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.