Thanks for the proposal, was about time.
First, a small premise.
I want to loosely comment on a few things. I am going to focus on what might be deemed by some controversial, and analyze past initiatives that might have not created the outcome the DAO wanted, and show why these imho have no material weight in the renewal.
2 years mandate
I think this is quite logical. In the program I run, the D.A.O. grant program, I moved the terms from 6 months to 1 year. I think initiatives that have a broad consensus and are perceived as important need to extend over time the time term because is the easiest way to allow the team to operate focusing on the mission, and not on the fact that in 12 months they will have to go all over this again.
Budget: $2.5M to $3M per year
This is a bump on base cost of 20%. 1 year ago, in Bruxelles, the team was made by Matt, Sam, Pruitt, and if I recall Brick was recently onboarded or soon to be. Unsure if Tom was already there.
Budget: 15M ARB bonus
I have never been a fun of the DAO voting on bonuses on people (not only on entropy). Yes, the DAO can evaluate if someone did the work it was supposed to do up to some degree. But voting on assigning/non assigning a bonus is tricky because it becomes an issue about quality of the job, if the people involved pushed into the last mile and more vs doing just the homework etc. I don’t think the DAO is well equipped to do this because is extremely difficult to be able to see the outcome as a function of the work behind, just like for an iceberg is easy to see the tip but you can only imagine the size of the submerged part. All of this to say: I think is fair to move to a bonus that is vested.
GMC/TMC proposal
This is explicitely mentioned by Entropy itself in the list of things from which there are mistakes from which they can learn from. Of the last proposals we have had, one of the biggest critique has been around the lack of flexibility and allocation in these proposals, and how protocols could have benefit from a broader framework.
Of the above mentioned, I think none is material through a renewal that takes in account the following points:
first treasury program that directly utilizes the eth we have. While imperfect, it bootstrapped the initiative
opco: everybody and their grandma in the dao now is eagerly expecting opco to be operating. This would not have happened without entropy. Worth noticing, them pushing for opco is a testimonial of their neutrality since they even voted against.
Converge: while most of us was not aware, Ethena launching on top of our stack is an important milestone. Entropy having a role, with first the data unit and then bd work on the ground is notable
Data and dashboard. I honestly haven’t seen this type of dashboard in any other ecosystem at least not at this level of detail and heterogeneity. I will state the obvious: neither the foundation, nor ocl, nor anybody else did create this data for us which is key to properly measure our operations and allows external parties to asses how good our stack and ecosystem is
sos proposal (previously: MVP): while this proposal was “immaterial”, I can’t think about anything else beside the detox discussion spearheaded by l2beat that had as much involvement from delegates
i could mention a few other stuff: CoC and calendar that allows for smoother operations and some breathing room during december, the stylus program to push for the adoption of the technology (being an insider i can testify that a lot of the passed proposals are key, for OCL, to push the adoption of the tech), the drip program (tbd on that one but we have a different approach and we come from a year with no real practical consensus on how to do incentives).
These are the material results; is a bit subjective and in general hard to understand the immaterial results and second order effect that Entropy manifested in the DAO. Two are worth mentioning:
we have raised the bar in term of professionalization compared to 1 year ago, and this is highly needed if we want the DAO to be a positive component of the Arbitrum ecosystem
Entropy has become a de fact public face of the DAO in a moment in which we didn’t had (and still don’t have) one.
The question becomes: were the $2.5M we paid a good price tag for what we obtained in the last 12 months? My answer as of today is a big yes.
I also don’t want to sound like a cheerleader. Everybody has margin of improvement here and Entropy is not an exception. Specifically, it can benefit by a lot of things. One of the pitfall we likely had, and is quite common in crypto, is a team that is not only extremely motivated, but also quite young. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but the lack of experience can sometimes create shortfalls that could have been easily avoided. This was noticeable, for example, in certain occasion, during communications with the rest of the DAO or some protocols.
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Since we are here I want to also give my educated opinion on the above post from Tane, not because his opinion is wrong but because the approach/angle should be a bit different imho.
OpCo is a good testimonial on how Entropy did facilitate other entities to rise in Arbitrum. They literally voted against because they thought: we, alongside foundation and OCL, can do enough here. And their opinion in this sense was overturned by the overall DAO vote despite them being the biggest delegate.
I am a bit puzzled by this point honestly. Having a provider working exclusively for us is something positive, not negative. It means that they will focus 100% of their energy toward our goal, and that we can align the outcomes in an easier way (re: 15M arb bonus for example). Should we for example in 8 months just vote and say “no, entropy should not be exclusive anymore”? I don’t think so. If we come to that point, the question is likely “should entropy still operate for the arbitrum dao”.
Arbitrum already coordinates Offchain Labs, the Foundation, and the emerging OpCo, so overlapping mandates can easily turn into a bureaucratic cost center without contributing to the actual project’s progress.
Unsure what you mean when you say “Arbitrum coordinates” but will just assume you mean the DAO. The DAO so far has not specifically coordinated OCL; on the contrary, OCL has posted to us their work and we have validated it from time to time. Same with the foundation, up to a lesser degree because the dialague is way more open (and both should improve over time).
A granular cost breakdown—headcount by role, salary bands, data-infrastructure spending, travel, and contingency—will help delegates judge whether the budget matches market rates and expected value delivered.
The cost breakdown (without going into the single salary numbers) has always been outlined afaik in their quarterly reports here: Entropy Advisors Updates - Arbitrum .
I personally answered in length on the above. But the point is that to build fundamentally strong initiatives we need to start thinking on the long term.for us . We are now at a point in which we need to double down on
EDIT rereading i realized my point toward Tane is not clear. More than discussing “guardrails, kpis, etc” which are fine but also details in the grand scheme of things, to me we should instead answer the following questions: did entropy do a good job in the past 12 months? Was the job worth the price tag? if the answers to the previous questions are both positive, is the new proposal something that puts them in condition to do a work that is at least of the same quality if not above?