Voting FOR after
- my concerns/questions (here and here) were addressed
- having a call with @kamilgorski
I am especially excited about the off-chain strategy, as imo making the pie bigger is the right strategy. LFG
1 Like
I vote against on this proposal. I would like it to be a smaller experiment using existing grant programs in Arbitrum first. I’m also hesitant to vote in favor until we first align with the mission and vision of Arbitrum. When that is clear, we will have an easier road to make decisions.
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From my point of view:
This incentivization program is lack of independent audit mechanism to verify declared KPIs, incentivizing inflated metrics.
Maybe Pattern can add third-party KPI verification and expand ROI metrics to cover hybrid (on/off-chain) economics.
Hey @Bruce, thanks for your comments! 
- What kind of service do you have in mind when saying “independent audit mechanism to verify declared KPIs”? We listed all accepted 3rd party apps to share KPIs in the application - which are Dune, Tokenterminal, DefiLlama, Flipsyde & Patterns. Dune, Flipsyde & DefiLlama metric queries are open-source and are fully verifiable. Do you maybe have in mind an anti-sybil verification?
- I guess that by hybrid economics you mean that some conversions happen off-chain. In such case, the dApp doesn’t generate sequencer fees, hence, revenue for the ecosystem. Do you have any example of Arbitrum-based dApp that has such mechanism?
@Zeptimus - thanks for your vote and feedback! 
- Can you please share what existing grant programs you have in mind?
- Regarding mission and vision - both of these are usually high-level and long-term goals of organizations. As long as we accept the fact that sequencer fees are an important revenue stream for Arbitrum, we believe that acquiring users to grow this revenue stream aligns with Arbitrum’s current goal. Scope of the project was consulted with Arbitrum Foundation which I believe confirms this line of thinking - we’re super happy to adjust this proposal however. Can you share some details on this?
Thanks and best!
Kamil
There is this page where we can see all the grants of Arbitrum: Arbitrum — Grants. I believe the Arbitrum Foundation Grant Program coming soon is the best fit for this type of proposal.
Great job on putting this proposal together! I appreciate the thought and effort you’ve put into aligning it with Arbitrum’s goals. In my view, we need a clearer roadmap to determine what to prioritize first. I also prefer to see a smaller pilot first and, if successful, scale it bigger.
Hey @Zeptimus, thanks for your reply! Yes, we’re aware of these Arbitrum Grants but these are focused on supporting new projects (Orbit, Stylus, AI & Gaming) - not existing ones that could instantly drive the sequencer revenue. None of them fit to what we have designed during ARB Liquidity Incentive calls where all the takeaways from STIP & LTIPP were collected and discussed.
We’re not aware of any AF Grant Program to be launched - if you mean OpCo then it will only be operational in June / July.
When it comes to pilot program - in statistics the trustworthiness of research results is correlated with the sample size (with different distributions for n < 30 and n > 30). We could run a pilot for 4-5 projects but then it wouldn’t necessarily be representative for all dApps in the ecosystem, rendering the results of such program inaccurate. 20 samples is a sweet spot to accommodate for different projects (Bridges, DeFis, Other; small & big) and still fit in a $3m limit that was discussed as a new limit for $ARB Incentives.
We, as Patterns, have no incentive in spending the whole $3m budget - our costs are fixed and not calculated as a %. Our aim is to deliver a positive ROI on this program and if there will be not enough good campaigns with a potential to do so, returning funds to the DAO is a much better solution from our perspective.
Thanks and best
Kamil
1 Like
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR this proposal in the Snapshot voting.
We appreciate the significant effort put forth by @kamilgorski in this proposal, engaging on the forum over the past two months, and iterating the proposal thoughtfully by addressing concerns raised by various delegates.
We previously shared our concerns about the proposal and it was addressed by @kamilgorski in his subsequent response, strengthening our confidence in the proposal.
We support this proposal because it addresses a critical challenge highlighted in our LTIPP research that short-term incentives alone have not been effective in sustaining user engagement. The approach outlined by the team is different and specifically targets long-term user retention by combining off-chain marketing strategies with clearly defined, measurable on-chain outcomes.
This proposal’s strength lies in its KPI-driven model, where funding is directly tied to performance metrics. This ensures transparency, accountability, and effective use of DAO funds. It also introduces important metrics like Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Lifetime Value (LTV), essential for the DAO to understand which user acquisition methods genuinely work.
Additionally, the plan includes a structured reporting framework, allowing the community to gain valuable insights into successful marketing strategies. This transparency can significantly benefit future DAO-funded initiatives, improving overall efficiency and user growth.
2 Likes
Entropy will be voting AGAINST this proposal. Before diving into our rationale, we would like to state that Entropy has a conflict of interest in that we have designed and authored a separate incentive program, which hasn’t been posted to the forum yet. Additionally, we’d like to acknowledge the amount of time and effort that the Patterns team has put into this proposal. Their interviews identified key insights regarding LTIPP projects’ level of knowledge about onchain user acquisition funnels and ability to calculate metrics like CAC and LTV. The proposed analytics tools and structures (enabling participants to work out core marketing metrics), as well as the ongoing reporting structure, additionally seem robust.
However, despite the recent changes, we are still not confident that this program is a significant improvement to LTIPP and STIP, and we fear that the DAO would be repeating several of those programs’ mistakes. For a program that is based on predefined measurable goals, the listed KPIs for the DeFi category in particular raise cause for concern, as metrics such as volume and number of trades can both be easily gamed. We fear that the program fails to incorporate the learnings of previous ARDC research work. For example, this is what Blockworks Research stated about optimizing for TVL in the lending category:
Furthermore, as we see it, analyzing absolute metrics instead of relative figures (e.g., total market share change) is flawed, since the absolute metrics are largely driven by current market conditions. When it comes to the program’s high-level structure, we foresee that the application and selection process will again put a lot of pressure on the projects, similar to previous programs. We’re especially concerned about projects having to design their own incentive and marketing structures, KPIs, as well as having to distribute incentives themselves(?). This concern is shared by other delegates:
As we have seen in the past, placing a majority of the responsibility for the campaign design with the projects, especially those that are smaller/newer teams, is likely to lead to subpar results. Taking into consideration that LTIPP saw over 170 applications, we expect the proposed program to see 100+ applications at minimum, which is more than the current committee structure can realistically help revise before selections. Thus, in the current design, the DAO would once again be selecting a small number of projects to run “experiments”.
Our team echoes several of the concerns @CastleCapital raised. It is our belief that generalized programs that include so many different types of projects make it impossible to evaluate and iterate upon. Having a large number of separate, project-specific campaigns creates fragmentation, lowering the overall impact and efficiency. Based on previous incentives research done within the Arbitrum DAO, as well as looking at the retention performance of concluded incentive programs run within other L2 ecosystems, e.g., ZKsync, it’s clear that generalized programs cause an increase in high-level market share metrics for incentivized actions, but this market share gain quickly reverts to the old, organic level once the programs end. Although the program proposed here differs from the conventional structure by focusing on marketing more heavily, it isn’t targeted enough on the demand side in our opinion, and we foresee that all increases in relative activity will revert within 90 days of the program.
Our overall view on incentive programs is that they should be extremely targeted, focusing on bootstrapping new products/markets that emerge from within the ecosystem, thus amplifying the effect deriving from natural product-market fit, as well as encouraging prospective verticals to develop by driving native as well as non-native projects to offer products within those verticals. In short, our belief is that once a vertical within an ecosystem reaches an organic market share and stabilizes, a structural or exogenous shock (such as efficiency gains from a new DEX model built on Arbitrum or an Arbitrum competitor’s sequencer experiencing prolonged downtime) is required for organic market share growth to materialize. When it comes to capital allocation, one possible avenue through which the DAO could create a structural shock in an already well-established vertical is by funneling sequencer profits back as incentives to that vertical—an idea we think should be seriously considered in the future as the DAO’s overall profitability continues increasing.
3 Likes
This proposal is thoughtful, well-researched, and efficiently written. With that said, it’s less an incentives program and more a digital advertising consulting program. While I think digital customer acquisition is an important aspect of growth, I’m not sure it makes sense for the DAO to operate a program in this area. I voted against this proposal at the temp check stage, but would be open to collaborating with the team on future proposals.
Separately, I have a question that stems from my role as an MSS Chair. If this proposal passes, will the proposer require the services Arbitrum Multisig Support Service?
After reviewing the proposal and seeing what other delegates had to say, We’re voting FOR this proposal. we think this is a solid step in the right direction. STIP and LTIPP helped bring short-term activity, but a lot of it didn’t stick and without proper tracking, it was hard to know what actually worked. We’ve always supported metrics-based approaches, and we really like that this proposal focuses on tracking things like CAC, LTV, and ROI. Making data measurable so we can learn and improve over time. The monthly KPI check-ins and clear structure give us a way to actually evaluate what’s working. Overall, we’re really interested to see how this plays out.
Im voting AGAINST this proposal, I think we do not need this right now, also because projects this big should start with something smaller to try to justified all the logic in this. pretty much I don’t have nothing left to say, but thank you very much for the time you have invested on this.
gm, thanks @kamilgorski for putting this out and the considerable time spent on this.
I have a different views on how we should use your skills and platforms, and how to fund it:
- I am in favor of a study to define how to efficiently attract users to apps that found PMF.
- The goal should be building a playbook that works for the next 12-24 months that the DAO / Arbitrum Foundation can help when new builders come onboard.
- The study should start from very specific and narrow use cases. Ex: onboarding new users to consumar apps (games, SocialFi, …) from various offchain sources.
Using incentives to attract existing onchain users is easy IMO - But how do we increase the pie? How do we bring net new users onchain? This should be the goal.
We should then start with a drastically lower budget. $100k range.
A $3m budget for a pilot sounds extremely risky.
With proven results and a defined playbook, move to the next niche. Experiment with something else.
Voting AGAINST the current proposal - very open to small, target experiments with your proposed approach in a future one.
Based on this, it seems there are alternative options. Why aren’t we evaluating all alternative options simultaneously?
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Again, user acquisition is always a top priority for any project, even in Web2 business. After consideration, I think this proposal can offer a good chance to boost Arbitrum’s growth by supporting various projects with clear KPIs and measurable results.
While the budget is high, the DAO cannot afford to sleep the competition. To stay ahead, new approaches need to be tried.
You can’t expect to win or change the situation by doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results 
As a co-founder of a marketing creator studio Pink Brains, maybe I am a little biased, but this proposal gives me good energy. I believe this initiative can strengthen the ecosystem and drive positive results.
Voted yes!
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I’ve decided to vote in favor as I genuinely believe that this proposal addresses a critical issue in the ecosystem. While dApps and protocols may be well-structured and effective, it’s also true that their potential becomes irrelevant if they cannot retain users long-term or effectively reach new ones. I really appreciate the effort that you put in crafting this proposal and I particularly like the performance-based approach. I’m excited to see how it will be implemented!
1 Like
Hey @Entropy, thanks for your feedback - let me answer in order:
-
Marketing guidance and campaign design (re comments from @jameskbh @karpatkey)
Not sure if that was noticed but we changed this in the last iteration of proposal and added consultations with a Marketing Expert to guide teams while building their campaigns. -
Metrics - absolute metrics allow to calculate the unit cost, eg. value of volume per $1 spent so indirect ROI - that’s why we used them.
-
Retention - the aim of this program is to acquire new wallets and calculate their LTV (‘lifetime value’) which is the overall amount of revenue a wallet generates to the ecosystem and to the dApp. At the same time, we calculate CAC (this wallet’s acquisition cost) from a campaign. If the LTV is higher than CAC then the acquisition of such wallet already paid itself off (= ecosystem / dApp made profit on it). The only thing left is to acquire more wallets of such type.
There’s no similarity to programs like zkSync Ignite because we don’t reward users directly so there’s no incentive for mercenary capital. Would anyone stop using a product because it’s ads are no longer showing up on Twitter?
That is exactly what we’re trying to accomplish here - create a sustainable program that allows to funnel sequencer revenues to acquire wallet segments with positive ROI (LTV > CAC) through dApps - so that it produces even more revenue. Is there any other way to discover such segments other than running an almost ecosystem-wide LTV & CAC measurement?
Best,
Kamil
First of all, I want to thank you for the tremendous effort put into this proposal—gathering and incorporating feedback from multiple delegates and stakeholders over the course of months. A lot of hard work went into it, and it truly shows in the quality of the final text.
I like this proposal; it suggests a metric-based approach to marketing, which is essential for developing a long-term strategy and refining it as we learn what works and what doesn’t.
I also appreciate the inclusion of off-chain marketing, as it targets a different type of user we want to attract to Arbitrum.
I like the idea of allowing protocols to propose their own KPIs and, with the help of a marketing expert, design the best strategies based on their products.
Now, here’s my concern regarding execution:
If we’re going to spend $3M on a three-month program for the DAO to showcase Arbitrum applications, how do we ensure continuity in implementing this strategy without the DAO having to allocate $12M per year to marketing for protocols? Would there be a commitment on their side to maintain continuity if it proves successful? Or do you think that’s a reasonable amount for the DAO to spend annually? Or do you believe that running a three-month campaign every certain period is an effective tool?
I believe this proposal can be implemented with a more concrete objective in two ways:
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Marketing for the DAO itself as an entity aligned with Arbitrum and the success of its protocols—raising awareness of all its initiatives. The DAO’s image is not at its best right now, and that needs to change. We need to attract users and builders to the DAO. In this regard, since Entropy mentioned the upcoming proposal on DeFi Renaissance, it would be interesting to explore how this proposal could align with the next incentive program. One of the failures during LTIPP and STIP (as you correctly identified) was the lack of alignment between a marketing proposal and the program’s execution.
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Given the imminent Pectra upgrade and the implementation of EIP-7702, which represents a potential massive UX improvement, it’s worth considering how to leverage this opportunity. (see) You recognized there’s a lack of intention to implement Account Abstraction. We could build momentum for this upgrade (Arbitrum is getting ready) and implement a program that incentivizes the use of Smart Accounts, combined with an off-chain marketing campaign to attract new users. Considering that off-chain campaigns will target users who are not necessarily familiar with EOAs and the complex onboarding processes, this could be an interesting opportunity to explore.
For these reasons, I will vote FOR in the temp check, although my vote on Tally is conditional on gaining more clarity on the mentioned points and seeing a strategy with more concrete objectives.
Hey @maxlomu, thanks for your comments. Let us align with your line of thinking:
- Limiting apps choice to the ones that found PMF (= generate revenue / profit) makes perfect sense
- I don’t believe that a universal workbook would work for all dApps in the ecosystem - in order to run a successful marketing campaign you need to define your USP, your audience and how to attract that audience - which is different for every app. I’m aware that most teams are very technical (=developers) but giving them a false feeling of security (because they read a playbook) would just do damage.
- CAC is going to be different for every dApp because the dApp LTV is different. In DeFi segment you may pay > $100 CAC for acquiring a user and it still pays off, in Gaming you’ll be targeting $10-20 CAC.
Our goal is exactly as you mentioned - to acquire new users. Running incentives is an optional type of campaign which still needs to be supplemented with an off-chain marketing campaign (min. 50% of budget).
We could run a smaller pilot but $100k range will just set Arbitrum back and give no actionable results. I’d say that $1m would be possible with limiting the program to around 10 dApps that have PMF and smaller budgets. If you focus on 2-3 dApps you’re going to have very mixed results, if you limit the budget to $5-10k per dApp - you’re not going to attract successful dApps (overhead costs) and if you limit the program time - you’re not going to have enough iterations (3 months is minimum IMO).
Let me kindly know what you think.
Best,
Kamil
Hi @kamilgorski, we have voted Against the proposal on Snapshot. We still stand by our earlier response.
The proposal in our point of view lacks proper consideration on how the program proposed can be extended further than the allocated budget. As we’ve mentioned before:
• The budget is too large for an undetermined result. There’s a reason the DAO decided on a period of abstaining from new incentive programs. If the objective of the program is to be an experiment, why not starting with a smaller ask for a pilot program open to limited protocols.
• In the current structure protocols are incentivized to spending because they will be reimbursed, misaligning incentives on efficient expenses. We’d prefer as mentioned before if the individual protocol campaigns were encapsulated by a larger campaign. So that if the results returned poor, at least Arbitrum still obtained visibility during the campaign period.
• Utilize a matching grant approach, this helps Arbitrum achieve the best returns on capital spend and ensures participating protocols have sufficient skin in the game.
We also agree with @maxlomu’s comments
Currently this proposal seems angled where the DAO supports the program financially over a set period. There is nothing mentioned in the proposal what the path to maturity looks like. This would be important as this would not be a program that is funded in perpetuity.
Hey @pedrob - huge thanks for your positive vote and an actual in-depth feedback which we really appreciate 
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Marketing for the DAO
I agree that the DAO’s image should change. The aim of this program is to acquire and identify users segments that have positive ROI for the ecosystem which means generating sequencer revenue. I believe that supporting builders with programs like this speaks for itself, especially in difficult market conditions. -
Account Abstraction
I fully agree - ERC4337 is a UX breakthrough and that’s why we included it in the most important strategies (eg. for Bridges). Arbitrum could gain a competitive advantage over networks that don’t utilize it enough (eg. Optimism Superchain) because the adoption is faster here:
Our aim was not to spend another $12m in next iteration but to identify wallet segments with positive ROI and focus marketing the spending on these - whether it’s going to be $1m or $5m. Patterns costs are fixed and not dependant on the budget size therefore we prefer to spend less and get better ROI.
Hey @CastleCapital - I already answered @maxlomu’s comment and proposed a smaller budget with an explanation.:
1. Proposed a $1m budget which in our opinion is the minimum - we’re open to discussing it.
2. I understand your point of view however the main goal of user acquisition is for the user to convert in the dApp (= generating fees), not gain visibility of Arbitrum. If you want to combine PR and user acquisition then user acquisition will most probably fail.
3. This would be possible but Arbitrum Foundation’s aim was to also discover small projects with potential that usually have no marketing budget and this is why we kept it this way.
We will work on explaining the path to maturity further as it seems that it’s not clear now. Thanks!
Best,
Kamil