Thanks for the questions!
1. Purpose of Polis
The purpose of Polis (I’ll call it DePolis so we can distinguish the existing Polis from DePolis, the system we’d wanna create based on the original Polis) is not to replace existing governance mechanisms but to facilitate large-scale discussions involving many actors.
Ideas about how DePolis could be integrated into decision-making processes are described in “5. Specifications. I. How Polis for DAOs should look”. Even when these ideas focus on delegates (e.g., “Facilitating a ‘pre-forum’ exchange of delegates’ opinions to map the existing opinion landscape”), they’re not meant to replace the current forum.
Anyway, in my opinion, the most canonical, straightforward, and practically useful use case is “Gathering Arbitrum users’ opinions on contentious topics” and/or “Gathering opinions from specific protocol/domain users”. In this case, overlapping topics aren’t a problem (moreover, they must overlap!), and effective collaboration between the forum and DePolis will be organically facilitated by the delegates, who are likely interested in considering DePolis participants’ (= Arbitrum users’) opinions.
In other words, forum - for skilled participants (delegates, service providers, large stakeholders), DePolis - for ordinary users.
2. Long-term maintenance
As stated in the proposal, “we want to start with a relatively simple implementation of DePolis that … will enable the Arbitrum DAO and its delegates to independently launch conversations without our involvement (including defining the participant pool and providing incentives for participants)”. So:
- yes, the costs focus only on development;
- maintenance for DePolis after its launch does not require an additional budget, updates/improvements/issue resolutions will require it.
The point we must achieve, no matter what, is:
- the development phase (with the functionality described in the proposal) is successfully accomplished, DePolis code is open-sourced and publicly available;
- the Arbitrum community has a working system that can be used without our involvement.
In my opinion, achieving these goals ensures that the grant’s money is not wasted, and even in the worst-case scenario, the Arbitrum community has a working system and is able to maintain it on its own.
At the same time, the most preferable scenario for us is when DePolis finds its PMF (within and potentially outside Arbitrum DAO), and we continue to maintain and upgrade it as a tool for Arbitrum DAO, as well as an instrument/product for other communities. It’s really hard to predict future scenarios in this case, but they include requesting Arbitrum DAO for additional funding (the budget will depend on the scope of our future work), requesting grants from other grant providers (likely interested in governance-related products), receiving funds from investors, etc.