[Non-Constitutional] ArbitrumHub Evolution: The Next Step in Streamlining Information Access and Raising Awareness for Arbitrum DAO

[0x_Buidler]

Thank you all for your valuable feedback on the ArbitrumHub proposal. We appreciate the time and thought put into your responses and would like to address some of the concerns raised.

Addressing Budget Concerns

1. Cost Justification:

The platform’s operations, maintenance, and continuous enhancement are critical to ensuring its reliability and effectiveness. A dedicated team from HoomanDigital, comprising designers, developers, and UX specialists, is essential to maintain high standards of security, uptime, and platform enhancements. This team will handle a range of tasks, including content creation, quality assurance, and managing community contributions. Each phase of development—Dev, Test, QA, UAT, and Live—requires distinct resources and meticulous attention to detail, including a four-week contingency plan and standby resources to address any unforeseen gaps. This structured approach ensures a robust and future-proof platform that meets the evolving needs of the DAO.

The weekly DAO sync reports, produced by Angela over the past 5-6 months, are integral to maintaining transparency and keeping the community informed. Each report, spanning 2,000-3,000 words, involves extensive research to cover all DAO activities accurately. The proposed cost of $1,200 per report is consistent with industry standards for such detailed and high-quality work. These reports include updates on governance, initiatives and community contributions, providing valuable insights and fostering informed decision-making within the DAO.

2. Budget Reduction Possibilities:

We acknowledge concerns about the budget and are open to discussing a moderate reduction. While some suggest pursuing grant programs, ArbitrumHub’s continuous nature makes it unsuitable for limited grant resources. Instead, we propose a phased approach with initial six-month milestones to establish a solid foundation, followed by longer-term plans. This strategy balances cost management with delivering a high-quality platform.

In response to feedback, we will present a refined proposal to better align with community expectations and financial considerations, demonstrating our commitment to creating a sustainable and impactful platform for the ArbitrumDAO.

Phased Implementation and Milestones

1. Phased Approach: Several community members suggested implementing the project in phases with clear milestones. We agree that this approach could manage costs and demonstrate value incrementally. Initially, we will follow up with six-month milestones to build a solid foundation for the initiative, followed by larger phases in the future. The initial phase will focus on the most critical aspects of the project, such as security, core development, and weekly reports. Subsequent phases could address additional features and community incentives based on the success and feedback from the initial phase.

Community and DAO Alignment

1. Transparency and Communication: We have always strived for transparency in our operations and budget allocations. We will continue to provide detailed reports and updates to the community to ensure clarity on how funds are being utilized.
2. Community Engagement: Incentivizing community contributions remains a priority. We believe that rewarding active participation through bounties, hackathons, and educational content creation will enhance the overall engagement and value of the DAO.

Utilization of Existing Platforms

1. Fragmentation Concerns: We acknowledge concerns about attention being divided across multiple platforms. Our goal with ArbitrumHub is to complement existing channels (Foundation website, Arbitrum Twitter, Gov forum) by providing a centralized hub for comprehensive, organized information. We aim to enhance, not fragment, the community’s access to valuable resources.

Next Steps

1. Grant Programs: We have noted the suggestion to pursue grant programs for funding. However, we would like to highlight that ArbitrumHub is a continuous effort that is not feasible to go through grant programs, as each grant program has very limited resources per project.
2. Proposal Revision: Based on the feedback, we will revisit our proposal to potentially reduce the budget and break it into more manageable phases. We aim to resubmit a revised proposal that addresses the community’s concerns while maintaining the integrity and objectives of the ArbitrumHub project.

Conclusion

We are committed to building a valuable resource for the Arbitrum DAO community and appreciate your constructive feedback. By working together, we can ensure that ArbitrumHub meets the community’s needs and becomes a cornerstone of the arbitrum DAO ecosystem.

Thank you for your ongoing support and input.

Best regards,
@0x_Buidler and the ArbitrumHub Team

[Curia]

After carefully reviewing the proposal and considering the feedback from other delegates, we have decided to vote against it at this time due to the following concerns:

1. High Budget Request: The budget requested for this proposal appears to be quite high. We believe that nearly half a million dollars is excessive for this initiative. Is it possible to lower the cost? We recommend revisiting the budget and exploring ways to reduce expenses while maintaining the proposal’s core objectives.
2. Traction: The proposed website aims to streamline information access and raise awareness, but we already have a foundation website and other social media platforms that many users are accustomed to. We have concerns about the traction this new website will gain. Additionally, we would like to understand the KPIs for this initiative. How will the success of this program be measured?

Despite these concerns, we are open to further discussions and are willing to reconsider our voting if adjustments are made. We are eager to help refine the proposal to better align with our expectations and ensure its success.

[0x_ultra]

I voted “against”, while the website and the goals are interesting, I think that the costs are too high compared to the potential value of this. In my opinion we should focus on already existing platforms like Foundation website and others. As others have mentioned above, I also recommend to apply for grants if you want to rework on it. Best of luck!

[maxlomu]

gm, thanks for submitting the proposal.

I can see value in having a more unified way to digest information for the DAO - however I must echo other delegates that this looks too expensive at the moment.

EDIT: thanks for pointing me to the existing portal, this was an oversight from my side.

Voting against.

[0x_Buidler]

thank you @maxlomu for the feedback , ArbitrumHub is already live, and we have been working on this initiative non-stop for the past six months. This is the first time we are coming to the DAO to ask for the necessary support. The budget we have proposed is not solely for the team; a significant portion is reserved for community contributions and weekly DAO sync reports.

Below are the socials for arbitrumhub:
Website: Arbitrum Hub
Twitter: Arbitrum Hub
Github: Arbitrum Hub

Thank you

[WinVerse]

DAOplomats would be voting against this proposal.

ArbitrumHub is definitely a nice to have. However, we strongly resonate with the sentiment surrounding costs that several delegates raised.

We would also love if some of the deliverables could be trimmed. For instance, promoting specific projects through a dedicated section (month 1), organizing regular meetings (month 2), sound a bit too excessive. It seems like the team is looking for ways to justify the proposed cost with these strategies.

[krst]

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

We will be voting AGAINST the proposal in its current form.

While we strongly agree that a hub such as the one outlined can be a very useful tool for delegates and other contributors interested in what’s happening in the DAO, we have concerns regarding the approach that the proposal suggests.

As others have already pointed out, the overall costs are rather inflated. In addition, we find some of the items redundant in the sense that they might not necessarily provide additional value. There’s also no mention of KPIs through which we can evaluate whether or not the initiative was successful or not after its completion.

Our understanding of a hub like the one outlined is that it will continue to be maintained and updated in perpetuity for as long as the DAO exists and operates. With that in mind, we should have ways to understand whether it’s creating the impact we want it to while also having feedback loops in place to iterate and improve the things that might not work.

Overall, we want to see the proposal succeed, but there needs to be more discussion on how to make an Arbitrum Hub that is as useful as possible, what that would entail, and how much it would reasonably cost to set up and maintain.

We understand the current state of ArbitrumHub as a proof-of-concept both from a technological and organizational point of view. While it’s great that the team pushed it that far, it definitely needs improvement and gathering more community feedback before we decide to scale it further.

While the website seems very versatile and comprehensive, in practice many topics were covered quite superficially, there’s also a lot of data that is simply outdated. The section about grants, the developer hub, or community initiatives - almost every part of the website is just scratching the surface of the topic and does not even allow for a deeper dive.

To be clear, we are not blaming the team for this, as maintaining such a hub is a very challenging and resource-intensive task. But right now we just don’t think that what the team is proposing - in terms of cost, structure, and process - addresses these issues and maximizes the chances of success.

As L2BEAT, we’ve been writing a weekly Governance Review for a few months now, so we know first-hand the amount of time and effort required to stay up to date with what is happening on the DAO. We also understand the challenge of aggregating all that information and presenting it in a digestible way.

To conclude, we commend and appreciate the efforts expended towards the proposal and the creation of arbitrumhub.io. We’d like to work with the proposers to improve the scope, cost, and structure of the proposal before attempting to go through the governance again to secure the funding needed.

[Michigan_Blockchain]

We will be voting against. The general motivation for this proposal is good, as the idea of ArbitrumHub being a source of information, and official / community interaction would ideally offer transparency and ease of access to important info. However, our main critique comes from what many in the discussion have already reiterated, which is the hefty budget requested for a small team. After a more accurate budget AND a better way to measure the project’s success is determined we’d be interested in reviewing again.

[Tane]

We vote AGAINST the proposal on Snapshot.

While we believe the concept and initial implementation of the hub is useful and good for the community, we don’t agree with how the compensations are calculated per tasks rather than each member. We understand the works required to maintain the service from the experience that we have but as other delegates expresses, the cost presented isn’t justified for the outcome we anticipate. Milestone based approaches would be better, but eventually it would come down to how much impact the initiative can make compared to other existing deliverables against the cost that DAO should pay. Some suggested this should go through a grant program, which should be an alternative path to take as well.

[BlockworksResearch]

Blockworks Research will be voting AGAINST this proposal on Snapshot.

While we believe that there is undeniably significant value for a consolidated Hub for all ecosystem and DAO activities, the budgetary expenditure seems extensive. Especially Items 2 and 3 feel high. For example, the budget allocates $17,000 per month for “Collaboration, Meetings & Meetings Report” to seemingly cover the salaries of two positions, which assumedly aren’t full-time as the dedicated persons would have additional commitments as well. Some of the proposed focus areas also seem to overlap with existing initiatives.

We understand the importance of creating a consolidated place for governance and ecosystem initiatives, especially since Arbitrum-related information is split across the web. However, due to the high/unclear budgeting and an absent longer-term operational plan, we will be voting against this proposal.

We would recommend excluding Items 2 and 3 from the proposal, and more clearly indicating how many full-time employees and what roles are required for Items 1 & 4, as well as estimations of any other OpEx required now and in the long-term to maintain the Hub. Although this funding request is for six months, we believe it would be beneficial to include a long-term vision for the project and what the steady state expenses for the Hub might look like.

[jwindawi]

I’m joining others in voting against this proposal on Snapshot. The existing hub has a beautiful design and a lot of potential, but it’s hard to see how this proposal concretely gets to that potential, and the budget ask is much too big for the stated scope.

The team has done a great job so far, and has demonstrated on the forum and elsewhere that they’re aligned with and committed to the DAO. I hope this work gets reframed in a way that can works for everyone, and that the team takes up offer’s like @krst’s upthread to work with them to get to something more compelling.

It would also be great to think about how this can proceed along two simultaneous tracks:

1. For decentralized/slower content management - which parts of the site would be best for this, and how/who can engage?
2. For higher-speed data and other automations - per @swmartin above, are there places where we can automate data feeds and dashboards, whether from Dune, kaito, StableLab’s Forse, or other sources?

[0x_Buidler]

It’s difficult to see even such a significant amount of upfront effort fail in a DAO.

Majority of the feedback has been about the budget. I want to clarify that the budget was not entirely for the team; a substantial portion was reserved for the community and weekly reports.

Some suggest removing these items, but I want to emphasize that doing so could lead to centralization, as it reduces community involvement. Additionally, we cannot expect the community to work for free, nor should we.

Therefore, we believe that a community incentives budget is necessary because a DAO is by the community and for the community. These incentives are not free; they are in exchange for the valuable resources that the community produces for the DAO.

Its funny, the DAO has hundreds of millions to spend on LTIPP and STIP etc…, but when it comes to incentives for the community to produce educational resources and make improvements, it seems too much for the DAO. I completely disagree with this point.

Lastly, this initiative is meant for the long term, and we proposed six months to establish a solid foundation and use cases for ArbitrumHub in the DAO. With proper resources in place, this task could be managed well; without them, and if we continue on our own, it could lead to burnout. That’s why we approached the DAO to supply the necessary resources for us to continue.

We hope to work with the delegates to find common ground and re-propose our plan in the future and really appreciate the extensive feedback, suggestions and time put into this proposal.

Thank you

[AranaDigital]

Arana Digital will be voting AGAINST this proposal on Snapshot.

Many delegates have echoed our reasons for our decision. The DAO seems to have reached a consensus that excessive spending will be highly scrutinized, as the collective has realized the unsustainable and reckless spending that was publicly highlighted by the Catalyze Gaming Eco proposal, which decided to hike payment just before the Onchian Tally vote (which we voted against as well). This has led to important initiatives with arguably high budgets being denied as we spend millions on ongoing incentive programs.

We want to thank @0x_Buidler and @AlaniKuye for their effort and communication, and we understand their frustrations with this outcome. The ArbitrumHub is an idea we strongly support. Having a resource that enables community members to cohesively access Arbitrum-related information and visualize the performance of the Arbitrum protocol, spending of the DAO, and consolidates initiatives would provide immense value. We are simply unable to support the proposal in its current state and look forward to working with @0x_Buidler and other driven community members to push through productive proposals in the future.

[0x_Buidler]

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to all the delegates and others who dedicated their time to review our proposal and provide valuable suggestions for improvement. We deeply appreciate the suggestions received from delegates in refining the proposal, establishing key performance indicators (KPIs), budget allocation, identifying critical next steps, and setting long-term goals to ensure the success of this impactful initiative. Your kind words regarding our work for DAO are sincerely appreciated.

Moving forward, our priority is to collaborate closely with delegates to further refine and iterate on the overall initiative and proposal. We look forward to another snapshot review in the near future.

Thank you.

[SavvyDAO]

Savvy DAO voted FOR this proposal.

See our Feedback below.

While we support this proposal, improvements are needed to justify the $474,000 commitment over six months and address concerns about centralization, which could hinder transparency and accountability. To strengthen the proposal we suggest to:

• Clarify the budget breakdown and how it aligns with the DAO’s strategic goals.
• Develop a clear strategy for gaining DAO adoption and participation.
• Outline plans to ensure that information remains current and relevant.

We voted FOR this proposal as we see it as a temperature check. We would expect a reduced budget to vote FOR on Tally.

See our Voting Rationale here: Savvy DAO - Delegate Communication Thread - #54 by SavvyDAO