[Non-Constitutional]: Empowering Early Contributors: The community Arbiter Proposal 2.0

This proposal was very complex to asses. Way more than others.

  • it lacks some context and explanations (why this high concentration of asian users on this proposal? They told me: initial a lot of communication happened in asian communities and channels)
  • it lacks some proper metrics (discord screenshots are, well, not the standard way to provide info. But how do you prove your community activity?)
  • it lacks some proper fact checking (is basically impossible to verify all the assertions and to verify that effectively all the users “deserving” a reward are in this list).

That said, community, especially in the beginning, are born on the sweat, blood and tier of (also) their most active users and their mods. These users, in the telegram and discord chat, keep the vibe alive, keep the spirit alive, address the fud, help with the engagements. They do provide value.

Assuming, effectively, a calculation of 2.5 years, that puts these users at 550/month. Even if we just consider 1000/m, in my opinion, it would be an ok number.

Why? Because being in such big community is really really really a lift. You have thousands of messages of people asking wen token, thousands of people asking how to claim, thousands of people saying they got scammed and so on. Is not easy to be constantly there.

That’s why I am voting for, with a caveat that @krst was able to properly express: this is a one time thing.
Doesn’t mean we can’t have retrogrants in Arbitrum, no. We should at some point be able to have retrogrants. But imho proposals can’t be presented to the community in this way, in this modality, and also with such premises.

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Following further reflection and consideration of insights from @Mysterymen and other delegates, we have decided to change our vote to support this proposal. Our decision is influenced by the recognition that the amount requested by Mysterymen is reasonable and modest compared to the initial proposal. We acknowledge the challenges associated with managing discord scams and the difficulty of engaging with people in discord. The contributions made have been impressive in terms of organization, and the evaluation of such intangible efforts is very challenging. Although we believe that individuals who contribute more significantly should receive greater rewards, since the arbiters are in favor of equal reward distribution, we will support this approach.

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The Savvy DeFi DAO’s Arbitrum Council has decisively voted FOR this proposal.

We acknowledge the evolution of this proposal over the past few months. The new approach and focus will be retroactively incentivized to the community. Of course, we also take into consideration the complexity involved in executing this project.

We decided to vote this time for this proposal and we’ll be following updates and insights here.

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Will be voting FOR this proposal but very much as a one off proposal from the formation of the DAO and a reflection of the contributions that were made in the those early days and not precedent setting.

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I will be voting “For” this proposal.

I appreciate Mystermen and their team for taking the criticisms from the initial proposal and re-working it for this second one. The reduction in requested amount is appreciated, and this ARB payout + the USD portion received seems to be fair compensation for the work provided. The detail provided paints a good picture of what was done, and while we value is subjective… a lot of work seems to have been done that warrants some form of compensation as stated.

Broadly speaking, I am for retroactive grants where they make sense. Based on the information provided / discussion that has came from this I think this is a case does so. I’ll echo other’s that I don’t want us to set a precedent that causes a flood of proposals, but I will also say that I don’t think these types of discussions need to be shyd away from when a fair case comes up. Early community work is often an altruistic and thankless job for a project that you may not even know will succeed. So I lean towards rewarding those who took on these types of roles were possible.

Edit 4/4/2024: My opinion is unchanged from when I first posted this for the Snapshot “For” vote above to the now Tally Vote. In order to not take up space with another forum post, I have edited this post to confirm that due to no changes from Snapshot to Tally I will be voting “For” on Tally for this proposal.

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The Princeton Blockchain Club will be voting in favor of The Community Arbiter Proposal V2 at the Snapshot stage. As others noted, properly evaluating this proposal has posed a unique challenge. We appreciate the work that @Mysterymen and co have put into improving V1.

We’re in favor of supporting valuable work for the community and encouraging others to contribute. As most of us are aware, moderating crypto-related Discords takes a lot of effort to do right!

We’ll be reviewing this further in the Tally stage, but we’ll vote For at this time.

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Thank you to all the delegates for your suggestions and help. arbiter has made some content updates in the 2.0 proposal based on the suggestions of delegates.

At the snapshot, 2.0 Proposal was voted in favor of an overwhelming majority of delegates.

In the next few days, arbiter will publish the 2.0 proposal on tally and start on-chain voting.

Thanks,
Arbiters

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I see this is finally live on tally, I guess it took a while to coordinate all the peeps involved.

Any important change in tally compared to snapshot?

Tally hasn’t changed. It’s still the same as the snapshot.

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We are in continued full support of this proposal. These members should receive contributions for their time and work. We think this has some resemblance to the Makerdao source cred system back in the day and are in favor of all contributors receiving fair compensation for their past work.

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I voted against the original version of this proposal in the off-chain Snapshot vote due to concerns about the process and fairness of rewarding a pre-selected group without clear criteria. However, after carefully considering the revised proposal and the surrounding discussion, I have decided to change my vote to FOR in this on-chain vote. Here’s my updated rationale:

  1. The proposers listened to community feedback and made significant efforts to address the issues raised, including reducing the ask amount and providing more detail on the Arbiters’ contributions. This shows a commendable willingness to engage with criticism and adapt.
  2. While it’s still challenging to quantify the impact of early community building work, the Arbiters clearly went above and beyond to support Arbitrum in its critical early days. Even if the process wasn’t perfect, they merit special recognition for their outsized contributions.
  3. The Arbiters are in a unique position, as they were formally recognized by the Arbitrum team itself for their early efforts. This provides important context for considering their proposal as a one-off exception.
  4. I empathize with the difficulty of retroactively measuring and rewarding early contributions, especially those made off-chain. The revised proposal strikes a reasonable balance based on the information available, even if it can’t achieve perfect fairness.
  5. Supporting this proposal doesn’t mean the floodgates are now open for constant retroactive rewards. The DAO still needs to be judicious and only entertain proposals with truly exceptional merit. We shouldn’t dramatically lower the bar based on this unique case.

I do want to reiterate the valid concerns that led me to initially vote against the proposal in the Snapshot:

  • There is still some unfairness in rewarding a pre-selected group without opening it up to all early contributors. The revised proposal is better but not a fully open process.
  • Many other community members beyond the Arbiters also made crucial early contributions to Arbitrum. It’s impossible to reward everyone’s efforts equally, especially so long after the fact.

On balance, while I originally voted against, I now believe the revised proposal warrants support as a rare exception given the Arbiters’ unique early role, their formal recognition by the Arbitrum team, and the substantial efforts by the proposers to address critiques and improve the request. The DAO should still view this as a special case and continue to reward community members primarily through open, transparent, ongoing processes rather than one-off retroactive drops.

I encourage the Arbitrum DAO to vote FOR this revised proposal to recognize the extraordinary early contributions of the Arbiters group, even though the original proposal had significant issues that led me to vote against it in the Snapshot. Let’s move forward together as a community while learning lessons for the future.

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Of course, the early contributors have played an invaluable role in the development of the Arbitrum community. Their hard work and dedication have laid a solid foundation for Arbitrum’s success. I wholeheartedly support your proposal and believe that early contributors should receive the retrospective rewards they deserve. Their contributions are not just for immediate gains but for the long-term development of the entire community. Therefore, I will actively support your initiative and hope to advocate for the recognition and rewards that early contributors deserve.

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Blockworks Research will be voting FOR this proposal on Tally.

The exact impact of early contributors is difficult to quantify, but it’s clear that Arbiters have been extremely valuable in, e.g., onboarding users, educating newcomers about the ecosystem, and preventing scams, in addition to moderation duties on Discord. The requested amount of ARB, accounting for the earlier USDC donations distributed by the Foundation, is fair in our opinion based on factors such as the % share of the total supply as well as comparative community allocations across other projects. Rewarding Arbiters partly based on estimated goodwill also makes sense given the circumstances.

We applaud the willingness to adjust the proposal based on community feedback as well as the amount of data points/information that has been sourced. Finally, we view this retroactive reward distribution as a one-off event and would have preferred the proposal’s Tally description to have mentioned the previously distributed USDC donations by the Foundation for transparency, but don’t think this warrants us abstaining from/voting against the proposal.

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We’re maintaining our support FOR the Arbiter 2.0 proposal on Tally

Spent some time looking through the Arbitrum Discord and we can confirm that a lot of folks with the Arbiter role were active in responding to community questions and other support requests. As we mentioned before, dealing with crypto-related Discord servers kinda sucks, so we think that’s worthy of being compensated for. A lot of the other evidence of contributions is hard to sort through, so we can only really independently vouch for their efforts on Discord (but this is good enough).

They did get some compensation from the Foundation in the form of USDC, but considering the reduced ask (500k → 125k ARB), an additional one-off grant from the DAO seems fine. However, further retroactive funding for DAO contributions should probably come through established grant programs, such as last year’s Arbitrum Citizens Retrofunding Round on Gitcoin.

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Just following up here on behalf of TreasureDAO to summarize why TreasureDAO’s ARC is voting FOR this proposal after much dialogue with the Arbiters.

Our main reason in voting for this was the fact that these Arbiters essentially served as community managers/support before Arbitrum had a team to do that.

The Arbitrum Foundation rewarded the Arbiters an average of 7.5K USDC and after reviewing the amount of work done by the Arbiters we feel their ask of the additional ~6K USDC is valid and fair.

Link to my previous comment on behalf of TreasureDAO: [Non-Constitutional]: Empowering Early Contributors: The community Arbiter Proposal 2.0 - #26 by thechaingamer.eth

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Penn Blockchain / FranklinDAO voted Abstain on this Tally proposal. Although their impact is hard to evaluate, we deeply appreciate the work that the Arbiters contributed in the early days of Arbitrum.

We support the Arbiters getting involved in governance as well as any other community member that wants to get involved. However, we do not see it as the DAO’s responsibility to seed this involvement.

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There has been a lot of back and forth with this proposal. However, we never doubted the work done by the Arbiters but only asked for a more detailed breakdown of the work done and compensation reasoning.

We saw these changes and a reduced ask in the final iteration on Tally so DAOPlomats (former DAOStewards) voted in favor. Also, echoing what @PrincetonBlockchain said, future requests of this kind is better suited to come through the Arbitrum Citizens Retrofunding Round on Gitcoin.

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Allocating 0.000125% of the total supply to retroactively acknowledge community members who contributed to the growth of the Arbitrum ecosystem before formal structures were established demonstrates a strong commitment to community appreciation and ecosystem development. This initiative offers compelling support for these community members.

Therefore, I am IN FAVOR of this proposal.

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I had initially voted against this proposal on snapshot. After giving it a second thought and seeing some of the developments it has had, I’ve decided to vote for it. The 125k ARB makes more sense now. Thanks for your contributions, Arbiters!

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The below response 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.

The proposal hasn’t changed since when we voted for it during temp check and as such we’ll also be voting in its favor during the on-chain vote. As we also mentioned in our previous comment, it’s important to note that we do not see this proposal as something that is setting a precedent, and we suggest that the DAO shouldn’t entertain such votes in the future unless there’s a very strong reason to do so.

In addition, we want to invite the Arbiters to continue being active in the Arbitrum ecosystem and specifically in the Arbitrum DAO as there are a lot of initiatives that could benefit from their help as original members of the community.

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