[Non-Constitutional] Arbitrum DAO Firestarter Fund

Proposals
1

The OpCo will be executing a smaller-scale pilot program funded by its own budget to further develop and validate the strategy before returning to make adjustments to this proposal. Please see our comment here.

TL;DR

  • The OpCo Team proposes creating the Arbitrum DAO Firestarter Fund, a 1M ARB fund dedicated to Firestarter Grants.

  • At the time of writing this proposal, there is no active DAO program with the flexibility and adaptability required to finance the groundwork of innovative ideas or small-scale experiments.

  • The OpCo Team will collaborate with contributors who bring fresh ideas to the DAO, bootstrap the initiative with a grant, and lay the foundation for those ideas to evolve into long-term DAO ventures.

  • The OpCo Team will be responsible for executing and overseeing the program, as well as monitoring the outcomes of the awarded grants.

Rationale

Arbitrum DAO has been characterized by its focus on fostering and funding experimentation and on promoting new ideas by allocating resources to individuals who bring fresh perspectives and drive innovation within the Arbitrum ecosystem.

This has taken shape through various grant programs launched by the DAO over time, with the Pluralistic Grants Program and the Domain Allocator being the most notable, the latter of which remains active today.

Within the former, which encompassed a wide range of initiatives, the Firestarters program stood out as a successful funding experiment. This initiative stemmed from the need for a fast-track funding program for small projects that required limited resources and agile funding distribution.

The idea is straightforward: to have funds readily available under a clear framework, enabling agile access to financing and the ability to bootstrap groundwork that could eventually lead to concrete proposals for programs in collaboration with AAEs or in support of their work, proof-of-concept for new AAEs, or initiatives that meet an unserved need in the Arbitrum ecosystem.

With the OpCo having sufficient context on the activities and needs of the Arbitrum Aligned Entities, the DAO has a capable, full-time team that can serve as a bridge to external experts or contributors whose ideas may be worth exploring or of interest to those entities.

In the past, an initiative of this kind has proven to deliver successful funded cases:

  • Funding of the Arbitrum Incentives Working Group, which led to the implementation of the DAO’s first major incentives program (STIP).

  • Funding of the Treasury & Sustainability Working Group, which resulted in the launch of the DAO’s first large-scale RWA program (STEP).

  • Funding for the development of the Procurement Framework for Security Services, which led to the creation of the Arbitrum DAO Procurement Committee (ADPC) and the delivery of a framework for financing audit services.

All the initiatives had one thing in common: a need identified within the DAO that was not being addressed, for which quick funding was required for an individual or group to conduct the necessary research and actions to prepare a concrete proposal that would fill that gap.

The new Arbitrum Firestarters Fund Program builds on past learnings. It recognizes the value of a flexible and agile mechanism to fund the essential research and preparation behind new proposals and opportunities for the Arbitrum DAO. The goal is to quickly and effectively address urgent needs identified by the OpCo Team, AAEs, contributors, or delegates, producing high-quality results that can serve as the foundation for robust initiatives, while demonstrating the DAO’s operational ability to deliver agile solutions for experimental ideas.

With the OpCo in place as the program owner, and with the ability to set priorities and provide context to external contributors, the DAO is now positioned to effectively run a program that restores the dynamism and steady flow of fresh, experimental, and innovative proposals that have distinguished our forum since the DAO’s inception.

Therefore, the OpCo Team requests that the DAO allocate 1,000,000 ARB to fund the new Arbitrum DAO Firestarter Fund.

The OpCo will act as the program manager and counterparty to grant recipients, providing oversight and transparency into the program and supporting it by offering sufficient context on the DAO, delegates, and other AAEs. The OpCo will work with grantees to ensure their deliverables are completed in a timely, smooth manner.

Specifications

The Firestarters Program consists of a 1M ARB fund available to the OpCo Team to award small grants to individuals or teams who wish to bring fresh, innovative ideas to the DAO.

The proposed DAO’s new governance model encourages the active involvement of Arbitrum Aligned Entities in the feedback loop with proposal submitters. This ensures that only initiatives aligned with the vision and mission of the entity responsible for their execution move forward, while avoiding duplicate spending or effort when an initiative is already in place, and preventing potential disruptions to these entities’ activities.

In this new model, the OpCo plays a fundamental role as the key piece that brings everyone together and acts as a control panel between the community, delegates, and AAEs. In this capacity, the OpCo Team has the tools and visibility to collaborate with AAEs and gain first-hand knowledge of their initiatives, activities, capabilities, and potential opportunities.

Grants from the Firestarters Program will be paid in ARB and capped at $10,000 at the time of disbursement. Grants will be issued at the OpCo Team’s discretion, based on their best understanding of the priorities of the Arbitrum ecosystem, their context regarding the activities of the Arbitrum Aligned Entities, and their knowledge of verticals or trends where Arbitrum has opportunities to grow or those areas that could be improved.

Through the management of the Firestarter Fund, the OpCo Team will proactively identify individuals or groups who could add value to the Arbitrum ecosystem and engage them to contribute to the Arbitrum Ecosystem through the DAO.

Firestarter Grants can be awarded for:

  • Groundwork for innovative ideas: This may include the initial preparation needed to test or further develop an idea. Through this avenue, the OpCo will be able to enable experimentation at a very early stage, something for which there’s currently no available funding.
  • Research: Preliminary investigations that help assess the feasibility of the idea or gather key information for the initiative. Research grants will be awarded through RFPs in collaboration with AAEs to ensure that there’s always a purpose and planned follow-through for each research project. Additionally, research grants may be awarded at the discretion of the OpCo in line with objectives defined through the soon-to-be-revived SOS process in collaboration with the DAO.
  • Planning: Development of strategies, frameworks, or action plans to structure the idea and lay a solid foundation for its execution.
  • Proof of concept: Testing the idea on a small scale to determine whether it can evolve into a larger project or a long-term venture for the DAO.

Beyond simply funding initiatives, the OpCo will act as a bridge, channeling the talent, creativity, and expertise of these contributors toward areas where the DAO and AAEs have clear needs or opportunities. By doing so, the Firestarter Fund not only supports the initial spark of innovative or experimental ideas but also ensures that momentum is maintained and directed in ways that amplify the DAO’s mission, avoid duplication of efforts, and strengthen collaboration across the ecosystem.

In implementing the Firestarters Program, the OpCo Team may collaborate with one or more DAO members or members of the Arbitrum ecosystem to bring in the necessary expertise for optimal execution. Should this be the case, any additional costs incurred will be covered by the OpCo’s budget and will not require additional funding from the DAO.

The Firestarters Program does not have a fixed end date and will remain active until the funds are depleted, the DAO decides to shut down the initiative, or the OpCo’s mandate concludes.

To adapt to market dynamics and maintain necessary flexibility, the OpCo Team reserves the right to modify the program’s application conditions. If the OpCo wishes to extend a grant above the $10,000 cap or change the cap altogether, it will require the OAT’s approval.

If the proposal is approved, the funds will be transferred to the Arbitrum Foundation’s controlled multisig until the OpCo has the operational capacity to take over the management of the DAO’s initiative funds.

KPIS

We consider the following indicators to be the most relevant for evaluating the success of the program:

  • At least 10 new individuals or teams who have not previously participated contribute to the Arbitrum DAO.

  • At least three initiatives funded through Firestarter Grants evolve into long-term, broad Arbitrum Ecosystem ventures.

  • Over 90% of projects complete their groundwork, research, or proof-of-concept as planned.

These KPIs are supposed to be met in the first year of the program.

Transparency

The OpCo Team will exercise oversight of the Program and prepare monthly reports for the DAO detailing grants awarded, the current status of ongoing work, and completed work.

Timeline

  1. Forum Period: 17th October - 30th October

  2. Snapshot: November 6th - November 13th

  3. If approved on Snapshot and no additional major comments/objections arise, the proposal will be moved to Tally on November 20th.

Calls

We will be available to discuss the proposal during OpCo’s Office Hours on Tuesday, October 28th at 15:30 UTC.

We will also present the proposal during the Open Discussion of Proposals on October 28th at 16:00 UTC.

7 Likes
2

this is not 7 days of discussion in the forum before going for a vote. today is friday and the vote would have to be posted next thursday, therefore it’s not 7 days. it would be nice if the OpCo would comply to the DAOs procedures.

1 Like
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This is a really good proposal, it will facilitate the work and initiatives within the DAO more efficiently.

4

We have updated the proposal’s timeline to allow time for more discussion.

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5

Took some time to review this proposal and gave myself a day to think about it. Overall, I think FF (Firestarter Fund) is a great idea. It gives the DAO an easy and straightforward way to test out new ideas and experiment.

At the moment, the only way to try something innovative is by submitting a full proposal, which takes time, effort, and usually involves multiple people. That means budgets tend to be higher and harder to manage. Having a $10k budget to experiment with working groups, do research, or build a proof of concept sounds like a solid approach.

I also like that the proposal is quite open-ended. It gives room for creativity and allows us to explore different directions.

With a total budget of 1M ARB, we could probably fund around 30–50 ideas (based on current ARB prices), or about 3–4 projects per month. That feels manageable.

A few questions came to mind:

  1. The OpCo team (and AAEs) will be reviewing applications and deciding who gets funded. Will all proposed ideas be made public, including the ones that aren’t selected?

  2. One of the KPIs mentions having at least 10 individuals or teams participate who haven’t contributed to the DAO before. What’s the thinking behind this goal? Is it mainly to attract new contributors?

  3. How do you plan to onboard these new individuals or teams? Will there be any promo or outreach campaigns for the FF, and who would handle that?

1 Like
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I think this is a meaningful initiative — as OpCo pointed out, many of the pain points or emerging needs within the Arbitrum ecosystem are often first identified not by the Foundation or AAEs, but by DAO members themselves. A flexible, bottom-up fund like this could really help surface new ideas early.

That said, to help the DAO better manage expectations and evaluate the potential ROI of proposals, it might be helpful to get a clearer picture of what kinds of contributions OpCo is most interested in supporting. For instance, are there specific areas or problem spaces within the ecosystem that OpCo believes would particularly benefit from these bottom-up experiments?

Having a few example focus areas or themes could help potential contributors understand how to align their proposals with the DAO’s current priorities — and make it easier for delegates to assess impact down the line. It could also help avoid the kind of ambiguity we’ve seen before, where members were unsure whether certain initiatives — such as event funding — should go through the DAO Event Budget Program or the D.A.O.

For example, OpCo has already outlined several possible categories such as Groundwork for innovative ideas, Research, Planning, and Proof of concept. Highlighting a few concrete examples within these areas would make it easier for community members to visualize the type of proposals OpCo is looking for — and help streamline both participation and evaluation.

7

First of all, thank you @OpCo for this first proposal. I’ve been suggesting for some time now that we should bring back the Firestarters initiative, so I am happy to see it as the first initiative brought by OpCo.

Having said that, I’m not convinced that this proposal currently lives up to (at least mine) expectations of the quality standard I’d like to see for DAO proposals, especially ones from the OpCo.

In fact, when we boil it down to the absolute substance, this proposal asks for a 1M ARB allocation for the OpCo team to spend on external contributors at their own discretion up to $10k, and without limits with OAT approval. There’s no details about the underlying vision, the process, scope, reporting details, etc. I don’t fully understand how it fits into the original Firestarters grant program. But let’s break it down.

  1. You say that:

but there is almost nothing about those past learnings mentioned in the proposal. You just mention three “initiative of this kind has proven to deliver successful funded cases”. Iirc, out of these three, only two were actually Firestarters-funded, STIP ended up being funded from the proposal itself.
And what about other Firestarters? What do you think about them? What do you think went right and what didn’t back then? What would you repeat and what would you do differently? What about other initiatives?

If this is supposed to build on past learnings, it would be helpful to see what those learnings are from your perspective; otherwise, it’s just piggybacking on the work of others.

  1. Related to the previous point, did you reach out to the people responsible for those past initiatives to ask for guidance and share experience? Most of them are still here, responsive and available (I checked with them in a matter of hours). I think it’s a waste to try to reinvent the wheel from scratch and not build on past DAO-funded experience.

  2. At the beginning of your proposal, you mention that:

I don’t think that’s accurate. First, the DAO Grants Program is still ongoing and distributing funds. Second, we have the DAO Events Budget, which has been barely utilized to date. Third, all the AAEs are well funded to issue grants of the size you mention here, with AGV and AF having specific grant budgets. AF has funded DAO facilitation initiatives in the past (Entropy’s initial bootstrapping grant, for example). To my knowledge, nothing is blocking them from funding such initiatives. Furthermore, there is already a proposal on the forum for the DIP 2.0 program that is supposed to be under OpCo supervision and is directly aimed at rewarding external contributors.

I’m not saying all this to say we don’t need this program. As I mentioned in the beginning, quite the contrary. But it’s just not true to say that we need it because there is nothing in place right now. This program should fit into other programs, and we should have clarity on what kind of initiatives are expected to be funded from this bucket and not from the others (and vice versa). And there should be a vision behind this targeted spending here.

  1. Speaking about the vision, I don’t fully understand where the $10k cap comes from. What do you expect to fund with this exact level of spending? It’s significantly more than what was proposed for contributions in the DIP 2.0 proposal, yet significantly less than the average of FIrestarters grants and other DAO facilitation initiatives. To be clear, I’m not questioning this amount. I can see several strategies where this amount makes sense. But I would prefer not to guess the strategy here (also to manage expectations). On the other hand, I don’t want to find ourselves in the situation where this approved cap amount ends up not being practical and being overwritten by OAT on a regular basis.

  2. Following up on the vision, the proposal lacks any details on structure and procedures, it just says that “Grants will be issued at the OpCo Team’s discretion, based on their best understanding of the priorities of the Arbitrum ecosystem” and that “the OpCo will act as a bridge, channeling the talent, creativity, and expertise of these contributors toward areas where the DAO and AAEs have clear needs or opportunities”.

Given OpCo’s role, I think a more transparent or participatory structure would align better with expectations. How does the DAO even fit here? Is it in the picture at all? This is two steps back from any grant program we had in the DAO in the past. Again, we already have the Arbitrum Foundation (with 1B ARB budget) in place with a mandate to distribute grants at their own discretion; we don’t need an OpCo for that, and we definitely don’t need to allocate additional funding for discretionary AAE spending.

  1. I will reiterate this, as I find it very important - the proposal doesn’t define how I, as a delegate or contributor, can engage with this initiative. Who and how should I contact? Who and how will make decisions? What initiatives are we looking for? Can it all be spent in the first week? Can it all be spent in the last month? There are KPIs but they are with a year (half of the OpCo mandate) horizon. What happens if they’re not met? What happens if they’re not on track to be met? Who monitors this? We need proper vision, structure, and processes in place; otherwise, there’s a risk that this becomes just an AAE slush fund to once again experiment on the DAO grant program from scratch.

  2. Furthermore, the proposal doesn’t say how OpCo is going to source the proposals. At this point, we’ve learnt several times over and over again that this is a recurring issue and that the approach of “allocate funds and they will come” does not work. One of the unique features of @DisruptionJoe, as a past Firestarters program manager, was that he is a very charismatic person and well-networked in this space, with a past Gitcoin experience; he was the catalyst of the initial program. What is the strategy for building the application pipeline here?

  3. Lastly, this proposal lacks clarity on who will define the grant recipients’ goals, milestones, and metrics. It just says that the OpCo will report the progress to the DAO monthly. In the past, we’ve seen this as a major pitfall of previous grants - both from grant programs and DAO initiatives. If it’s up to the grant recipient to decide on what and how they report, there’s no reason for them to report on any issues and blockers until it’s too late.

To sum up, I’m very supportive of the idea, but that’s how I see this current proposal right now - as merely an idea that should be turned into a proper grant program that can raise the bar and set the standard for future DAO proposals. But right now it’s not it. Fortunately, there is a lot of past knowledge, experience, and competent people in the DAO who can help make this happen. OpCo just needs to coordinate on that.

7 Likes
8

We support dedicating 1M ARB to a Firestarter Fund for small grants of up to 10,000 ARB. Although there are still open questions about this program—as highlighted by delegates in the comments—we believe the OpCo is the right team to manage this grant program. Given OpCo’s role as the control panel between the community, delegates, and AAEs, we expect the team to have a high-context understanding of Arbitrum’s needs and the trajectory of the ecosystem.

Our main ask is that the program builds in flexibility and adaptability from the start, allowing OpCo to refine funding priorities as ecosystem needs and SOS outcomes shape the DAO’s direction.

We don’t expect OpCo to share detailed operational plans, but we encourage the team to provide a framework outlining how the program will be structured to remain adaptable, along with a feedback loop that meaningfully incorporates input from AAEs, delegates, and contributors.

Additionally, we encourage OpCo to explore supporting builders developing mini-apps on Arbitrum, using Farcaster as a platform. Several DAO contributors @Tekr0x.eth and @maxlomu are already actively building and could be great resources to explore how the Firestarter Fund can best support developer experimentation with mini-apps.

1 Like
9

Thank you for the feedback and the questions so far. We want to ensure that everyone has a clear view of what Firestarters is going to look like and how we’re thinking about it.

The OpCo will publish a monthly update that includes all accepted applications and relevant information. We may omit the exact amount of a given grant to maintain negotiation power and prevent future grantees from anchoring their requests to previous grants.

Yes, the idea is to help attract new builders and contributors to the DAO and the broader ecosystem. However, that doesn’t mean that existing contributors are ineligible for the program.

Plurality Labs, the entity that ran the previous Firestarters program on which this proposal is based, published a review that included the DAO’s main takeaways. Those were:

  • Without clearly defined priorities and a structured process for establishing 3–6 month strategies, it becomes challenging for the DAO to foster meaningful experimentation.

Although this is not something Firestarters directly addresses, the OpCo is in a really good position to help define those priority areas alongside the DAO and AAEs. With the soon-to-be revived SOS initiative, Firestarters will act as an enabler of targeted experimentation to bootstrap initiatives and ideas aligned with the SOS’s outcomes.

  • Potential contributors require a clear pathway to access small grants for narrowly scoped projects. These initiatives should then be evaluated to provide contributors with guidance on next steps and enable the DAO to identify and further support high-performing participants.

This is precisely the kind of point Firestarters will address. And with OpCo managing the program, the evaluation, and guidance on next steps will be much more direct.

  • DAO members need streamlined and consolidated communications. There was no centralized source for maintaining context, understanding responsibilities, or learning about additional ways to contribute effectively as Arbitrum participants.

Initiatives born in the DAO can greatly benefit from a central point (OpCo) to maintain context and responsibilities and facilitate contributors. With the OpCo in place, DAO-funded initiatives will stop operating in a silo, the people running the initiatives will have operational support, and delegates will know who to turn to for questions, feedback, or suggestions.

  • Given Arbitrum’s decentralized nature, processes tend to move slowly. Now, we are in a position to accelerate progress and improve overall efficiency.

A good example of this is the past M&A and AVI proposals. While the DAO expressed interest in exploring those proposals further, delegates didn’t want to commit to a fully fledged proposal from the start. The middle-ground solution was to create a separate proposal to act as a pilot program to validate (or not) the concept.

With Firestarters in place, some groundwork for the pilot programs could have happened much more quickly, enabling faster iteration.

We are in the process of discussing with past grantees to learn more about their experience and feedback, and have also reached out to the program manager (@DisruptionJoe ) for their perspective. Additionally, a lot of the learnings had been documented (e.g., here), which we consulted.

All of the programs mentioned are funding particular domains that are, by design, narrow in scope. Firestarters is supposed to fill in the blanks and cater to categories not covered by the existing programs, either due to scope or size.

Also, when it comes to the DAO Events Budget, many people are going to the respective domain in Questbook to request funding, which is likely why the budget hasn’t been utilized as much.

We envision Firestarters as a top-of-funnel program that helps get builders and contributors into the ecosystem and, potentially, into one of the programs mentioned above to continue their work.

We conceived Firestarters as both inbound- and outbound-oriented program. For the inbounds, we’ll leverage the existing community/contributor/delegate base, other AAEs, and the contacts in their adjacent circles to spread the word about the program.

For the outbound part, if we (the OpCo), other AAEs, or DAO delegates/contributors see a need that an individual or team could fulfil, we’ll proactively look into filling that gap through a firestarter grant.

Additionally, we’ll be collaborating with other grant programs so they can refer applicants whose applications might be strong but are too early or too experimental for their program’s scope.

The OpCo will establish internal procedures for managing applications, reviewing them, and working with AAEs or other contributors, as needed, within a grantee’s scope of work. The details are a work-in-progress, but will be shared before the proposal moves to an onchain vote, so delegates can have a better understanding of how we’re thinking about it.

Regarding the DAO’s participation: the program is and will be DAO-owned, managed, and executed by the OpCo, a DAO-funded entity with the mandate to execute initiatives on behalf of the DAO. Do you envision more hands-on participation from the DAO? And if yes, in what capacity?

Delegates & contributors can offer their feedback on funding priorities, refer people to the program, or apply to the program themselves. They can help raise awareness about the program’s existence among builders and help shape a pipeline. The program itself will be run by the OpCo team. If any external party is hired to help manage the program, the OpCo will continue to own the initiative and communications with delegates, ensuring the ultimate authority and responsible party remains the OpCo.

The scope of initiatives we’ll accept is intentionally left wide to allow for agility in funding priorities. The program’s direction will be influenced by the DAO landscape and the broader ecosystem at any given time, and the soon-to-be-revisited SOS will also inform it. For that reason, we wish to maintain flexibility.

There’s no specific goal for when the budget should be spent. If there are initiatives that pop up and make sense to fund, we will. If there are a few months without any meaningful opportunities to fund and no grants are distributed, that’s an acceptable outcome as well.

The OpCo will monitor and report on the KPIs monthly. If the program is not on track to meet its KPIs, the DAO can vote to end the program via a Snapshot vote that requires at least 3% of the votable supply to participate. In addition, the OAT is overseeing the OpCo and, by extension, this program.

The OpCo team will work with each grantee to determine and set their goals, milestones, and any KPIs where applicable. We’ll take on a project management role and oversee the completion of all deliverables from grantees.

We will be available to discuss the proposal during OpCo’s office hours on Tuesday, October 28th at 15:30 UTC. We will also present the proposal during the Open Discussion of Proposals on October 28th at 16:00 UTC.

1 Like
10

Thanks for your proposal! I want to address a few items:

To the best of my knowledge, there was no vote on this matter. So it may be a good suggestion, but it should not be what defines which proposals should come to the DAO appreciation today (until this vision is accepted through a vote). Therefore, it should not be part of the reasoning/specification of a proposal, IMO.

That also brings us to my next point:

We are missing the clear needs of the DAO. While I don’t think it should prevent this initiative from moving forward, I would prefer it to proceed in conjunction with the resolution of the SOS framework, where we, as a DAO, define our priorities. Then the AAEs and other relevant parties can move forward to implement them. Right now, it feels as though we are “putting the cart before the horse”:

We don’t know what the DAO needs;
The prospects (builders, contributors, etc) don’t know how they can be effective;
and so on.

I echo @maxlomu’s comment (and others) in the sense that we need to verify this before fully committing to the proposal.

However, if we MUST move forward, I would suggest the categorisation of contributions or initiatives that Firestarters is aiming to support.

Currently, the proposal maintains an intentionally broad scope, which enhances flexibility but can also make it challenging for potential applicants to determine whether their idea aligns. Introducing a light categorisation framework (for example: Technical / Tooling, Community / Coordination, Research / Governance, Growth / BD / Ecosystem, etc.) would help in a few ways:

  • make the program’s intent clearer to new builders;
  • improve alignment between DAO priorities and funded experiments; and
  • simplify reporting, allowing the DAO to see which types of initiatives are gaining traction.

This doesn’t have to be rigid; even a few high-level categories would already make the funnel clearer and help Firestarters serve as a true on-ramp for new contributors, providing more clarity on the points that are still not elaborated/detailed.

11

I support this initiative. It fills an important gap for early stage experiments.

One idea that could make it more interesting: structure it more like ENS Small Grants / Prop House, where the delegates can vote for proposals. Maybe delegates distribute 50% in regular Prop House style rounds and OpCo can distribute the other 50%. I thought the Prop House model was very effective for this sort of thing.

4 Likes
12

This proposal was well thought out. The Firestarter Fund feels like something the DAO genuinely needs right now, a flexible and fast way to back early-stage ideas before they get lost in long discussions or die off due to lack of small funding.

One thing I’ve noticed over time is that many promising ideas on this forum don’t always move forward, not because they’re bad, but because there’s no light-touch funding structure to help them get started or validated. This proposal seems to fill that gap perfectly.

Having the OpCo team manage it also makes sense. They already have the context, relationships, and visibility across the DAO and AAEs, which gives them a good sense of what areas deserve quick attention. The $10K cap per grant is reasonable too, small enough to stay agile, but enough to test ideas properly.

I especially appreciate that this isn’t just about throwing money around but about building momentum for contributors and experimental projects that could later grow into bigger DAO initiatives.

Overall, this proposal brings back the “builder spirit” that made the early days of the DAO exciting. I fully support it and look forward to seeing what kind of new contributors and ideas it helps surface.

2 Likes
13

Wanted to chime in as a former firestarter grantee and one of the three examples cited here!

  1. Capping at $10k feels arbitrary and also hard to enforce. For eg, the Treasury Working group had 2 working leads (myself and one other person) each of whom were paid 24k ARB. A cap of $10k per person makes sense, but sometimes its good to have another person for bouncing ideas with so I would modify the cap of $10k to be enforced at an individual level rather than project level.
  2. All 3 examples cited here culminated in a Snapshot proposal. While season 1 of the treasury WG had 2 outputs (research and STEP proposal), we saw much more engagment with the proposal than the research. So in season 2 we ensured that each WG lead had to produce a proposal that would be voted on in snapshot (the token swap proposal which didnt pass and STEP 2 which did). Converting research into something like actionable snapshot proposals ensur4es people actually read your work
  3. Make sure that firestarter leads document the interviews they do with people as part of the grant. @krst really pushed us to list out all RWA providers we spoke with and im glad he did. In the age of AI, content can be faked but actual interviews with stakeholders cant.
  4. I would be wary of putting a KPI like new people entering the ecosystem. If they are new well & good, what matters is quality of proposals put forth to delegates and whether they drive positive outcomes or not
  5. You need someone to scope out needs and then recruit people that can do the legwork in proposing solutions meeting those needs. The most boring but useful way of thinking about firestarter grantees, is that of a neutral bureaucrat whose job is to interview all relevant people and present proposals to the board. @DisruptionJoe first approached me to lead the treasury group with a clear scoped out ask of understanding “price impact of distributions, sequencer fees, turning grants to investents, and potential treasury management earning yield to fund continuous streams of funding”. we need an equivalent manager for getting such well scoped out questions that we can then recruit for via firestarters
5 Likes
14

This is a tremendous idea. My only addition would be partnering it with a coordinated publicity strategy in order to inform grantees what the Firestarter Fund is, how to participate in it, and why it exists.

This seems like a great opportunity that should be shared with as many people as possible.

1 Like
15

Hey all,

Thanks to everyone who provided feedback on the proposal so far, both here and in private.

After reviewing all the different perspectives and discussing the proposal with several delegates, including some grantees of the previous Firestarter program and Disruption Joe, who ran the program, we are confident that there is significant interest in reviving the program and that the majority of stakeholders agree.

We strive to create an initiative that is effective, aligned within the AAE setup, and ideally also supported and recognized as valuable by a large number of stakeholders. For the Firestarters, we distilled the feedback we received and distilled the main points of concern into three overarching themes.

1. Why fund the proposal from the DAO, when the OpCo’s budget could finance it?

One of the main questions we were asked was why we chose to request funds from the DAO rather than using our own budget to fund the program. With the proposal the OAT passed back in June, doing so would fall within our scope. Our initial instinct was to request a different budget so as not to overstep our mandate, as we saw OAT’s proposal more as a solution to one-off cases, rather than a carte blanche to fund anything we deemed necessary.

At the same time, we want to protect OpCo’s runway. It’s still very early in our 2-year term, and ARB’s negative price movement since the proposal’s execution (approximately -45% at the time of writing this comment) means we must be extra mindful of how we allocate our resources. However, delegates were wary of allocating additional resources to OpCo for a program that OpCo already has the funds for.

2. The flexibility of the grants’ scope shouldn’t come at the expense of an overarching strategy.

Our intention in letting the scope of grants loosely defined was to have the flexibility to fund all sorts of ideas regardless of their domain, as long as our evaluation of their potential impact was positive. But there is a skinny line between having a flexible strategy and having no plan. In addition to delegates not being clear on our strategy, they noted that having a loosely defined program also makes it difficult for potential contributors to determine whether their ideas are within scope, which could deter potentially valuable contributions.

Delegates also had reservations about trusting the OpCo to create a strategy, as the entity doesn’t yet have a track record of being able to deliver results in such programs successfully. There were requests to take the DAO’s input into account when creating such a strategy and to rely on the expertise and experience of several contributors, rather than doing the entire thing ‘in-house’.

3. Even with a strategy in place and an intention to use Firestarters to address the DAO’s needs, it’s not clear what the DAO’s needs are.

While we have our own understanding of what the DAO’s needs look like, indeed, there isn’t a shared understanding or a unified vision of what the DAO’s needs are. This is an area where the SOS and the process around it would truly help, but alas, it hasn’t been figured out yet. Rushing to create a program without having an overarching vision for the DAO’s direction will probably lead us into the same challenges we’ve faced in the past: no clear strategy, lack of cohesion, and initiatives working in silos.

Addressing the feedback

Upon reflecting on the points above and the rest of the feedback we received, we decided to take the following steps:

  1. Put the current proposal on ‘pause’.

  2. Internalize and fund a Firestarters pilot from OpCo’s budget with a max of $50,000. That will help with a) having a small bucket of funds we can use to award small grants as we further develop the program without additional expense to the DAO, and b) act as a validation of OpCo’s ability to manage such a program.

  3. Develop the Firestarters strategy further and host dedicated calls to discuss delegate input and feedback post Devconnect. At the same time, we’ll focus on creating evaluation criteria for the pilot program that we’ll be running. Things like the application funnel, evaluation of grantees’ successes, and adequate reporting to the DAO are among the things we’ll be looking at evaluating.

  4. Revisit the proposal at a later date, after we’ve developed a more robust strategy in alignment with stakeholders, we’ve successfully validated the concept as well as our ability to manage the program, or we’ve fully allocated the $50,000 with some level of success, the interpretation of which will be determined while also developing the strategy with delegates.

We’ll keep this thread open and under the ‘Proposals’ category so folks can still continue sharing their feedback even if they can’t make it to a call, or in Buenos Aires, but we do not plan on moving the proposal to Snapshot anytime soon. We’ve updated the original proposal’s text to reflect that.

Please direct any questions or feedback for Firestarters to @Sinkas (Telegram)

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