March 2025 Member Election Phase

Security Council Security Council Elections
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The Member Election phase (the final round of voting) of the March 2025 Security Council election process commenced on April 12th at ~15:20 UTC, on Tally.

What is the Member Election Phase?

  • During this phase, delegates must vote on their preferred candidate(s) on Tally.
  • The 6 candidates with the most votes at the end of this phase, will join the Security Council.
  • Delegates can split their votes across multiple candidates.

When is the Member Election Phase?

  • Please note, this phase runs in 2 parts:
    • Full Weight Voting (Apr 12 - Apr 19): Delegates can vote with full voting power in the first 7 days
    • Decreasing Weight Voting (Apr 19 - May 3): To encourage delegates to cast votes early, voting power will linearly decay if not used within the first 7 days (by Apr 19 at ~15:20 UTC).
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Who are the Candidates?

What makes a good candidate?

  • Choosing the right Security Council members is crucial to the security of the Arbitrum ecosystem due to the authority granted to them.
  • This guide highlights some things to consider when evaluating candidates.

What is the Security Council?

  • The Security Council is a committee of 12 members who are signers of a multi-sig wallet. They are responsible for combatting any critical risks associated with the Arbitrum protocol by making time-sensitive & emergency response decisions. Accordingly, the Security Council is key to securing the Arbitrum ecosystem.
  • Security Council Elections are held every 6 months, and allow the DAO to elect 6 new Security Council members.
  • Actively participating in Security Council Elections is one of the most important responsibilities of the ArbitrumDAO.

If you want to find out more about the Security Council and the Security Council elections, please refer to the following resources:

Remember to Vote!

We’re counting on you to vote for the next cohort of Security Council members to secure the Arbitrum ecosystem! :saluting_face::blue_heart::orange_heart:

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After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation decided to split our votes equally between the following six candidates:

Rationale

When selecting candidates for this election, the @SEEDgov delegation believes that the composition of the Security Council should reflect a balanced combination of technical competence, geographic diversity, independence, and relevant experience. With that in mind, we decided to split our vote evenly among six candidates who, in our view, embody these key qualities.

We prioritized candidates with a strong technical background and a proven track record in blockchain security. This includes auditors or auditing firms whose work provides them with a practical and rigorous understanding of the challenges involved in securing decentralized systems.

We also valued prior experience in similar bodies and a deep understanding of how a Security Council operates.

Geographic diversity was another key criterion—we intentionally sought a spread of locations to reduce the risk of signers being physically concentrated in one place, which enhances the system’s resilience in critical situations.

Additionally, we emphasized the importance of candidates showing genuine alignment with the vision of Arbitrum and Ethereum, as well as a track record of involvement or meaningful ties with the DAO, particularly through active participation in initiatives funded by it.

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We Split our security council evenly over:
Openzeppelin - a leader in the security space that has developed open source libraries, an obvious choice.

Spearbit/Cantina - one of the top Security auditors, for their domain knowledge.

MartinGBz - as part of ACI, has experience in DAO/governance related security issues.

We believe these candidates have the experience and skills in both blockchain and DAO security issues to serve Arbitrum DAO’s security council well.

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As in @web3citizenxyz representation. Voting for equally for: Yoav, Bartek, Certora (Elad Erdheim), Open Zeppelin (Steven Thornton), Michael Lewellen and Jake Nyquist.

Below the rationale:

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The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst, @Sinkas, and @Manugotsuka, and it’s based on their combined research, fact-checking, and ideation.

Nomination Phase

We didn’t use our voting power during the nomination phase of the March 2025 Security Council elections. That was a conscious decision, as all the candidates we wanted to see qualify for the elections phase had already done so.

For those unaware, during the nomination phase, candidates can only receive up to the necessary amount of votes needed to qualify (8.5M in this case), but no more than that. Seeing as the Security Council elections are perhaps one of the most important votes in the DAO, we didn’t want to use our voting power simply for the sake of exercising our voting right.

Election Phase

As with the previous elections’ nomination period, we selected the applicants we voted for based on the following high-level criteria:

  • Strong technical knowledge
  • Reputation at stake
  • Location

After reviewing all applications, attending the AMA call on the 11th of April, and consulting with our research team, we decided to split our voting power between 3 candidates:

Bartek

Our very first choice was obviously Bartek. In addition to being L2BEAT’s co-founder, Bartek has strong technical knowledge and extensive experience with many L2s, including Arbitrum. His prior involvement with the Security Council also makes him an ideal candidate for this cohort.

Yoav.eth

Yoav comes from a security and research background. His technical expertise and extensive knowledge of Arbitrum mechanisms will be a significant addition to the Security Council.

Fred

Fred was the previous tech lead at Arbitrum Foundation. Before that, he was the tech lead at Offchain Labs, making him intimately familiar with Arbitrum’s tech and a perfect candidate for the Security Council. He’s now no longer directly associated with either AF or OCL, although he is a technical advisor to Arbitrum.

Disclaimer

We know that the Security Council is comprised of 6 people, but we consciously decided to concentrate our voting power on the 3 people that we feel most confident in, that we have direct experience working with, and therefore feel confident in their ability to serve on the Security Council. We appreciate every candidate who has applied, and we believe there are some very capable people who can make up a really strong cohort.

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I have held it fairly simple.
MartinGBz received 100% of my voting power. I got to know and work with him through the Aave DAO. So he knows DAOs and governance pretty well.
He was always helpful when support was needed.

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We voted for

  • Bartek.eth
  • Fred
  • Michael Lewellen
  • Yoav.eth

Rationale:

Our decision-making process focused primarily on three key criteria, with geographic diversity as a secondary consideration:

Deep Security Expertise: This was paramount. The Security Council needs members capable of implementing rapid upgrades and fixes when vulnerabilities arise, requiring significant technical expertise. We highly valued not just general technical understanding, but specific knowledge of security practices – identifying vulnerabilities and knowing effective mitigation strategies, areas where auditors and security researchers often excel.

Profound Understanding of the Arbitrum Protocol: A deep comprehension of Arbitrum’s specific design and mechanics is crucial for effective security governance. Fred, in particular, stands out due to his role as a Tech Lead and deep involvement with the protocol’s intricacies, making his continued presence on the council highly valuable.

Proven Track Record in Security Council Participation: While relying solely on past participation risks stagnation, practical experience in handling emergency situations (“war room” scenarios) is critical. This goes beyond theoretical security knowledge to include demonstrated ability to act effectively under pressure, informed by protocol understanding. Several candidates have direct experience from the first cohort, and Michael Lewellen has extensive experience in similar roles across other DAOs.

Geographic Diversity (Supplementary): Given the pool of candidates primarily from the US, Europe, and the Middle East, we aimed for a reasonable distribution across these regions. However, we note a significant gap in coverage for the Asian time zone. This remains a concern, and initiatives to encourage qualified individuals from this region to participate in future elections might be beneficial.

Overall, these four candidates represent a strong combination of deep technical security skills, specific Arbitrum knowledge, and practical experience in handling critical security responsibilities, balanced with reasonable geographic distribution among the available nominees.

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Voted 100% for MartinGbz.

I trust his hands on experience with securing and managing high value transactions at Aave. He’s been deeply involved in governance, proposal implementation, and risk mitigation, things that directly impact protocol safety.

I believe he’ll bring a thoughtful, practical approach to the Security Council and genuinely help strengthen the ecosystem.

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I’ve cast my votes for Michael Lewellen, bartek.eth, and yoav.eth in the Security Council election.

Michael Lewellen brings crucial hands-on security expertise from his work with Immunefi and substantial background in smart contract security. In governance, technical competence must take priority over political considerations - especially when dealing with protocol security.I admire the way he communicate on the security council call being extremely communicative which is also a very important characteristic to have in the team

bartek.eth has demonstrated consistent engagement in our ecosystem and has the technical chops needed for incident response. His work across multiple protocols gives him the perspective to assess risks effectively without unnecessary bureaucracy.

yoav.eth offers a strong mix of technical skills and governance experience that aligns with my preference for accountability and clear metrics. I also appreciate how he responded when asked why he’s not participating so much in governance - he was straight up about only voting where he has expertise (security) instead of pretending to know everything. That kind of self-awareness is exactly what we need.

Security Council members must have both technical understanding and the judgment to know when not to intervene - all three candidates demonstrate this balance. The protocol’s long-term value depends on having competent technical minds that understand their role is to address genuine emergencies while respecting DAO dynamics.