum activity will become so important, it can make sense to have different parties track governance metrics in different ways.

So Curia you got my support here. But please, when you will move to Tally, try to take in account all of the initiative above, to tailor current key initiatives in our dao; try also to have API implemented in a way that is functional to the data other parties might need as well. We are at the point in which we have a lot of good tools in our dao, but we need to make them work together in a better way

Should the DAO Default to using Shielded Voting for Snapshot Votes?

Vote: For Elections Only

@JoJo

As stated here, voting in favour for elections only.

It would definitely help allievating the “lobbying” problem, which means also newcomers in the dao might have better chances as byproduct of this.
But i am not convinced about other type of voting. As we have seen, most of the discussions on certain topic, for the good or the bad, happen not really in the preliminary weeks/months but only when the vote is live. While I think this is not good, it’s still better than no discussion/engagement at all, and I think shutter vote on non election snapshots would just kill the general engagement for delegates.

Proposal to Temporary Extend Delegate Incentive System.

Vote: For

@JoJo

I obviously support the extention. Being here, provide meaningful comments, steer the narratives toward what we think is best for the dao, requires a lot of energy and time, and the DIP initiatives is definitely needed.

I also agree on keeping the cost the same, despite a drop in arb price. This is the problem we have in any program that is arb denominated: people are happy when price of arb goes up, unhappy when it goes down.
Consistency is key here, and for just a simple 2 months extention keeping everything as is is the best choice to avoid discussion that would better be targeted to a new renewed program.

EDIT just saw the proposal is on snapshot. Voting “for”.

An (EIP-4824 powered) daoURI for the Arbitrum DAO

Vote: Against

@JoJo

Voting against as others. Let’s follow the proper formal path, also maybe in the next discussion we might be able to start to identify what we want to specifically publish as metadata even before going to tally.

ArbitrumDAO Off-site

Vote: Abstain

@JoJo

I am voting “abstain” on this proposal.
While I understand is about exploring the possibility, I think we are going a bit outside the general scope of sentiment check, which should be about more scoped an detailed proposals, while in here we are doing the sentiment check of the sentiment check.

For example, if this was a proposal about having a 1 day event at devcon/ethcc/denver as side event, with a venue specifically for all delegates, some specific rooms for top X delegates, and a specific agenda, I would have voted yes. On an event that it outside any major one, I would vote against (i started larping as a cow to avoid flying all over the world, so I personally prefer going in another continent and do more stuff at once) etcetera.

Should the DAO Create COI & Self Voting Policies?

Vote: FOR: Disclosure Policy, FOR: Responsible Voting Policy

@JoJo

For all the reasons mentioned above, I am voting for “FOR: Disclosure Policy” and “FOR: Responsible Voting Policy”.

I think is definitely good if people disclose their conflicts; is also good if, in a vote that can benefit themself, they also vote in a way that is “responsible”, so for other 2 seats in a 3 seats election etcetera.
I am against the self strict voting policies, especially because protocols for example should be allowed to vote for proposals that directly involve themself. If that was not allowed any user delegating their precious arb to the protocol of their choice would see their delegation being useless, because the protocol can’t vote for his own benefit. A byproduct that I don’t want, among others.

Regardless of my vote, Entropy I am also interested about the specific implementation of this proposal. Knowing it can’t be enforced, should any new vote from now on decide what happens if there is a self voting (with the strict voting policy on) or anything that is against the expected behaviour? How we will specifically handle these conflicts?

Ethereum Protocol Attackathon Sponsorship

Vote: Panda, Abstain, Against, Unicorn

@JoJo

I am voting “Panda, Abstain, Against, Unicorn”.

There is a merit in sustaining the Ethereum ecosystem initiatives, especially the security oriented ones, and by just participating we will get the audit contest in Arbitrum.
That said, I think the Panda commitment would be enough for this initiative, at least in the first iteration in which is proposed, and we can see in future if we want to double down on potential success.
Also, I still think we should pay the equivalent in Arb in the Tally proposal if it’s ok for the organizers instead of Eth.

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Tally votings

[Constitutional] ArbOS 31 “Bianca” (Stylus, RIP-7212 Support, Nova Fee Router)

Vote: For
Confirming previous snapshot votes about Stylus and https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-support-rip-7212-for-account-abstraction-wallets-arbos-30/23298/17?u=jojo

Arbitrum Multi-sig Support Service (MSS)

Vote: For

@JoJo

Voting “for” on Tally.

• the initiative will be cost saving for the DAO
• there will likely be an higher security standard and approach to the matter, thanks to a more robust initiative (member already went through a specific workshop)
• I am part of the multisig, so obviously I support it.

Entropy Advisors: Exclusively Working With Arbitrum DAO

Vote: For

Confirming snapshot vote

[JoJo]

September 2024 voting

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Snapshot votings

[Constitutional] Extend Delay on L2Time Lock

Vote: For

@JoJo

yellow is a good color. Voting for.
The 8D lock for constitutional proposal is definitely not a lot for the proposals itself (that, usually, needs to be vetted by several actors and discussed by the dao). At the same time we need to implement mechanism for users to be able to get the fuck out if the want in time, especially considering that arbitrum as of now is the biggest L2 in term of tvl. We have a responsibility, ensuring that users are safe in their ability to manage their capital, and this vote works toward this first principle.

STIP-Bridge Operational Budget

Vote: Abstain

@JoJo

As one of the contributors to the STIP, I am voting “abstain”.
While the current COI policy approved and voted by the DAO doesn’t necessarily stop people to vote for themself, in a situation like this it makes sense to do so regardless, hoping that the DAO does indeed find valuable the contribution that me, SEEDGov, CastleCapital, Matt_StableLab and AlexLumley gave to this initiative.

[Replace Oversight Committee with MSS] Delegate to Voter Enfranchisement Pool — Event Horizon

Vote: For

@JoJo

1. confirming the Tally vote here. I think this is a very cool experiment, to have a distributed delegated. We will see the frequency of votes and the alignment of votes. I think is worth seeing the results, and I think it would help addressing the rising quorum since my expectation is a 100% presence in all votings, both in snapshot and tally.
2. voting in favour for the addition to the MSS to the program in the snapshot vote. As part of the MSS i am glad projects are getting onboarded, the more the better, to save costs and increase security.

ArbitrumDAO Procurement Committee Phase II

Vote: For

@JoJo

Strongly voting “for” on this proposal.

ADPC created one of a kinda entity in arbitrum and I think in crypto in general, and goes in what I think is an extremely good direction for high decentralized orgs like our dao: bridge well known framework and way to solve problems from more traditional industries to ours.

We don’t need to reinvent the wheel everytime, we can easily adapt what already exists in professional world into crypto, with a tailoring for the specific tools and needs we have, and this is what is happening here in my opinion.

I also like the expantion in scope, and I partially share the concern of @Frisson about it potentially be a big too big as workload; at the same time, knowing the parties involved, I think they can pull it off.

As a final note, in this case, like in the stylus sprint, I am strongly against any new election. While I think there could be others that potentially have the knowledge to move this forward (even tho 90% of the lawyerish force of arbitrum is in the parties above), even just the handover, and the reshape of vision, would literally eat on the whole mandate time wise with suboptimal results.

[Pyth Network] Arbitrum LTIPP Extension Request

Vote: Against

@JoJo

Going back to the snapshot, as for the synthetix application, I am, unfortunately, voting against it, as well as the other extention requests in Arbitrum. To quote my previous answer:

@JoJo

I would have normally been in favour if it wasn’t for the detox proposal just recently presented, and passed, in our DAO; but that proposal is an extremely important signal about 1) trying to see what happens to our chains with no incentives 2) give the time to the DAO to best reflect how to weaponize these programs in future. There is also the secondary point, not necessarily as important but indeed important, about competitive advantages of protocols asking for an extention versus protocols that just finished in LTIPP or about to finish in STIP.

In here we have a different situation, which is a potential usage of funds for an infra product, so I could see the merit of the extention. But the mix of the detox proposal + the fact that most of the leftover funds are tied, in my understanding, to lower costs than expected, means that the only real reason to keep Pyth in an extention would be to facilitate his role in Arbitrum. This is something we could advocate for Synthetix and Aave as well, even if their role is different. Again, the vote of the DAO for the detox proposal is more important, and should just be respected by participants.

Synthetix LTIP Grant Extension Request

Vote: Against

@JoJo

Thank you for this detailed feedback.

I am, unfortunately, voting against this and all the other extention requests in Arbitrum.
I would have normally been in favour if it wasn’t for the detox proposal just recently presented, and passed, in our DAO; but that proposal is an extremely important signal about 1) trying to see what happens to our chains with no incentives 2) give the time to the DAO to best reflect how to weaponize these programs in future. There is also the secondary point, not necessarily as important but indeed important, about competitive advantages of protocols asking for an extention versus protocols that just finished in LTIPP or about to finish in STIP.

But I also want to add a few things. I really feel you about first, the excitement of participating to this program, and then the constant small delays of integrations and tech development that turn out to be eating more and more week over week on the timeline, up to the point you had to come here to ask for this extention; I have seen this happening, and even in the protocols i work for we had to take hard and complex decisions due to delay of partners’ integrations.
As you already partially mentioned most of the issue would be addressed by a longer program, in which of course we need to embed a process for these and other similar situations: if you have 1 year, and you need to skip the first three months for technical issue, you will still have a way in.

Finally, i want to commend the effort the synthetix team made to come to arbitrum. You decided to go for a specific push in our chain, with an ad-hoc application and obviously a lot of work behind it, on a product level, strategic level and marketing level, and what did happen is indeed unfortunate but also something quite common in the tech world. For this reason, in the next program, I will be one your stronger supporter fwiw.

Enhancing Multichain Governance: Upgrading RARI Governance Token on Arbitrum

Vote: For

@JoJo

Seconding blockworks, gauntlet and others, support in a proposal that in future can potentially be replicated and tailored to basically allows the onboarding of more protocols over time in arbitrum.
Voting for.

Fund the Stylus Sprint

@JoJo

this proposal makes sense. Voting in favour: pushing stylus, from adoption and marketing standpoint, can only increase the strength of technical positions of Arbitrum as a chain, which hopefully will also reflect on the economics down the road. Stylus is a strategic advantage we have.

Now, a few points worth discussing.
Not sure if this would be outside the idea of a “sprint”, but maybe is worth discussing @Entropy.
The amount of the program is non trivial, and the minimum amount suggested, 50k is non trivial either. For a budget of $750k in new protocols and ideas i received 84 proposals in 4 months. While here is more scoped, the combination of only an 8 weeks application + a relative high budget might create a rush of application which, while indication of success, might not be the best organic answer you might be looking for. Suggestion could be a cohort type of approach like the one we had in the UAGP program, potentially here alternative a 4 weeks application + feedback with a 4 weeks evaluation, and repeat for 3 seasons, covering the first 6 months of the program. And this would also mean putting at budget a little bit more than what was posted due to operations extending for further 4 months.
Due to also how the committee is structure and the length of the program, I suggest you to either select in the committee a program manager or add one when you go to tally. There will be plenty of decisions or complex situations along the way such as

• evaluating diversity of application from a higher point of view
• keeping consistency in modus operandi of reporting and communication
• being the ultimate decision maker, in case of disagreement of the commission, on changes from protocols’ developments along this long year, non expected outcomes from protocols and other circumstances that are just too heterogeneous to be mentioned here.
  As you described it, entropy could be that program manager, but I also see you listed as advisor; might be worth clarifying.

On the milestones:

@Entropy

Milestone distribution will function as the following are achieved:

1. 10% - Planning + Building: Creation of a Development Plan, Architecture Design, Prototyping, Implementation, Optimization.
2. 30% - Deployment: Testing, Auditing, Deployment. *Projects will be eligible but not guaranteed admission into the subsidy program per the ADPC
3. 25% - Checkpoint 1
4. 25% - Checkpoint 2

This makes a lot of sense theoretically but might just not be practically doable based on previous experience. You should try to integrate this in the template/framework for protocols, but you should also be flexible to other type of structures, because is extremely likely that other needs will arise.

As a final note, i am TOTALLY in favour in a non election type of the committee. In general, while a dao should be open for roles, there are several situation in which the knowledge to be part of a committee is just too vertical that elections are just detrimental. This program, and the ADPC, are clear examples.

Hope this helps, and sorry for not providing this feedback earlier before the snapshot.

[Aave DAO] LTIPP Grant Extension Request

Vote: Against

@JoJo

Voting against. Let me first report a previous feedback released for synthetix, and still relevant here.

@JoJo

I am, unfortunately, voting against this and all the other extention requests in Arbitrum.
I would have normally been in favour if it wasn’t for the detox proposal just recently presented, and passed, in our DAO; but that proposal is an extremely important signal about 1) trying to see what happens to our chains with no incentives 2) give the time to the DAO to best reflect how to weaponize these programs in future. There is also the secondary point, not necessarily as important but indeed important, about competitive advantages of protocols asking for an extention versus protocols that just finished in LTIPP or about to finish in STIP.

But I also want to add a few things. I really feel you about first, the excitement of participating to this program, and then the constant small delays of integrations and tech development that turn out to be eating more and more week over week on the timeline, up to the point you had to come here to ask for this extention; I have seen this happening, and even in the protocols i work for we had to take hard and complex decisions due to delay of partners’ integrations.
As you already partially mentioned most of the issue would be addressed by a longer program, in which of course we need to embed a process for these and other similar situations: if you have 1 year, and you need to skip the first three months for technical issue, you will still have a way in.

And I’ll be honest, I am quite said of not seeing the full fledged program about GHO going live in arbitrum, especially after being the LTIPP advisor for AAVE. I can see value + utility for the ecosystem.

My strong advice here, is prepare in the next quarter everything that is needed, from a tech/audit standpoint on the GHO ecosystem. Whatever the next iteration of the program is going to be, I don’t see AAVE not being part of it as one of the main lender, and not being part of it as stablecoin facilitator in the ecosystem, including GHO. I think it will be a no brainer a collaboration between arbitrum and AAVE, also on the diffusion and adoption of gho and increase of stablecoin liquidity in the ecosystem.
So, while I understand this vote can be a frustrating, I am definitely keen to see AAVE here as a constant presence in crypto and in Arbitrum specifically, as well as an important participant to any relevant incenive program we might spin up in future.

Constitutional AIP: Proposal to adopt Timeboost, a new transaction ordering policy

Vote: Collect bids in ETH to treasury

@JoJo

Confirming my previous take, I am voting for collecting the fees in eth.

While the buyback and burn would create some sort of upward pressure, this will be dwarfed by the unlocks; considering we are on track to also approve the arb staking proposal, to me it makes more sense, for now, to just collect everything in eth.

I can also see the dao going back to this decision after a few years to reasses.

Terms of Tenure for STEP program manager

Vote: Earmark Funds from existing, Have a new elections, Run the program for only 6 months, Liquidate the program, Abstain

@JoJo

exploiting for shortening reasons the response from Pennsylvania University cause i voted in the same order (earmark funds, new elections, only 6 months, liquidation of the program, abstain)

Goal is to find the funds to pay Steakhouse for a whole year, to me anything else is unacceptable knowing the effort that was done to create this program growth oriented. Let’s find the money to keep the program running please.

PS please, for the future, write the options in the snapshot in a better way. I understand that there are characters limitations, but a simple option a / b / c etcetera with an explanation of each option in the test would make everything clearer. Took me a few minutes to understand how to properly vote in the way I wanted.

ArbitrumDAO Off-site

Vote: IRL/conference/no scholarships

@JoJo

Voting as per the below

I’m in favour of meeting people, but with a series of caveat.
IF we have to do it, to me would be key to have it on major conferences: despite all the fun and giggles, this event or conferences are de facto job travels, and would like to keep it at minimum if possible.
I am also not a fan of scholarships in a case like this one, so it was not my first choice.
As a final note, I think online would not be meaningful nor different from the calls we do on a day to day basis.

Would also like to add that while i can generally support the idea, a potential tally vote to me is dependent on the initiatives that will be moved forward by the GovHack team, that I would favour over this one due to the previous track record.

GovHack Devcon in Bangkok - Hack Humanity

Vote: FOR

@JoJo

@JoJo

This is proposal is something I am really glad came in our forum.

It has several stuff that either we did succesfully in the past (the govhackaton) or stuff that naturally came in during previous govhacks that the dao and delegates ned (core day).

I told this klauss in a call, when people come to govhack, since it is the first event that gathers people in the arbitrum ecosystem, it naturally transforms (also) in a BD event, with delegates jumping between helping teams and tracks vs personal meetings with others; but this latter part happens without a dedicated time and space, thus creating and inefficient situation.

While I understand that some might ask themself why the addition of core, this is the exact reason: satisfy a need that happens naturally cause of the dynamics described above.

Some more details are likely needed to lay down the proper rules of this new part, but these can be decided together in the next 2 months.

Full support to this initiative, especially cause is quite contained in price.

consistently with this, voting a strong FOR on this initiative.

I really appreciated GovHack at ETHcc, and Klauss was able to go around and gather feedbacks on how to improve.
The initial core day i think is quite important because of the timeline dynamic we see, and is perfectly complementary to the event as we know it. Plus, the budget is somehow contained compared to similar initiatives currently in discussion/vote.

[Non-Constitutional] Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program

Vote: FOR DIP 1.5

@JoJo

After all the feedbacks here, feedbacks in the call and private feedbacks, voting “For” on DIP 1.5.

Is gonna be a mess, seed is gonna have the hardest time of their life, and I am pretty sure a lot of folks will initially complain about having that 0.75 points more in this or that category.

But often times than not the hardest path is also the path that leads to the biggest growth, and I think evaluating not only the votes, but a big part of the arbitrum governance life, is what we need. We literally need to put all delegates in the position of interacting, and interact in a meaningful way.

A few things here

1. we are going to have to obviously trust the seed gang here. I won’t quote Uncle Ben here. But you know where i am going with this
2. that said, if I had to trust one delegate on a massive program like this, it would be seed. Having had the pleasure to work with some of them, and meet a few of them, I see them as a force of good that is pushing more than others for adoption of crypto not to speculate but to solve specific problems. I quote this because is easy for some, as we saw in the call, to think that there could be too much power concentration. While is true, is also necessary since a public mechanism for evaluation would be not only extremely unfeasible, but won’t be consistent over time. TLDR: I trust seed latam, a lot, to run this in the fairiest way possible
3. As suggested, I think the spread of costs between 1.5 and 1.1 of around 40k is too small. We could find ourself to have a (positive) explosion of delegates presence between this program, the staking program and all the initiatives we have. The amount of work is almost linear with the amount of delegates we have, and since this program is a 1y long one my strong suggestion is to add a clause, on the tally vote, for which that if we will be above X amount of delegates, they might ask for some further funds to cover opex, which is mostly manual labour
4. in the previous iteration, seed if i recall was not able to enroll in the program to avoid conflicts. I think this be removed for 1.5. To make the participation fair and agnostic, the evaluation of seed governance could be only about the amount of votes, onchain and offchain, plus call particpation. for the rest of the evaluation, subject to interpretation, it could just be the median of the score of all delegates involved in the program, or maybe the median of the second lower half.

Yes, in all of this I am saying that seed should be able to ask more and enroll in the program, thus incresing overall cost. While aware of this, I also understand the enormous amount of workload this program will bring to their shoulders, being a cow that reads all the posts and comments in the forum: if i imagine myself not only reading all, but also evaluating all, and knowing how much this program will probably be relevant for the arbi staking proposal, I really want for seed to have all the ability to do the best job possible here. And here it means being able to onboard all the people they think are needed to have a consistent evaluation over the next 12 months.

[Non-Constitutional] Funds to Bolster Foundation’s Strategic Partnerships Budget

Vote: FOR

@JoJo

I am voting “for” on this proposal.

As stated above, I think the idea of the foundation having a fund to foster growth for specific deals, is what is needed, especially for orbit expantion.

I partially second the voices of folks calling for more transparency; I also understand that not all details should be disclosed and, in some cases, some details can’t be disclosed due to either specific agreements or just business logic.
We have several gaps here due to the status of Foundation, as the most important stakeholder in our ecosystem. And I don’t think anybody wants to challenge this status, nor thinks it doesn’t hold true. But potentially, this is not for example a way to disclose some information to the dao (re: foundation grant program, while we can see the end protocol getting the grant, I don’t think there is a public list of the amount or scope for each grant request, just to give an example).

So, while the above could be a bit off topic here, would be a solution similar to the one adopted for the GCP be useful?
In there we have a council, under NDA, that can have full knowledge on the operation behind, and can alert the DAO in case something is wrong, and potentially claw back funds (paging @Djinn for confirmation here). I don’t think we should gun necessarily for this specific type of dynamic, nor I do think the DAO should claw back funds from the foundation. But a certain degree of oversight/collaboration, even if under NDA, could be useful, and in general could be a good tool to leverage the operation of DAO and foundation. This council can indeed steer the convo of dao’s initiative toward specific ones that would benefit on going deal of the foundation, and the council could be part of the transparency semestral report (or, add an indepedent section all together).

I am spitballing ideas here, and I am open to a feedback that is: all of this is just nonsense, is non applicable, doesn’t solve problems, does only introduce friction.

But since the foundation is coming to the dao, and since we should enhance the synergy between the dao and the foundation in general because we all have the same goal, this initiative could be a start.

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Tally votings

Funds to bootstrap the first BoLD validator

Vote: For
Confirming previous snapshot votes about letting foundation run the first Bold validator and financing potential third parties.

ARB Staking: Unlock ARB Utility and Align Governance

Confirming previous snapshot vote; I also think the new details on the technical implementation (the unistaker module, ability to introduce a small timelock and others) make a lot of sense.

Vote: For

[CANCELED] Delegate to Voter Enfranchisement Pool — Event Horizon

Vote: Against
Vote cancelled due to the wrong details in the proposal, voting against

Delegate to Voter Enfranchisement Pool — Event Horizon

Vote: For

@JoJo

• confirming the Tally vote here. I think this is a very cool experiment, to have a distributed delegated. We will see the frequency of votes and the alignment of votes. I think is worth seeing the results, and I think it would help addressing the rising quorum since my expectation is a 100% presence in all votings, both in snapshot and tally.
• voting in favour for the addition to the MSS to the program in the snapshot vote. As part of the MSS i am glad projects are getting onboarded, the more the better, to save costs and increase security.

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Security council

Nominee Selection

Vote: Dedaub (100% of the weight)

@JoJo

I am a poor cow with just about 50k votes.

For this reason, i decided in this round to just push for Dedaub.

Not only they are an audit firm but, more than others, thanks to the ADPC program, are more entrenched in the arbitrum ecosystem. I think we should double down on people and entities committed in our blue chain, and I think that their experience plus their tailored role in here will be helpful in the security council.

[JoJo]

October 2024 voting

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Snapshot votings

[Non-Constitutional] Whitelist Infura Nova Validator

Vote: For

@JoJo

Infura is in my knowledge one of the most reliable provider out there, and also well known in the industry. While this is just a formality, obviously needs to be rectified so we can register them. Voting for.

Not sure if could be maybe a situation in which we also want to review how we handle onboarding/offboarding of infra provider, to avoid this happening again in future (but maybe as cliffton said was just an oversight and nothing more)

Research on context and retention

Vote: For

@JoJo

Voting for.
Identifying patterns in discussion could be quite interesting, even tho I wouldn’t personally want a big focus of the DAO, in future, being on this topic, cause it risks to skew convos too much.
As it is, in favour because also this initiative won’t bear any cost.

An EIP-4824 powered daoURI for Arbitrum DAO

Vote: For – Use ENS txt records

@JoJo

While the contract could be better more flexible, I think is fine going for the simplest solution, AKA a txt file in the ens. And I think that when we will want to update info in a meaningful way, a discussion + a sentiment check vote could be done and the foundation could take care of it, especially because my guess is that this operation shouldn’t happen too often.
amanwithwings pls let me know if i am missing something here.

LTIPP Retroactive Community Funding Selections

Vote: Tokenguard
I was quite impressed by their presentation during the Incentive call of this week: they are one of the few providers who decided to try and go more in depth in the data analysis, regardless of LTIPP council not selecting them in the previous months.
I would have normally voted against funding any initiative, but this one bears to me a push forward to keep the team engaged in our DAO: their data while imperfect is to me a good step toward the right direction analysis wise.

Establishing a DAO Events Budget for 2025

Vote: For

@JoJo

With the primary proposal + changes I want to show my overall support.

As a Dao, our goal is to, generically, evolve and get better. While this concept is abstract, from a pragmatic pov it means filling the gaps we have and remove friction.

One of the biggest friction we have is what is in between good proposals from good contributors vs the final outcome; often times than not this is about having not only a budget, but a budget by a certain date. With the previous even we saw that you need to move with weeks and sometimes months in advance, and the event budget will likely remove this friction (same as the treasury initiative to have a certain amount of stables, in our pocjets, will allow to remove friction from programs that requires a usd denominated budget; OT here, I know, but to me it has the same overarching goal of removing friction).

(V2) Arbitrum Research & Development Collective

Vote: For, 2.09M

@JoJo

I am voting in favor.

I think we need for our DAO this collective. We spin up ton of initiatives, and some goes in parallel, are highly technical and/or require smart contract implementation. We need to be able to asses the risk and we can’t make the responsability fall back on OCL.
At the same time we need a data science unit; we need to crunch data and understand what is happening both in our world and in the rest of the crypto world.

I don’t have a very strong opinion on the budget. Immutablelawyer I know it would be quite difficult, but maybe in future could be interesting to try and highlight the difference of amount of deliverable (or whatever kpi you deem fit) between budget A, B and C. I am pretty sure that 90% of users here who didn’t work in an audit or research firm don’t know the cost of bread. Because of this, I am going with the middle choice of 2.09M.

As a final thought, I hope that when we are going to have to renew this initiative in 6 months, we will have opco capable of internalize this whole structure. I really think we will need risk and data analyst, constantly, moving forward.

On a more general note, I support the council added on top, I really think analyzing the work can be a very complex task not suited just for a single advocate; the payroll structure (1/3 upfront, and the rest split 50/50 before/after deliverable) is for sure better in term of alignment. I also think it’s more of a theoretical solution than anything, “hours” in crypto are what they are, they are easy to game (not saying anyone would do that) and are a not so meaningful measure compared to IRL jobs in which you just use a badge. But I understand the need to address some concern, and the need to at least try to find solutions.

Thanks for the hard work.

[Non-Constitutional] Arbitrum Token Swap Pilot Program

Vote: Against

@JoJo

I’m voting AGAINST this proposal in the temp check.

First of all, motivation seems unclear.

@LuukDAO

By embedding Token Swaps as a vital element of Arbitrum Ecosystem Development and critical programs such as LTIP, Arbitrum can continue pro-actively incentivizing ecosystem growth

This is what is stated here. In the initial discussion, which I don’t know why it wasn’t linked, it was instead presented with a different motivation.

@thedevanshmehta

Token swaps are a form of treasury diversification that increases Arbitrum alignment of protocols. In our view, token swaps should be the final stage of ecosystem support by the DAO, which could begin with a small Questbook grant and finally graduate to a direct token swap with us.

The initiative has been moved from treasury diversification to growth of the chain, with a partial common goal of alignment of the protocols. But even here, the treasure example to me doesn’t hold: we are giving for granted that, if our treasury would have held magic, treasure would have stayed in our ecosystem. I don’t think this holds true.
For these reasons, seems like the end goals are a bit unclear.

Also, and maybe is me, I think this program is more a “virtue signal” than anything. Let me try to analyse the reasons why a protocol should do a token swap, knowing that the following are the terms.

@LuukDAO

Non-Sales Clause
Arbitrum DAO and the third-party DAO will swap tokens with a 3-month lock. After the three month lock, the tokens will unlock 10% monthly for ten months. If no Arbitrum Treasury Management team is in place within nine months of executing the token swaps, the Pilot team will propose a solution for managing these tokens before they unlock.

Using for OpEx / Incentive program
The protocol will start to receive to get unlocked arb, at a rate of 10%, after 3 months. I see little reason for a protocol to get into this deal for covering opex since these are the terms; but neither the terms are such that the protocol can use the sum easily to spin up their own incentive program, at least not before several months (and they could do it through their own token at that point).

Using as yield generating mechanism
We still don’t have staked arb. We are currently working on it, but will take some time to be implemented; as such, is quite difficult to project the economics in an exchange. Matter of the fact, most token swaps are done because not only you signal alignment, but also because is bad optic for yourself to farm your own protocol with your own token but is instead ok to farm a friendly protocol. How can we even put the real value proposition of arb if we don’t yet know how staking will look like?

Using for voting power
This is the only case currently that would make sense to me: a protocol wants to participate to the governance of Arbitrum. But, looking at the list of the 19 protocols whitelisted, almost all the upperhalf of them is already participating to the governance; the lower half, will be quite difficult IMHO to involve them in governance unless there has been specific contacts on this regards. Happy to be proven wrong, would be good to have more builders involved in our DAO directly.

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There is also a final consideration on the management of these coins. Assuming swaps will go through, and let’s even assume we have everything vested, at that point there is definitely a different reputation consequences for the protocols selling the arbs, or for our dao to sell the protocols’ tokens.
For the protocol, selling the arb token will likely be ok, or even go unnoticed.
For our DAO, it will likely be negative (“you don’t support external protocols”) to sell non arbitrum native protocols’ tokens. It will be extremely negative to sell instead the token of arbitrum native one (“the dao doesn’t even support GMX/Camelot/insert name of native arbitrum protocol”). It could potentially be ok to utilize them in yield generating strategies through a treasury manager, but the amount exchanged, since we have a cap of 500k, won’t be worth the hassle in my opinion; plus, we are assuming that there will be good way to generate yield or that we will also have a treasury manager. TLDR: whatever token swap we do, it will be quite difficult for the DAO to sell these tokens.

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In my view, the DAO should take a totally different approach to align protocols to the chain and foster growth: we should invest in protocols.
This doesn’t mean buying the token, but literally participating to raises of the protocols, and get a portion of the equity. This, to me, would make way more sense.
We are not there yet because we need legal infrastructure that we don’t have for example. But to me, not having yet the tools doesn’t mean we should go for the path highlighted above.

As a final note, i want to say I appreciate the work done so far. I think the proposal is for sure better than the initial one, and I think the people added (paper, castlecap) add a ton of experience and professionality to this group. Despite this, I really can’t find a way to frame the token swaps idea as a good idea for our DAO, sorry.

GCP Council Re-Confirmation Vote for Tim Chang

Vote: For

@JoJo

I’m voting FOR to reconfirm the two appointed members of GCP, Tim and John.

I had the pleasure to know and work for a bit with Tim when I was in the Interim Committee. I can testify that he definitely brings on table the experience of a VC that has been investing in gaming, which, well, is probably one of the most meaningful way in which a committee member can contribute to the GCP fund.

[…]

Glad we have both of them onboard!

GCP Council Re-Confirmation Vote for John Kennedy

Vote: For

@JoJo

I’m voting FOR to reconfirm the two appointed members of GCP, Tim and John.

[…]

With John, I only knew him from meeting him and working with him at GovHack in Bruxelles, and at the time of elections i discovered is important background in the AWS game tech. The experience with one of the most important infra provider, in gaming, already makes him a fit for the council; the fact that he is also actively involved in the DAO and his further experience in VC is a welcomed plus.

Glad we have both of them onboard!

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Tally votings

UPDATED - Ethereum Protocol Attackathon Sponsorship

Vote: For
Confirming previous snapshot vote

[NON-CONSTITUTIONAL] Arbitrum DAO Procurement Committee: Phase II Proposal

Vote: For
Confirming previous snapshot vote

Constitutional AIP - Extend Delay on L2Time Lock

Vote: For
Confirming previous snapshot vote

[Non-Constitutional] Funds to Bolster Foundation’s Strategic Partnerships Budget

Vote: For
Confirming previous snapshot vote

Enhancing Multichain Governance: Upgrading RARI Governance Token on Arbitrum

Vote: For
Confirming previous snapshot vote

ArbitrumDAO strategic “Off-site” (online) updated proposal

Vote: Against

@JoJo

I didn’t thought the online option would win, so I didn’t craft a proper feedback for snapshot, and feel like I should add some here in Tally.

Voting against. I’ll be really honest here, we all live in a series of infinite calls and meetings, both public (with the arb calendar) and private (talk to delegates, working groups etc). I don’t think an online event with a 2 workshops of half day each, plus async alignment, will be successful, because presence is likely gonna be scattered and inconsistent.

I would be REALLY HAPPY to be proven wrong here, and if it passes I hope it will be something extremely useful to which I will do my best to attend

[Non-Constitutional] Arbitrum DAO Delegate Incentive Program

Vote: For
Confirming previous snapshot vote

Fund the Stylus Sprint

Vote: Abstain
Since I was contacted to be part of the program and help the committee, I decided to abstain from the Tally voting compared to the “for” I gave in snapshot. Still think that obviously this is a great proposal for which I would have voted in favor otherwise

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Security council

Member election, phase 2

@JoJo

Voted Dedaub, Dennison and Emiliano.

• Dedaub, as explained in phase 1, is already pretty entrenched through the security subsidy fund. Would like to see them in the council
• Dennison, there is no stronger partner to our ecosystem then Tally
• Emiliano is a powerhouse and didn’t made it in the last election by very few votes, and hope to see him in the security council right now.

There are plenty of good candidates to be honest, special mention for gzeon as well which I hope I will see in the council.

[JoJo]

November 2024 voting

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Snapshot votings

Adopt a Delegate Code of Conduct & Formalize Operations

Vote: For

@JoJo

Voting in favour of the code of conduct.

First, we are getting big enough that we need at least a piece of paper in which is stated: this is good, this is ok, this can likely have bad consequences. Otherwise, with the amount of people we have, there will be at some point malicious actor that would just justify their action by saying that it was not written anywhere.

While I can understand that most are concerned about hard implementation, I think the soft one is fine, for one reason: if we come to the point of having to exclude someone from the dao life (dip, or other), it is unlikely to come from just a single event. It will come from a behaviour, over time, that will show poor alignment with the dao as a whole, likely culminating with a single event that can be used as a proxy.
I am again positive, and optimist, on the fact that all the og and good delegates we have in here will just constantly observe what happens in the forum, in the chat, in the vote rationale, and also in twitter, and will do their best to solve conflicts and realign parties before we come to the point of having to take actions based on violation of the code of conduct.

Also thanks entropy for this!

[Non-Constitutional] Treasury Management v1.2

Vote: For

@JoJo

Interesting set of feedbacks so far on the votes. Let me first anticipate the vote: in favour.

The issue addressed here, to me, is broad: is about weaponizing some assets that we have in the treasury (eth) + have an environement with less friction in the dao to pay SP in stables (conversion of arb in stables), something that we failed a couple of times already. Plus at the same time find yield strategies for these assets idling, which are the stables and up to some degree the arb.

@pedrob

However, I don’t see this proposal as true treasury management.

I can kinda agree here. This is not necessarily treasury management at full scope, but is a management of a subpart of assets, with just a certain consciousness of DAO spending (regen reports) and no DAO budget yet. It tries to address some needs that we have, plus create yield on some assets doing, effectively, nothing for now.
So again: is it treasury management satisfying all the needs we have in term of spending, risk, yield etc? No. But we don’t have these info, and to me is a very good way to start.
It tried to go for low hanging fruits such as eth staking, stable convertion and some yield. Already with this, in the environment (our dao) that we have, historically quite resilient to these initiative, we see a decent opposition.

I think instead is good that we start exactly here, and evolve into what we need: in 6 months we might have the opco, likely another more aggressive type of market regime, we will have hopefully some insight into timeboost revenue, and other iniative laid down that will tell us if we will have to increase/decrease size, risk, type of assets, etc.

Now let’s go on doubt, margin of improvements and others.

@pedrob

Finally, I would like to inquire about the rationale behind creating two committees to execute each of the management’s objectives.

I don’t have an opinion as strong as this one but can understand the rationality. At the same time, I can understand the rationality like entropy said of the two buckets being run with different skillset in mind.
I think the effective answer is a mix of both: there could be different people in the operation of both buckets, but there should be a single overview to always have a tab on what is effectively happening from a risk standpoint. I think, for now, the current setup is good enough, and hope that in 6 months, at renewal or under opco, it will be instead made more cohesive.

Another big improvement part in future will be STEP: it necessarily has to converge in these initiative. While it also add a somehow very specific growth nature, even more so on a BD and advertisement level since it was also about attracting institution in our DAO, we don’t have to forget how in the end the goal of that initiative was to have stables deployed in RWA to produce yield for the DAO. In 6 months it should converge into whatever we will have here, and any phase 2 for step, if started in the meantime, should be setup with this merging goal in mind.

On a final note on the people involved and the process so far proposed.

@GFXlabs

More broadly, GFX usually votes against proposals that bundle creation of an office and ratification of specific persons to hold that office.

I can honestly say that this makes a lot of sense as a general approach, but not always. As usual, devil is in the details, and we are a DAO in which we tend to try and have a say in everything, always.
In this very instance we have a topic that is both extremely complex (treasury management), requires a lot of expertise and so specific figures, and a history of the DAO not finding right away the path (remember the karp/gauntlet proposal was on discussion i think in july, almost 5 months ago). The fact that we need to move toward some sort of treasury management, the fact that in 6 months this will likely be revised, and the fact that Entropy made the DD on all candidates, to me is more than enough to support this initiative. And I hope others will see, more than the imperfections of it, the important step forward that it will be for the DAO, knowing that we will be able to adjust it along the road.

Restitution For Extensively Delayed ArbitrumDAO Minigrant Winners

Vote: Against

@JoJo

@JoJo

Never chimed in the discussion so far, but let me reiterate what others already posted: in a grant program that is denominated in non stable currencies, the change of value in payment is expected.

Is quite unfortunate that this resulted in delay and a blocker for most projects; but this doesn’t necessarily entile the project to further compensantion because nobody would be here if arb would have gone from 2$ to 4$. And this is something i can say first hand because not only i have been in several grant programs, i also have been in programs with payments denominated in arb, in which grantee never complained when price was going up, but had some reservation when it was going down.

This to be clear is not to flip responsability on you. I simpathize with your situation, and having served a lot of small team with grants I know how important these milestones can be just for the survivability of a team, or to effectively ship the product. There was a problem in the program, a lot of delays, that had bad consequences on the operation of project. This will mean that the dao, next time, either won’t vote for the same people to run the program, or for the program itself.

But it doesn’t necessarily mean that the dao should compensate people who requested the grant and saw the dollar value going down. We could, at scale, apply this to the LTIPP program, in which 60M of arbs got distributed, with proposal coming in when arb was way above 1$, and projects receiving the stream for users up to the point in which it was worth 0.4$. While different (we are talking about opex in your case, incentive to users in this case), should there be an argument for it as well? The answer is obviously no.

Consistently with this, I have voted against this proposal.

I really sympathise with both the proposer and the team affected, I really do, and I can understand the frustration. But the grant program has always been denominated in arb.
To give an example, in LTIPP, proposers created specific kpi on economic value based on arb at the time of their proposal (around 1.7$). They effectively received arb at a value that was below 0.8$ or less, and we are talking about 30, 40M arbs. This extreme example is to show that for non denominated arb grants there will always be this problem; it’s unfortunately more prominent in grants that are for smaller team, because it can really make the difference for the survivability of a project.
But again the dao can’t take the burden of how volatile the asset is; the dao can for sure take in consideration how there was a big problem with the service provider involved, and try to find ways to correct this behaviour in future.
It’s really quite unfortunate, I don’t think it would be fair to set this precedent.

Hackathon Continuation Program

Vote: In favour, yes onchain mechanism

@JoJo

Voting in favor, with the option of onchain.

First, the structure is quite interesting. I have chatted privately with Daniel on this proposal, the mentorship part is something that inheretly comes in grant programs for some teams (young founders, founders with extremely good ideas but no experience, founders that got rejected but that have a bright future) but this happens on a spot basis, and is tied to the skill and will of the comimttee/person who evaluate it. And definitely we would need more, so is interesting to see a program structured to incorporate it.

I added the yes to the onchain vote cause i personally evaluated collaberry for a grant in questbook season 2, and I am looking forward to see them showing off their tool in the “real life”.

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Tally votings

(V2) Arbitrum Research & Development Collective

Vote: For
Confirming snapshot vote

Establishing a DAO Events Budget for 2025

Vote: For
Confirming snapshot vote

[JoJo]

December 2024 voting

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Snapshot votings

[Non-consitutional] User Research: Why build on Arbitrum?

Vote: Arbitrum + 2 Others (OP + SOL)

@JoJo

I don’t mind this research, on several fronts, so I am voting in favour with the 2 other ecosystems: it makes sense to do a research that even if scoped, or preliminary, can give us some insight.

Few things tho:

• agree with pedrob, this could have stayed on the forum for a while more to be honest
• also agree with 0x_ultra that methodology to select builders will be key. You might be for sure more expert than us in this topic, top of my mind selecting exclusive builders vs cross chain ones, and builders that started at day 1 here vs new builders approaching, can give us not only info on the why, but also how this why and the general perception of the chain has evolved over time
• it obviously make sense to coordinate with ardc as you posted or in general any other entity that might arise in the dao that can have connections or interest in this topic. In general this is something that I hope for every initiative.

Designing and operating the reporting and information function

Vote: For, More Salary - no bonus

@JoJo

I want to support this proposal, but I also have some doubts.

This doubts are not on the function. I think we need an overall reporting authority with experience in the dao.
Is also not on the person. I think Alex has stick around in our ecosystem for a while, showing he is willing to work and contribute here, both in virtual and in irl meetings.

I think there is value in the mission. And I think Alex is well positioned for this task due to his experience in the DAO.

As every initiative, in the end the evaluation comes down to the following paramters:

1. mission: does it have value? I already provided the answer above
2. cost: is the cost fair?
3. kpi/evaluation: is it easy for the dao to evaluate this initiative, during and post?

While I briefly answered to 1, 2 and 3 are still up for discussion.
What follows comes down to the fact that, is quoted, we will have around 1.03 FTE in 1 year (please clarify if that is not the case, understanding that there is a 45k discretionary budget to potentially hire other members).

As far as I understood (and claude helped me spoiler) we are talking, for the 1.03 FTE, of

• $150k as base for 1y
• $125k as bonus (will consider your prices for arb and convert them knowing it will be likely adjusted)

Basically, a $12.5k monthly salary, with a $10k bonus.

This, for reporting and oversight work, is the high side of the barrel I will be honest. I would expect a level of scrutiny that is almost at a military grade level, to be blunt. I would expect you to physically chase people who don’t answer you in telegram to get the info you need, and this is no hyperbole, cause sometimes is just so hard to get info from people in chat.
The main doubts from a quantitative standpoint comes from basically plugging the whole initiative, and the persona, at an OpCo level, when OpCo is still in discussion. I easily see this initiative, if it moves forward, being incorporated by opco, and likely at the same initial price. But, if we had the opco live now, would it be done in these financial terms? Not sure.

I will vote in favor of this initiative to signal support, for 1) the initiative 2) the persona running it. I can’t in all honesty agree with the financials, which imho should be revised down.
It’s a bit hard for me to suggest numbers: you reference the senior opco level, but in an org like the opco (in any org, tbh), the scope of work would probably naturally expand based on the needs and would be leveraged in a team to bring additional value as the needs come over time. On what is a 12.5+10 potential monthly salary, I could see for example a reduction to 10+5.
There is also the problem of the quarterly evaluation and release of bonus which as other mentioned doesn’t seem to be addressed, and needs a clarification.

On top of everything, we have a 45k retroactive for the 5 months of GCR working which is 9k/m and you mentioned a discounted rate of 0.75%. I appreciated your hard work, but the 75% rate on the proposal seems high: again is hard to suggest numbers here, if i had to take an educated guess, would maybe put 50% of base which in my suggestion above is 10k, so overall 25k. No hard opinions here, except that charging 75% on the base seems too high.

I want to finalize all of this by iterating that I want to support Alex. I want to see him being more involved in our DAO, work here full time, be happy about what he does, and provide value to us. I sincerely see him as a good contributor to the ecosystem, so I want to see this initiative moving forward. I don’t currently see the numbers proposed matching the expectations of the DAO tho, just that, and I think this can be fixed, which would make me extremely happy.

On this, I am voting in favor, expecting a broader discussion and adjustment on tally on numbers and on way to evaluate the bonus.

Arbitrum D.A.O. Domain Allocator Offerings) Grant Program - Season 3

Vote: Abstain

I’m the proposer so, naturally, have voted Abstain. Would have voted to have 5 domains including Orbit of course.

[NON-CONSTITUTIONAL] Arbitrum Onboarding V2: A Governance Bootcamp

Vote: For

@JoJo

I voted in favor of this proposal.

I share some of the concerns expressed above: it’s a bit unclear the value that the initiative will have 1 year from now because we don’t know where these trained analyst will end up being, if in protocols, in our dao, in others etc.

At the same time, I want to be mindful of a trend we have been seeing lately and that few delegates shared privately with me, which is new contributors, in the DAO, entering with a decent amount of criticism in every initiative without necessarily providing solutions or alternatives (or, when that is done, is done through solutions that are quite superficial and don’t necessarily tackle the initial issue). This is partially due on how the DIP is structure, in which de facto commenting increases the amount of point, and part due to the human nature: sounding pessimism and being critic is the easiest way to sound smart to be blunt.
(note: nothing against seed here or anyone in particular. It is what it is, and is a byproduct of our dao growing more and more over time).

For the reason above, I hope this program will indeed elevate the quality of new contributors, and this is why I am voting in favor. I share the concern that of the 193k allocated only 30k goes to analysts: to me it means that the expectation, end of program, is to have 20 kickass black belt governance analysts, I am expecting no less with an opex of 160k.

I also think we should find a way for weaponize these new analysts, and right now one of the biggest gap we have is the protocols’ participations. We should find a way to advertise this pool of participants to protocols (a bit hard: every team tends to internalize people that they trust, not necessarily suggested by third party sources).
I also suggest to select people with also a technical background, that have experience in designing protocols, tokenomics and lst. We don’t need only people that know about governance, we also need people who are technically knowleageable, cause up to some degree we saw partially the limitation of knowledge of delegates during the working group for designing arb staking. I would really like to have more people that have been builders to be trained in governance.

Finally, i agree that DIP kpi are not the right one here. Success, to me, means that the trained analyst end up contributing to our dao, either through specific dao roles, or by being integrated in protocols as part of their personnel etc.

All in all I don’t have all the answers to the questions above, and I hope @RikaGoldberg and gang will iterate between this and tally to try and address some of these concerns.

ARDC (V2) Supervisory Council Election

ARDC (V2) Research Election

ARDC (V2) Risk Election

ARDC (V2) Security Election

Votes:

• Supervisory elections: Pedro and James for comms, Entropy+Tamara OPS
• Research Election: Castlecap and Blockworksresearch
• Security Election: OpenZeppelin
• Risk Elections: VendingMachine/Nethermind

@JoJo

ARDC (V2) Supervisory Council Election

For the supervisory elections, I am voting for pedrob and jameskbh for the communications.

There is a great set of candidates here, but for these 2 specifically I have had the pleasure to know and work with both of them. And I think at this point both deserve more space in our DAO: the skillset they have is quite complementary (james technical and entrenched, pedro very comms oriented, and both extremely present) and they would not let a single detail slide without overviewing it first.
I honestly don’t think we could get a better team for this complex task than these 2 nice folks here, and the DAO would only benefit from the value they can provide.

I am also voting on entropy + tamara since is the only candidate for operations. I am glad we will be able to see them working together, and I am looking forward to see tamara bridging her experience from Lido to the ARDC.

ARDC (V2) Research Election

This is quite difficult due to having only 1 elected member. I will have to split my votes:

• 63% will go to CastleCapital + DefiLlama. I have worked and meet the castle team, and encountered them the first time with the STIP feedback. It was impressive: tailored feedback for each one of the protocols involved. Quite a lift at the time, and I had then the pleasure to have them alongside me as advisors in LTIPP and STIP.b. I think they have a very good and pragmatic approach. On defillama, as most that are here I have been using their open and free tools forever. The thing that has always struck me was the agility in execution on their side, with defillama website being updated in matter of days when there was enough request on twitter. This agility shows 2 things: ability to listen to stakeholders and ability to quickly iterate. I would like to see them working in our DAO
• 37% goes to BlockworksResearch. I cannot not support them after what I saw in previous ARDC. I did read all deliverables from all deliverables, and without taking anything from the others, the blockworks reports where just better. Not necessarily more in depth (they were tho), but with an angle that was imho the right one to have followup actions on our side as a DAO, at least up to some degree. For example, their team with Carolina was the only one able to produce normalized data for the incentive programs, something that was the groundwork to even understand if the programs were successful or not.

It’s to be honest a shame that we can’t have both these teams working in our DAO.

ARDC (V2) Security Election

I am voting for Open Zeppelin. Not only they are good, they have been following Arbitrum since almost inception, and have multiple roles in our ecosystem. While diversity of vendors can sometimes be a strength, the experience that Open Zeppelin has in our ecosystem is just too much of an advantage here.

ARDC (V2) Risk Election

Split my vote, 50/50, for VendingMachine and Nethermind. I think all the companies here are quite professional, and as for the comms/ops we should have more than one member. That said, the scope of work presented to me by these 2 was the most valuable, specifically the all around framework from vending machine, and the lst analysis from nethermind.

Unifying Arbitrum’s Mission, Vision, Purpose (MVP)

Vote: For

@JoJo

Thanks for this.

Voting For on the proposal.

We have here the natural continuation of the discussion on mission, vision and goals that started a few months ago after EthCC, with a proper formalization and plan here.

We had the chance to discuss some of these topics, live, in Bangkok, and was a pretty awesome discussion, oriented toward what we all collectively think Arbitrum should be from a high level view point up to the connection with strategic key ideas that can be then translated in actual program andi initiatives.

This is not an easy discussion. We are likely all here (in crypto, not necessarily in Arbitrum) because we “believe in something”: financial sovereign, unlockin equal opportuninties, efficiency of capital flow, just name one, there are thousands of reasons. But asking someone “what is Arbitrum for you” and then “ok, now that I have your definition, what is your plan to make that vision that you have happen” would more likely than not not being followed by a proper answer.

What I like here is that we went for an abstract question, with a process to try and translate it into operational plan. When the vision is approved, we will be able to define in a second phase, the sos, strategic goals. From the strategic goals, in a third phase, we will be able to go more concrete by establishing buckets of capital and budget spending to reailze these goals.

The byproduct is that, if we do phase 1 and 2 right, we should be in a position that for every initiave, old or new, we will be able to evaluate if it fits the vision and the underneath strategic goals. This should definitely give us more clarity, and help for example in the definition of stuff like incentive programs for which everybody and their grandma has an opinion, but not necessarily understand the consequences and the effect from a higher point of view.

Partner with ETH Bucharest 2025

Vote: For, without POAP

@JoJo

Understanding the concerns of entropy for this, I might want to highlight that the discontinuity of programs, in this case the D.A.O. grants program, is something that is causing most of this situation, and should be generally tackled better by us as a collective (one of the reason why we gonna move to a 1y program instead of 6 months over 6 months).
That said, and because of the reason above, I am voting in favor with no poap. I don’t necessarily share the concerns about the dao event budget since this will be fixed, hopefully, in a couple of months; but at the same time I don’t see the benefit to add 15k of costs which are an increase of 25% and counting on top of the base of 55k.

I think the organizers are doing a great job tho and that these events can become de facto a staple for the eth and arb community in countries that don’t necessarily have one “champion” yet.

Full support on my side, hoping to have the time to drop there by the time is live

OpCo – A DAO-adjacent Entity for Strategy Execution

Vote: For

@JoJo

Already gave plenty of feedbacks, here, here and here, plus some more scattered. And in general, as a judgment on specific topic, have engaged in this interesting convo.

To me situation is relative straight forward:

1. we need a legal entity that is controlled by the DAO. If we want to hire people, agencies etc is the only way to do it. And I think we need to upscale some operations in tandem with other initiatives, that will require an operative arm such the OpCo.
2. we need an entity that is “empowered” to carry the mission. Here empowered, very abused word nowadays, means several things: enough financial capital to operate, a mandate that is both precise but also loose enough that the DAO can tap into it, and obviously the right head
3. as for any venture in any work environment, is mostly about the people. We will need the right people to run it, we will need the right head, proactive, capable to propose a vision compatible with our needs, and a set of people around it capable to implement this vision. This will likely mean a mix of people outside of the dao, and potentially inside the arbitrum ecosystem (not necessarily the dao).

The points above to me are first, compatible with what most has judged as a too long of a mandate. De facto of the 30 months, we can consider the first 6 months burned between setting up the entity, source the ceo (and possibly the cfo), find the oat, negotiate first 2 salaries, get the operations up and running with a first few sets of people being the operational people alongside the 2 c-suite. Even just writing this down, 6 months could be optimistic considering the summer in between.
That’s why 30 months is the bare minimum here.
On the capital, as stated previously, I prefer the OpCo having more than it needs and eventually give it back then the opposite situation; if I read the prospect above with the people + salaries, the 22M arb is compatible with a full fledged org, with again no obligation to spend it all (and here, spend = overhire = controlled by oats).
I also think that salaries proposed are not that out of the world: remember, anybody in there won’t be able to partake in any other initiative in this dao, or others dao, or protocols. This is quite big: the opportunities in the crypto space are quite abundant, having this exclusivity does bear a premium; and the bonus is necessary to align performances (otherwise you risk people doing the bare minimum, and we don’t even want to have to tackle a situation like this, we want people that grind everyday).

The main risk of this proposal is finding the right CEO, this was discussed already, and will be one of the most important key success factor.

Not only i am voting in favor, I vote in favor with the hope that scope will be expanded by the dao overtime.

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Tally votings

Arbitrum Hackathon Builder Continuation Program

Vote: For

@JoJo

I’m confirming my snapshot vote on tally.
Would like to add few things for danielo

1. first thanks for posting a small table with breakdown of costs, this is what we spoke privately, helps to better understand costs vs invstment
2. a suggestion for the future. I understand the holiday pause can be annoying and somehow disruptive for the flow, but in future you shouldn’t rush any proposal to tally this much. I am voting in favour only cause I think the model is worth experimenting upon and there is monetary commitment from RnDao, and don’t want to kill the initiative, but if it wasn’t for these 2 I would have likely abstained or even vote against. A lot of other proposals are in this very same situation, with different flavour of course, so please let’s avoid this happening again.

Treasury Management V1.2

Vote: For

Confirming previous snapshot vote

[JoJo]

January 2025 voting

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Snapshot votings

Non-Constitutional: Stable Treasury Endowment Program 2.0

Vote: For

@JoJo

I am mostly agreeing with pedrob here; despite so, will vote in favour.

I think is worth hammering the table on one of the narrative in which arbitrum is leading, which is RWA. I would have rather preferred to see some changes, including either

• the program falling into the new one just voted for treasury management OR
• the program falling under opco.

Understanding that continuity here means moving relatively fast (relatively cause is ognna take months according to the timeline), the handover of the program would likely be such to further increment this time. For this reason, and knowing the very good professional background of Paper & Gang on these instruments, I prefer a continuation as it is. With a caveat: this, ideally, should be the last iteration of this program as it is. For the next one we will either have 1) opco up and running 2) treasury initiative going to expiration with a potential renewal if opco is not ready. I would like an handover of the program. To clarify, doesn’t mean it would need a new committee for example (but there could be a merit to reduce it if the current treasury management committee has some experience, to avoid surplus), nor that steakhouse won’t be the PM until the end of the mandate. But if in 6 months we want to add another 40, 50, $100M to the program, it should be done under either opco or currently elected treasury managers.

On a final note, I hope we will be able to diversify the issuers with the next RFP, obviously always while being compatible with the risk profile the committee will deem necessary. But I would like to see also new issuers, since the growth is one of the target of this program.

As a final note: please potentially reconsider the budget for the 4 committee members. It’s quite likely there should be more applications, and the budget might be on the low end here. An increase of 20-25% to 30-32.5k per member could be ok imho, knowing that there is in these programs a somehow linear effort based on the amount of applicants.

Arbitrum D.A.O. Season 3 Elections - Gaming

Vote: Equally split among all candidates
As the PM of the future program, I deemed necessary abstaining by distributing my votes in the same weight among all candidates, despite having professional and personal preferences.

Arbitrum D.A.O. Season 3 Elections - Dev Tooling on One and Stylus

Vote: Equally split among all candidates
As the PM of the future program, I deemed necessary abstaining by distributing my votes in the same weight among all candidates, despite having professional and personal preferences.

Arbitrum D.A.O. Season 3 Elections - Education, Community Growth, and Events

Vote: Equally split among all candidates
As the PM of the future program, I deemed necessary abstaining by distributing my votes in the same weight among all candidates, despite having professional and personal preferences.

Arbitrum D.A.O. Season 3 Elections - New Protocols and Ideas

Vote: Equally split among all candidates
As the PM of the future program, I deemed necessary abstaining by distributing my votes in the same weight among all candidates, despite having professional and personal preferences.

The Watchdog: Arbitrum DAO’s Grant Misuse Bounty Program

Vote: For

@JoJo

Voting in favor of the proposal.

We need the ability to tell to “someone” if something is wrong, without fear of repercussion in a space that is not only quite small but lacks proper accountability like other industries, at least for now.
I love that was introduced the clause for which people can submit a report without having to kyc if they don’t want the reward: this is key for several actors, such as protocols, that are best positioned to understand what is going on and if there is anybody acting in a shady way. Pretty sure there were plenty of protocols during stip, ltipp, stip bridge, that saw stuff that was “non compliance” and were just hesitant of coming forward due to fear of repercussion, reputational damage and what not due to the lack of this program.

I am also in favor to build an ad-hoc infra for this (pedrob mentions protonmail, but would not suffice imho because it will make the commission work just too complex; it also does not allow for proper anonimity on the side of whistleblower if they are not careful enough on their email).
But would like to see this infra lately fall into the hands of opco, not in the management sense, but in the ownership sense, as well as all the other website we will build for our dao.

Thanks Entropy

Proposal for Piloting Enhancements and Strengthening the Sustainability of ArbitrumHub in the Year Ahead

Vote: Against

@JoJo

I am voting against this proposal.

First I want to commend 0x_Buidler and his crew on iterating on this project for several months if not almost a year: we need, in Arbitrum, builders like you capable to stick to their personal vision. This is not a statement to just sweeten the pill here, I really mean it.
That said, I still have two big issues: the fact this is an isolated initiative for the infra of the dao, and the costs. To report what I posted above for clarity.

@JoJo

[…]
The main problem i have is that we have the trend, in the dao, to build all sort of infrastructures (website, bot, dapp etc) that are detached one from another.
Even more, we are doing this with no strategic view on top.

I have the strong opinion that the dao should do a more comprehensive plan in this regard: have his own website, his own socials, his own initiative, and also own the infra and the content related to this.
This hasn’t happened so far because we lack a legal entity, and we have had the AF that has been a steward in this sense when it was needed. But, hopefully, will change when we have the OpCo.

All to say that I personally can’t currently support this proposal because I think we need an higher level plan from the dao to craft and create infrastructures and content that make sense based on the goals that we have (and for this the SOS proposal from @Entropy, after the vision proposal we just voted, will be able to help as well).

Don’t get me wrong, we need a front end for the dao, even this forum is hosted on the foundation domain. But we are at the point in which we need to own it, and we are also at the point in which we need to collectively establish what content we want in there, and then hire eventually service providers or elect people to create such content. It has to fall into a more strategic plan.

Beside this, I generally speaking agree with the comments on the budget. Without going into the specific details, 19k per month for all of this feels like a lot.

While there was the effort to embed this into the SOS proposal and any future change, I don’t honestly think is enough: the website of the DAO will be one of our main front end for communication beside social accounts (assuming we will ever had dao managed ones), and it has to go through a more high level strategic plan.
As a secondary point, the budget is still too high for the service provided. I think that for slightly more we could hire directly a marketing team for the dao which would help us filling a gap that we have. This would help not only driving the engagement higher, but also spread the geography (if we see the reporting dashboard with a 6 months horizon, of the 11,000 visit to the website almost half of them come from India, which is neither right or wrong but is likely a byproduct of the founder being based in that geography AFAIK. Which means, to me, that the current reach is mostly tied to personal effort, and we are at a point in which we need to step up the game in several areas.

As a final note, I don’t know how the current team could interface themself with the DAO in future, and likely with OpCo going forward, I can’t say if with the current terms this project could be for example absorbed by the opco, or the team hired as service provider. I like the work that was done, and I think we should find a way to reward the “stickiness” of a team in the ecosystem, just, not with these economical terms, and not without an higher level plan.

Arbitrum Strategic Objective Setting (SOS) – Defining the DAO’s Interim Goals

Vote: For

@JoJo

@Entropy

@JoJo

This could be partially solved by having epochs long 4/6 months in which

This was something we thought about adding when we drafted the proposal. However, there are quite a few frictions we foresaw with this approach. For example, it’s well-known that DAOs often move slowly, inherent to their decentralized nature, meaning that, e.g., 6 months might not be enough time for the objectives’ “correctness” to materialize. This means that delegates may be more inclined to vote for a change prematurely, especially given delegates voting for a change can’t be obligated to create a submission. Compare this to the current structure, where ad hoc objective adjustments can be proposed by anyone at any time, but this requires them to post reasoning for the change together with adjusted objectives and key results. As such, objectives could still be changed 2/4/6/etc. months after their implementation, but the proposer must be able to clearly justify the reasoning and exert effort in creating an adjusted objectives matrix. This ensures that proposals for change are tied to accountability and require proposers to deeply think about the current objectives as well as what should be changed and why. The proposal also suggests instructing the research member of the ARDC to create quarterly reports on how the DAO is doing against its objectives, meaning that active delegates will receive timely updates on any potential changes that might be needed.

I think this is fair. I totally understand how a quarter or 6 months might just not be enough to evaluate the mid term status of a goal, I did personally face the same thoughts on the D.A.O. program.
The proposed solution is good enough then (having the entity responsible for that goal being able to steer it if deemed necessary + quarterly report from ARDC on metrics), because yes DAOs are slow.

Thank you for addressing my concerns here, I am in generally voting in favor and would have had despite the clarification above, because we need to make concrete what we started with MVP and we need to move from a high level vision to more tangible goals. It’s a long process but I bet will bring a new level of maturity in our DAO.

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Tally votings

[Constitutional AIP] Activate Arbitrum BoLD + Infura Nova Validator Whitelist

Vote: For

Confirming the two previous snapshot votes. Also, to quote a few differences, I think is wise to keep the validators’ list in Nova permissioned, since we would have to increase x10 the tvl in there just to create the bond we will have in One.

[JoJo]

February 2025 voting

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Snapshot votings

Approve the Nova Fee Sweep Action

Vote: For

@JoJo

tbh not too much to discuss. Let’s sweep the fees, and let’s also find a way to use next time the swept eth to produce yield for the dao.

In favor of combining both the timeboost and this sweep into a single AIP for convenience, to focus efforts into quorum one time instead of two.

Request to Increase the Stylus Sprint Committee’s Budget

Vote: Abstain
Since I am part of the committee, I am abstaining from this vote. That said, I STRONGLY support the additional funds in the program. We did review 150+ applications, and a lot of this should have gone through but it was not possible due to lack of fundings.

Arbitrum Growth Circles Event Proposal

Vote: Against

@JoJo

I am voting against this proposal.

The idea is well intended but, to me, it starts from a totally wrong premise. We partially covered in the entropy call, will reiterate in the forum: the whole approach here is about making protocol come to the dao, help them, give them a hand, having this back and forth to make everything better.

This vision is totally detached from reality.

As of now

• Arbitrum DAO is perceived, by most builders, as a leech entity that is just not helping the ecosystem and mostly dragging it down
• Arbitrum, as a chain, has been seen more and more as a place that has lost ground in defi and other key verticals compared to 1/2 years ago
• ARB has a token has had lackluster performances, certainly similar to OP and to other low float high fdv tokens we have out there, but this is key in the performances of other tokens in the chain.

I am not mentioning the aboves to just criticize full around, but I am mentioning it to explain why protocols and builders won’t come to us. We are not starting from an advantageous point, as a DAO, and the approach to me should be the opposite: we, as a collective, should start chasing some protocols, likely a very few (and most important ones) at the beginning, understand what they need and understand how we can give them what they need compared to the goals we have as a DAO. And after we create these successfull initiatives, we enlarge the scope out to the point we - hopefully - turn the table in term of reputation, so that builders see us a value added for the chain and not value extracting.

To be clear: I am not saying that the DAO is value extracting. But this is how we are perceived by most builders that have hands down in the chain everyday.

This is the main reason i am voting against this proposal.
I want to also echo some of the feedbacks received here:

@Entropy

Entropy will again point out that the DAO should hold proposals pulling from the DAO’s 2025 Event Budget to a high standard. Letting this budget slowly be chipped away $60-70K at a time reduces the possibility for a larger scale, more professionally organized Arbitrum event to be funded. […]

Lastly, as per the AVI’s latest update, the DAO is still waiting to receive all of the deliverables from the Pilot Program.

I agree that this habit of chipping out money from the event budget is something I don’t personally like. With the current position in the market that Arbitrum ecosyste has, I really think we should focus on the biggest impact possible, and in this sense is likely that 10 events of 60k have less impact than a single event of 600k (quite superficial but you get the idea).

Finally, I am still a bit puzzled of the AVI findings, not only we have to receive all deliverables but I have yet to see a compacted finalized finding. So far I have seen several threads, with several deliverables, and there should be an effort to unify and simplify the findings with then specific follow ups on specific verticals. This is a bit OT here but partially related in the sense that part of the request is tied to the findings of the AVI research.

To conclude, I think the AVI team is well intended. And I don’t want to question their expertise here nor the network that they have build in the last year. But I just think the approach should be different: if we embark in a 3, 4, 6 months adventure in this sense, we will lose valuable time and so we will lose opportunities in a market that is getting narrower and narrower.

Finally, is worth waiting for the SOS goals to come live. It will be way easier for us to understand how we can help protocols if we know what goals we have as a collective.

Arbitrum Audit Program

Vote: For

@JoJo

Currently voting in favor as support, with few things to address in tally that have been mentioned in the calls but are not clear enough in the proposal:

1. the nature of protocols who could apply. Understanding that this proposal has a growth nature, we need to clarify if current protocols in arbitrum can apply, if protocols migrating/expanding from other chains can apply. And the answer likely can’t just be a single “yes” otherwise everybody who has to do an audit in arbitrum will come here making life of the committee miserable, there has to be some sort of wording on whom can apply
2. I would like to know, being this a 1 year initiative, if we will be able to morph it over time based on SOS outcomes and in general other more robust framework we might have in the DAO to create long life tracks for protocols in Arbitrum, ie: a path in which you first get a grant, then an audit, then an investment, all over time.

[CONSTITUTIONAL] AIP: ArbOS Version 40 Callisto

Vote: For
Not too much to add to this being a technical proposal. It follows the roadmap of the Pectra upgrade in ETH, and adds very important quality of life upgrades such as EIP-7702. As for all other upgrades, will wait for the audit report before Tally.

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Tally votings

OpCo: A DAO-adjacent Entity for Strategy Execution

Vote: For

@JoJo

I gotta say, I am excited to vote in favour on tally. I don’t usually comment when we go onchain, yes there are changes but here what is worth pointing out are the kpi for the first 12 months: achievable, but ambitious.
OpCo in 12 months should be able to consolidate TM + STEP, should have a framework and structure to onboard SP, should be able to handle (excluding funding) an initiative top down, from drafting to vote to onboarding to kyc/b to disbursement of payments. This is literally the bare minimum. At the same time, it would be quite a step ahead in our DAO if we think how convoluted are our processes now.
And yes, looking at the interim goal we have for the year, continuing the SOS proposal up to the reporting part (this will depend on how technical the tasks are tho, and there could be needed a technical support but we will see), absorbing event budget/watchdog, creating standard reporting for financials. Doable as well.
Likely the most complex task is the branding/marketing with the Foundation, because is probably the most abstract goal of the pack. But is exciting to think about being able, as a DAO, to have an enabler like the opco to do things that so far we have had to task others to do on our behalf.

Strong vote in favor.

Non-Constitutional: Stable Treasury Endowment Program 2.0

Vote: For
Confirming previous snapshot vote

Arbitrum D.A.O. (Domain Allocator Offerings) Grant Program - Season 3

Vote: Abstain
Being the candidate PM, will abstain from this vote

[JoJo]

March 2025 voting

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Snapshot votings

TMC Recommendation

Vote: Deploy only the stable strategy, Deploy both, Deploy nothing, Only deploy arb strategies, Abstain

@JoJo

Had to cool off for a couple of days before being able to provide a proper feedback.

I am voting as suggested by threesigma in the following way.

@threesigmaxyz

#3 YES, deploy the Stable Strategy /// NO, do not deploy the ARB Strategy

But this vote is not an endorsement of what was done so far, and comes from the believe that we need to increase the speed of execution from 0.1 miles for hours to 0.15 miles per hours.

Let me break down the proposal.

The Good

The stablecoin strategy are likely good. I am ok in dividing in equal parts in all the 3 parts. I am also ok in karp and avantgard charging a management fee: in the shortlist of protocols i see for both univ3 and camelot v3. Makes me think there is a management of liquidity in a v3 range that might change over time, or at least be manually assessed, since there is no mention of a third party ALM. Managing liquidity is not trivial, and stable pools are all beside stable despite the name.
I am expecting this portion of the strategy to be not only succesfull in yield but useful for the check account of the dao and i am also happy to have avantgard and karpatkey to have a more active role operationally wise in our dao, with gauntlet also consolidating it.

The Bad

The fact that we can’t come up with a proper arb strategy is, to be blunt, quite bad. We all know that, as asset, has only value toward governance; is not not spread enough to be an hub of liquidity (and this maybe can change in future), we don’t have staking out yet so is not a collateral good ebough. This is a quite obvious.
But the fact that, as a dao, we can’t find a way to properly utilize arb at minimal risk and minimal yield for us speaks loud about the state of the ecosystem. I will go back to this but it shows that 1) we need to prepare programs that are more tailored to what we can effectively do in our ecosystem 2) we need to improve the state of arb as a token, in term of utility.

The Ugly

I am honestly still puzzled why the vote was not separated between stable and arb strategy: there was more than 1 suggestion, and if someone has a strong feeling against the current arb approach rule wise it would have to potentially stop even the stable part of the program to push, for example, for a change in rules. This choiche was not only imho quite straightforward but also suggested by some delegates.

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Between this proposal, and the GMC, is pretty clear that while both the committees and organizer were well intended, there were issues regarding the risk approach and the availability of options on the table.
We had a very good opportunity to not only create yield for the dao, but also increase the usage of arbitrum native protocols as a signal to external parties that yes, the dao sustains aligned and native protocols. This will be true only in part and applies both here and to the eth side of the treasury.

My STRONG expectation is that, once we move forward with the stable here, and the eth in gmc, we create right away a second proposal in which

• the risk parameters, while tight, should be commisurated to be able to take risk in protocols that allows us as a collective to use intensively the most important arbitrum protocols. Is not about to retrofit / tailor fit, is about being realistic on what we can do today in our chain
• the financial goals should be such that, if we can’t find a “good enough” source of yield for single side arb, we can instead pair arb with other assets, such as eth or stables, to provide for example liquidity in v2/v3 pools or as collateral for perps
• the operations of the committee should be such that, if there is a protocol/vault potentially deemed useful, it can work directly with the protocol operator, to both adjust the application and even tweak if needed some parameters of the vaults in case there is the possibility (which is not there most of the time but asking has 0 cost in life).

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I want to stress one final concept. Is relative easy to quantify financial risk of deploying capital here or there in term of projected yield based on market conditions.
What is not apparent, most of the time, is the risk we incur as a DAO by not supporting the stakeholder protocols of our ecosystem. If, as a dao, we don’t promote their utilization by being the first customer on the line, why should we expect others to come to us in the first place?

Note: i have been quite harsh in the judgment above. This is not against single components of the committee or entropy: we have crafted on paper an idea, and this idea has been carried forward while in part being very risk adverse and in part sticking to what we voted for. Which, on paper, is totally fine, and I am sure the committee had to evaluate ton of applications with some (several? most?) not even written in the proper way risk wise. But we need to start pushing toward the last mile here, be proactive, understand how to go toward the goal we want and do the legwork we maybe didn’t expect we had to do. So my harshness is not about badly judging this initiative or the participatns, is in reality just a way to stimulate everybody to be in war mode.

GMC’s Preferred Allocations (7,500 ETH)

Vote: Abstain, due to the fact I helped Camelot in crafting the proposal and worked with the committee to adapt it to the risk profile that was requested
Would still report what I think was the most important feedback on my side here

@JoJo

I am gonna jump the gun to move the convo from the current twitter drama and delegate chat hell into the forum.

I have experienced mixed feeling since the publication of these results. I will start by saying is impossible for me and for anybody else to read all the applications so far posted by the protocols, especially because some are gathed as docs so, likely, any end take I or others will have will be currently mostly

• gut related
• tied to higher level goals.

At first, I was honestly disappointed by the 3 protocols selected. Don’t get me wrong, I was well aware that lido staked eth would have been an important part of this first tranche, as well as aave. We are talking about battletested protocols, backbone of defi. Thinking arbitrum can succed for example without these 2 would be naive at best, malicious at worst.
I won’t comment on fluid that, as a protocol, I don’t know well enough. I will trust the committee in saying it provides risk adjusted yields that are good enough for our DAO.

All this premised, it seems rather strange that there is not a single eth allocated to arbitrum native protocols.
This is bad because we are on an almost 2 months streak in which the highest autorithy of our chains (OCL through Steven/AJ, Foundation through Patrick, DAO through Entropy, and I am surely missing several here so no offense) talk about how the DAO and the ecosystem should change pace, should push for alignment of participants etc. The one time we had the capacity to take actions matching our collective words, we have a very strict choice of protocols, all from ethereum mainnet.

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I am not here to say that these protocols should excluded or others should be plugged in. Nor I am here to say that the committe didn’t do a proper risk adjusted analysis, because I am pretty sure that are well equipped in this sense, likely more than most particpants here. But the decisions here have been extremely short-sighted.

Our DAO is at an inflection point. I personally expect all participants of the DAO, especially the ones in active roles, in knowing how bad the perception of Arbitrum is out there. For this reason, is quite strange that out of 7500 ETH, we couldn’t even allocate 10% spread in other protocols, even to just give outside a signal that “the dao is here to support you, builder that decides to come to arbitrum instead of going to base to enjoy the support of coinbase or to solana to be part of the biggest casino in the world”.

I am going to also try and put myself in the shoes of the committee. The program, as was structured, was mostly a one-way program. Meaning that while there is mentioning of “having a counterparty negotiating”, this is mostly related to numbers. At least, this has been my direct experience having crafted the jones/camelot joint proposal. But, the committee didn’t engage with protocols saying “of X, Y and Z that you proposed, we can do X, we can do 30% of Y and Z doesn’t fall in the risk parameters”. Curious to know if this happened to others.

Let’s also do a practical example.

@Entropy

Again, only strategies that rely on ETH and ETH-pegged asset strategies will be pursued.

This point was in the end unclear in the details. As stated above, only staked lido direct strategies have been pursued with no direct exposure to LRT; likely more than one protocol has submitted strategies involving lido eth, rocketpool eth, renzo eth, etherfi eth etcetera. The committee could have, for example, only onboarded the staked lido part and maybe exclude the others.
Note that I am not suggesting this course of action, but merely stating an example in which there could have been alignment.

Note that taking on actively all proposals, reshaping that on behalf of the DAO, would make this program more akin to what we have had through STIP.b and LTIPP in which advisors indeed had this painful role. We don’t want to go down that route again, but we can find compromise that are driven by the overarching goals of

• reach the financial independence of the DAO
• give a signal to builders that we, indeed, want to support them in several ways
• start to change the perception of the general public of the Arbitrum ecosystem, the DAO, the Foundation, that are all seen in a downward spiral.

An approach like this would have the benefit, for example, to allow utilizing instead of 5000 eth in AAVE, of using 4800 ETH in AAVE and 200 in Dolomite, only in the ETH lending, having what accordingly to defillama is an average yield that is double on only 4% of the initial capital, in a protocol that natively started in Arbitrum, has participated to our incentive programs, and now expanded succesfully in berachain where thanks to the work of the foundation and ecosystem now manages there half a billion in assets. This not a shill for dolo, to which I am not affiliated nor I am an investor, but is a prime example of a protocol that, for the good or the bad, has found better opportunities and more success outside of Arbitrum, and that we should try to retain and keep closer to our ecosystem.

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I totally understand that, whatever the choice the commission would have made, it would have made someone unhappy. But the current choice feels is going against what we have been seen preaching by the ecosystem leaders.

I will wait for the proper explanations from the committee. The goal will be, in the end, to have working capital for the dao in a risk adjusted way: if we find ways to do it while signalling support for a broader cohort of Arbitrum protocols, we will have a net positive outcome outpacing value wise both the work needed for it to come to fruition and any yield difference.

disclosure: cow has wrote the applications for jones and camelot, has partially advised winr, and has helped more protocols than he really wants to admit in the end. While biased, cow likes to think he cares about the ecosystem as a whole regardless single protocol preferences

[CONSTITUTIONAL] Proposal: For Arbitrum DAO to register the Sky Custom Gateway contracts in the Router

Vote: For
Pretty straightfoward vote, is something we did for Rari as well, the fact that OCL is engaged in this
activity helps strengthening the confidence

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Tally votings

Request to Increase the Stylus Sprint Committee’s Budget

Vote: Abstain
As for the snapshot vote, since I am part of the committee, I am abstaining from this vote.

[CONSTITUTIONAL] - Adopt Timeboost + Nova Fee Sweep

Vote: For
This collapsed the 2 previous votes, i am in support of both so just confirming previous snapshots

[NON-CONSTITUTIONAL] Arbitrum Onboarding V2: A Governance Bootcamp

Vote: For

@JoJo

I did vote in favor in snapshot and i am confirming my vote here, but for reasons that are slightly different that I want to explore.

The premise: ongoing changes in Arbitrum sentiment

The landscape of Arbitrum DAO has changed a lot in the last quarter, both due to the new political landscape, the market dynamics and an higher involvement of AF/OCL. This is leading us, chaotically sometimes, toward new sentiment tied to exclusivity of contributors, quality of works, cutting spending that is not deemed necessary. Nothing wrong with any of this.

But, has also created a concerning byproduct in my view: is becoming complex to work and contribute in the DAO.

The problem: keep valuable entities/people engaged in the ecosystem

We can talk a lot about what contributing to this DAO means, we have a degree of flavours that go from being a small delegate in DIP (deemed, by several, as something net negative, bringing noise at a high monetary cost and also indirect reputational damage outside of our sphere) to being a service provider for ARDC, with all that happens in between. The common denominator is: is becoming harder and harder to be part of programs, regardless if you are “aligned”, want to do a good job, want to bring value to both your team and the ecosystem. We have seen this first hand:

• some established service providers, that did a great job in the dao (previous ardc, adpc, grant programs) have turned down a lot their contributions in our dao
• single meaningful member and contributors can’t find a way to properly be here (one can “use” dip, and the importance of arbitrum, up to some degree to justify the amount of time spent here)
• even introducing new people is extremely hard because there is an amount of time spent to pass proposals, with no certainty of the outcome, that drives these new forces away despite a handshake agreement (saw this first hand in the D.A.O. program).

This is, useless to say, my personal opinion. But also the opinion of someone that engaged, directly or indirectly, with most delegates and participated to several programs. You really need a thick skin to work in Arbitrum.

Governance bootcamp as experiment not for junior hiring, but for methodology of junior hiring

So, why all of this introduction? Because while

• is true what krst said (i don’t remember when): we are potentially training people for jobs that we don’t know what they will be
• is true what others said: we don’t have any guarantee that these people will be retained by the DAO, and they might just move in other ecosystem
• is true also what Arbitrum said: costs are high, is not necessary

I think we have to be more proactive and less miopic and think a few quarters ahead.

This, to me, is an experiment to understand if in-house training can partially be a solution to find new workforces. And honestly it could be: when you hire junior people in a company, you hire them based on previous experience and competence, but also you train them to the culture, framework and modus operandi of your company, and you train them to know the intricacy of the people working in there, the overall goals etc.

I think this is a very expensive experiment. But knowing the outcome of this 200k initiative, knowing what things will and won’t work from it, can probably be more valuable than the base cost if the collective goal is to think about our DAO more as a company moving forward. It can help us find our “corporate” identity, and specifically help us try to understand if in this way we can facilitate to have valuable new people in Arbitrum.

[JoJo]

Aprile 2025 voting

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Snapshot votings

[Non-constitutional] ARB Incentives: User Acquisition for dApps & Protocols

Vote: n/a

OpCo – Oversight and Transparency Committee (OAT) Elections

Vote: n/a

TMC Stablecoin Recommendation

Vote: n/a

TMC ARB Recommendation

Vote: n/a

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Tally votings

[NON-CONSTITUTIONAL] Arbitrum Audit Program

Vote: For

@JoJo

Several good improvements that i see here:

@Arbitrum

any code audited will need to remain exclusive to our ecosystem for a fixed period of time.

@Arbitrum

We are targeting relatively early stage projects, projects that have demonstrated product market fit on Arbitrum, and finally projects that have remained loyal to our ecosystem with an upcoming launch or upgrade that has the potential to help grow the ecosystem.

@Arbitrum

• Native deployment. Projects that are operational on Arbitrum must demonstrate either a strong product market fit or a committed alignment with the Arbitrum ecosystem with expectations that subsequent product launches will be successful.
• Migrating deployment. Project is planning to migrate from another blockchain ecosystem to Arbitrum
• New audits only. Only new code, or code that has undergone significant modifications.
• Arbitrum exclusivity. Audited code must remain exclusive to Arbitrum for a fixed period of time.

@Arbitrum

and a team member from the OpCo (when operational).

I like all of these addition which address most of what was proposed by several delegates. I also like adding one member of the opco because the sheer amount of work could potentially be important, and having more members involved in the DAO can be beneficial even just for comms and to keep context.