LTIP Pilot: Karel Vuong’s Council Application
Background
- Name: Karel Vuong
- Position I am applying for: Council
- TG: @karel0x
- Twitter: @karelvuong
- Affiliations / Expertise:
- Co-Founder of Treasure DAO, the leading decentralized game publisher on Arbitrum building the next gaming and entertainment powerhouse built and owned by all. Treasure’s ecosystem is connected by the $MAGIC token and features games like The Beacon, Mighty Action Heroes, Realm, Knights of the Ether, Kaiju Cards, Zeeverse, Tales of Elleria, and many others.
- Arbitrum DAO delegate via Treasure
- Angel investor in Delegate, Helika, Satsuma (acq. by Alchemy), and AcadArena
- Prior stints in TradFi venture capital and asset management (6+ years, 3 funds launched, $14B in AUM), startup studio and venture creation (2 exits, 1 IPO), and wearer of many hats at multi-stage startups (product, operations, strategy, engineering, BD, marketing, talent, etc.)
Why you?
Why would you be the best candidate for this position?
- Long standing history with Arbitrum - Both Treasure and I have been building with Arbitrum since its early days (October 2021)! We’ve had the pleasure of growing up together with the Arbitrum. Building together, innovating together, going after developers / game studios / protocols / partners together, and, now, building our shared, decentralized future together. With Treasure currently serving as Arbitrum’s largest delegate (thanks to all who have delegated to us), we are strongly aligned with the ecosystem.
- Representing a much needed voice within Arbitrum across gaming, culture, and entertainment - While it’s already apparent today that Arbitrum is the clear winner in decentralized finance across ecosystems, I want to ensure that we can win in all other areas and this includes gaming, culture, and entertainment (NFTs and art). These are under-indexed areas both within the Arbitrum ecosystem (we are hoping to make a big difference here as Treasure) and also across the DAO’s current delegate pool which is representative of the make-up of the Arbitrum network. A council should be diverse and adequately represent the DAO (both current and the future we want to see). If gaming and culture are key priorities for Arbitrum, the council should not be absent this perspective.
- Track record of being in the builder’s seat - While Treasure is my first concerted entrepreneurial endeavour in web3, this is an experience I’ve had time and time again in web2 across both early-stage and late stage organizations. A number of the organizations I have been a part of founding and growing from the ground up were able to be brought through to successful exits (2 through M&A and 1 through IPO) and this journey has helped shape my journey as a builder. With Treasure, we had a truly bottom-up inception as a fair distribution project with a free mint. This is all relevant as I can deeply empathize with the lean and scrappy builders with big dreams and ambitions on Arbitrum. This operating perspective is necessary to round out a council.
- Venture background - Beyond my operating experience, I’ve also been in the venture seat as well both at a fintech-focused fund ($2.5B in AUM) and as an angel investor. This pairs well with oversight / participation in grants programs as the experience in conducting diligence and evaluation process with a lens towards partnering or supporting successful, enduring organizations is fully transferrable to this program.
- Experience with grant / incentive programs - My experience with grants / incentive programs is two-fold: (1) via Arbitrum DAO; and (2) via Treasure DAO. Within Arbitrum, this experience comes from Treasure DAO’s participation in the evaluation and voting of 100+ STIP Round 1 applicants, me personally serving on the STIP Multisig, and also weighing in on the early LTIPP designs as it was drafted by its authors. Within Treasure DAO, we’ve had our own fair share of grants and partnerships that we’ve structured across our game studios and through our Community Grants Program as well.
What do you think a good incentive application looks like?
- Is clear and concise, but comprehensive
- Is Arbitrum-aligned and supports the ecosystem’s broader goals
- Built upon innovative technology or products with established or strong signals of adoption / traction (or an awesome plan to make it happen)
- Has structured milestones and measurable KPIs with a solid plan to achieve them
- Has incentive design that is impactful with a long-term mindset (ie. is Sybil resistant, minimizes grant farming, also looks beyond the short-term)
- Can prove trust (via team and viability of their product, has tech that has been audited and is secure)
What are your goals for this program?
- Ensure quality protocols and builders working to grow Arbitrum have a clear path to incentives
- Help establish a long-term and sustainable incentive program
- Specifically, further test the thesis of a category/cluster-based system of grant programs and sub-councils (ie. gaming, DeFi, RWAs, culture, etc.) that would all roll back up to the broader DAO
- Also expand the definition of incentives to be able to support protocol development and runway (after all - without the app layer that can bring on a new user base, there would be no ecosystem and demand for blockspace)
- Support meritocracy, not politics