Background
- Name: Milan | Jonas
- Position we are jointly applying for: Application Advisor
- TG: @Milan_IgniteDAO | @ jooooo5as
- Twitter: @proofofmilan | @ jooooo5as
- Affiliations (Currently I am working with, invested in, etc.): Ignite DAO | Gyroscope
Why You
Why would You be the best candidate for this position?
We believe the main role as an Application Advisor is to facilitate clear and effective communication. We see three main dimensions here:
- communication of operational aspects, e.g., explanations of the grant scope, process, and criteria
- communication of strategic goals, e.g., demonstrations how a project could better align goals and strategies with the Arbitrum ecosystem.
- communication of performance against the stated goals
We further believe it is important to understand and operate within the boundaries of a grant seeker. As we, Milan and Jonas, both have experience using, building, and researching DeFi applications we can bring in this perspective and help projects steelman their grant proposals.
A few points on our individual experience and qualifications:
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Milan started working in crypto at Zilliqa in 2017. He soon became Zilliqa’s Head of Marketing and Partnerships and played a key role in executing strategic plans and building valuable partnerships for the organization (e.g. with big esports teams like Ninja in Pyjamas or Mad Lions). Milan also worked with a lot of ecosystem partners to help them on how to work on applications for the Zilliqa blockchain.
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Milan also has hands-on experience as an entrepreneur, having self-funded and bootstrapped Ignite DAO, a wallet for Zilliqa with >11m USD in TVL.
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Jonas has diverse experience in the crypto industry, primarily in Applied Research and Analyst roles. His expertise includes data analysis (Python & SQL) and effectively communicating findings. He also contributes as an operator in a DeFi project.
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Jonas authored the most-frequently-cited stablecoin paper while working at the European Central Bank, conducted internal and external research projects while working at Binance, and is currently a full-time contributor to a DeFi project, Gyroscope.
What do you think a good incentive application looks like?
We can reuse the earlier stated three dimensions to structure how a good application can look like.
Operational: ideally, the grant seeker is ready to start the incentive campaign.
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Readiness: are all necessary contracts deployed? Are there external dependencies that could impact the success of the grant usage?
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Alignment: is there an outline of a broader marketing strategy with established partnerships or a core link to a newly launched product feature?
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Planning for the Future: does the team demonstrate a commitment to conducting thorough testing of technical infrastructure and addressing potential scalability, security, or user adoption challenges in the future, leveraging the grant effectively?
Strategic: ideally, the grant seeker can use the grant funding to build out a sustainable edge (that persists even after the grant funds have been used).
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Vision: does the team intend to utilize additional funds to establish a sustainable competitive edge? Ideally, via a focus on strategies like bootstrapping dominance in a niche, scaling up initially proven product-market fit, and maintaining a long-term orientation.
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Ecosystem Contribution: do the project’s goals align with the overarching objectives of the Arbitrum ecosystem? Is there a description how the project contributes to the ecosystem’s growth, while emphasizing unique features that differentiate it from competitors or including use-cases that are prohibitively expensive on Ethereum mainnet.
Communicational: ideally, the grant seeker commits to transparent, comprehensive, and honest reporting.
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Transparent reporting: will the team commit to standardized reports on a defined cadence (e.g. monthly, quarterly, or after reaching milestones)? The format of the standardized reports must support enough flexibility, while keeping the required effort for the grant seeker minimal & should be strongly linked to the scoring rubric.
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Comprehensive reporting: is the team willing to provide comprehensive reports covering both successes and challenges faced during the incentive campaign?
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Adaptability and Proactive Problem-Solving: does the team demonstrate a willingness and ability to discuss and adjust their strategy openly if initial objectives are not being met?
In summary, a strong incentive application for Arbitrum should highlight operational readiness, with an emphasis on immediate launch capability and readiness for unforeseen challenges. Strategically, it must showcase a clear vision for leveraging the grant to gain a sustainable edge, aligning closely with Arbitrum’s ecosystem goals and distinguishing itself from competitors. Communicationally, the application needs to commit to transparent, comprehensive reporting and adaptability, ensuring an open dialogue about progress and any necessary strategic shifts. This approach ensures a thorough, competitive, and well-aligned application for consideration.
What are your goals for this program?
This long-term oriented program has the opportunity to move towards and define a set of best-practices on how to distribute community grants. This sounds fun and we’d like to contribute to this.
Concretely, we see three different sub-goals here:
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Creating a grading rubric that is fundamentally data-driven, but measures the ‘right’ things. Metrics that are beneficial to the broader Arbitrum ecosystem even when gamed, metrics that include a long-term orientation, and metrics that are easy to measure.
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Creating a way to effectively communicate the grading rubric in an intuitive, yet exhaustive manner. This will be difficult, but can preempt many problems.
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Creating healthy feedback cycles. Various kinds of feedback cycles that range from providing concrete feedback to grant seekers on how to improve their application, to an iterative development of the grading rubric, to tracking the grant seeker performance against goals.
But beyond just providing incentives, the program should also offer real advisory support. Teams may encounter challenges during the implementation phase, and offering guidance can help them navigate these hurdles successfully.
Additionally, this grant program may very well be the project’s first major touchpoint with Arbitrum, making a positive impression crucial. This reinforces the need for open communication, constructive feedback, and specific, objective criteria even or particularly when communicating a negative funding decision.
also adding a tl;dr:
- What you see is what you get. Instead of applying on behalf of a team member, we will be the ones engaged in this. This would be the first DAO engagement for us, so we would be dedicated to this and have no conflicts of interest w/ other DAO functions. Similarly, we have sth to prove and will make sure to deliver.
- We’ve proven our capabilities in past roles. Milan was the Marketing Lead at Ziliqa and has expertise in marketing and grant programs. As a founder of a Zilliqa Wallet he also understands the candidate perspective and roadblocks. Jonas held past roles at the ECB and Binance and is currently working as a DeFi operator.
- Concretely, we think we have skills this program needs. we think we can bring a lot of operational excellence, structure, and context awareness to this program. We also have skills in data science and marketing.
- Some of the key points we believe are important.
- Process: The grant process starts long before the grant seeker applies and ends long after grant funding is distributed. We want to take a holistic look and focus on infographics & similar tooling to clarify the program scope and process.
- Substance: We think it is crucial to check whether any funds will be used to establish a sustainable competitive edge or will simply temporarily boost the activity. To give examples, we think it would make sense to select for projects that focus on strategies like bootstrapping dominance in a niche or scaling up initially proven product-market fit. Ultimately this depends on the scoring rubric. What we want to do is to concretely help projects to perform well within the scope of LTIPP.