For me this was a though decision but I ended up voting against.
What spoke in favor
- the DAO needs more skilled delegates
- the Arbitrum DAO is complex in nature
- in light of the amount requested, the proposal is very thorough
- the team set-up would invite some diversity into the DAO (and you can say all you want pro/con, end of the story is that 49.7% of the world’s population is female, and if we want to move the financial system on-chain we need to be creating products not only attracting male degens - I am exaggerating on purpose - but also other demographics; and hence we need these demographics to be represented otherwise we will never create products that are being liked and used)
What spoke against
- poor ROI; ~200k USD for 10 delegates is simply too high; at current ARB prices this could fund 11 DIPs
- the reality of DAOs and Web3 in a broader sense is that to succeed you need to be able to (at least at some level) self-teach yourself some concepts. Even by attending a governance bootcamp, applicants might face hurdles when certain topics are up for voting - if they have not been able to teach themselves concepts before, they wont be able to educate themselves on new topics/hence bringing low value
What could be explored in the future
- taking the funding DIPs idea, there could some sort of competition to win 5 DIPs for new delegates. E.g., need to join the DAO and show that they can provide value over 4 months. Top 5 get voted on, receive 50k ARB and can apply for DIP
- broadening the funnel: I am a big fan of SheFi (COI: I was part of cohort 11 and think Maggie is very inspiring) and believe something similar could be helpful to generally onboard non-crypto natives into Web3 (no matter their sex). E.g., something like a Arbitrum University (going through the same lectures as SheFi) that introduces people into crypto generally (and by onboarding them to Arbitrum/providing them value expecting them to stick to the ecosystem → lower hanging fruit vs chasing yield seekers). A nice side effect is that a curriculum (such as Arbitrum University) can be marketed on Meta/TikTok etc (while crypto is mostly banned).
From such a funnel, where we educate ppl about crypto, also potential contributors could come from/but even if there are just a few/none, at least we “Arbitrum pilled” them.
As I have also commented to other marketing intiatives/incentives etc.: I am missing the whole picture which could be the following:
- through incentives (which are xyz) we target yield seekers
- through Arbitrum University we target non native crypto users
- through DIP scholarship we compete for the most promising DAO contributors
- etc