in Season 2, PM and Platform were bundled in a single entity costing 10k/m. Projected 1y cost: 120k
in Season 3, these are unbundled. PM will cost 6.5k/m so 78k for a year, Platform will cost 5k/m so 60k for a year, for a total of 138k for a year. In addition there is a 25k arb payment for the PM, at the current value of $0.43 per arb is a bit less than 11k. This brings the total to $149k
So current increase is $29k or 24%.
The main reason is that in previous season, through the bundling of PM + Platform, it was possible to save some costs. This time instead, the PM will have a more active role in the program, with duties spanning from proper reporting (in calls and texts) to internally directing specific projects to other DAO initiatives.
Iâm voting FOR this proposal on Tally and Event Horizon. My rationale hasnât changed much since temp-check:
Iâve personally witnessed the tangible benefits this program has brought to individuals I know. It has empowered them to bring their ideas to life, which speaks volumes about its impact. Programs like this are vital for boosting innovation and creativity within our ecosystem.
Also, the addition of Orbit to the framework will definitely help further boost its adoption and expand its reach. Itâs a strategic move, and Iâm excited to see the outcomes it will bring.
Furthermore, Iâm also glad on the DAâs that were elected for this season and trust theyâll do a great work. Congratulations again to @JoJo , @Juandi , @SEEDGov , @CastleCapital , @Flook and @maxlomu , yâall have a great responsibility and Iâm confident you will be allocate these funds wisely.
Voting abstain on Tally - based on what I was able to research the program has been successful in Season 1, with Season 2 still tbd. In my opinion we should focus on doubling down on Season 2 participants and handhold them a bit further.
Having coached Start-Ups on behalf of incubators I wonder if we are doing any of it? The program talks about monitoring projects, but wouldnât it be smarter to coach them in domains we as DAO are good at/can help them a hand to be successful? An Example is Lido Alliance but any Web2 Accelerator Program is doing it at some level i.e., giving money + expertise to make sure the money is âwell investedâ.
On the other side I have faith in Jojo and team to act in the best interest of the ecosystem, hence I am torn and abstain.
Gm Tamara.
No, we are currently not doing it officially. We have been doing it in a non official way, for a few projects, on a personal basis (personal = DAs). We are improving it by having a closer monitoring, plus internal pitching to AF/GCP/relevant party for what we will internally evaluate as good projects.
On thing is worth noticing: this season is modular, in the sense we can add domains if we want. But nothing stops us from adding an incubator approach.
We would need to publicly discuss the approach, find the people and funds for this. But is potentially doable.
Letâs talk in DM about this idea, you know where to find me.
First and foremost, we want to highlight that @JoJo has proven himself as an extremely high-quality executor on behalf of the DAOâs grants program, and our decision to vote against has nothing to do with the competency of any particular individual.
With that said, we believe that grants are one of the most important programs the DAO runs, as it is often the first time a new builder touches the Arbitrum ecosystem. Arbitrum DAO should strive to offer one of the best grant programs in the industry. When looking into past results and taking into account the ~$700k in operational overhead, we believe there is room for improvement. As it currently stands, the grants program is too separated from the DAOâs other strategies in our opinion. Given that the Arbitrum Foundation is capable of giving out grants in the interim and that this would be the third iteration of the program, it is time the DAO took a more methodical, professional approach in how it allocates capital for grants rather than rushing to get something put together for the sake of having something.
In practice, we are strongly in favor of creating a DAO-owned, Arbitrum-branded platform for grant workflows. The dYdX grant page is an excellent example of a frontend that the Entropy team admires and believes the DAO can emulate. We would also like to further refine/cement the grant review process to ensure that grant recipients are of high caliber and that there are proper processes in place to ensure that recipients follow through with their original promises.
While this is just our opinion, and our vote is unlikely to change the outcome of the grants program vote, our âAgainstâ vote is in-line with our preference that this iteration of the program should be striving for perfection.
Thank you for the answer @Entropy. I would like to take the time to go toward some statements here. Understanding thanks to your introduction that the vote is not personal (and I would have not taken in that regard anyway), let me premise something: my following answer is not adversarial, but in an historical moment in the DAO in which seems like we could see a âchange of sentimentâ, is worth dotting the i and crossing the t.
This is true in everything, both in our DAO and in life as well
Is important to define what we mean here for separation.
If for separation you mean: not connected to initiatives currently in discussion like the SOS one, I can agree just even from a timing perspective.
From a context perspective, tho, it might be useful to revisit some points of the initial proposal as well:
The above are just 3 examples of the ideation that has happened, in the past 4 months, with the Arbitrum Foundation. To name one, the telegram vertical was an explicit input from the AF. The goal here is not to build a siloed program that will distribute $6-7M dollars, but allow for the growth of verticals and initiatives that are deemed valuable and being worked on by others as well.
In general, the approach is the following: a 1 year program is extremely long in our DAO. I am pretty sure that priorities and narratives will take different shapes and evolve over time. The program will adapt as well, and the meetings with stakeholder will be a way to steer what we think is worth financing over time.
For sure the AF is capable of operate in a more lean and efficient way. But one of the premise of the program as always been the following:
If this has changed in the last 4 months, I was not aware.
As said above, there is always margin of improvement.
Now, I find this statement quite inconsistent with the reality of a forum in which, in the last few months, we have had several requests of grants to which several delegates have answered âit should go to the new season of D.A.O. grantsâ.
Even the stylus program (to which you were PM, and I was part of the committee) has had tens and more proposals in which the judgment has been ârejection, but is worth pushing to the new season of D.A.O. grantsâ.
As a final note, in the last year we have had several grantees applying because âthe arbitrum foundation did send them to the (ex-Questbook) programâ.
Again: there is A LOT of margin of improvement. But this new course of the DAO canât make us being inconsistent with our past, even the most recent past like the Stylus program.
I want to briefly touch base on this number. I personally think we donât have the most efficient cost, but this also comes from the fact that the orbit domain has half of the funding of the domains; we would be below 10% if that was fully allocated. But this is more of a nuance than a fact.
I want to pick the most recent grant iteration program we had, Stylus, to try and make a comparison. In Stylus we have 7 members running it at a cost of 300k ARB in a year out of a 5M ARB grant budget. But of these 7 members, only 4 are on payroll (me, seed, michael and gustavo from OZ). If we would have had the others on payroll as well, we would have accrued a cost of 450k ARB in a year, a proportion that is quite similar to the one proposed here. We could have indeed achieved the same operational efficiency in the D.A.O. program with, for example, Entropy running a couple of domains, or with the help of other unpaid members to be clear.
Itâs also worth mentioning a big difference: the amount of hours necessary for the D.A.O. program compared to the stylus one is higher, just because of the amount of applications and of the more granular nature of it, with Stylus oriented toward few big impactful grants, and D.A.O. program more oriented toward introductory grants.
Donât get me wrong, I am purposely nitpicky here. Mine is not a critique, but we need to take in account that the same numbers, in this case budget numbers, can just have behind different stories once you go in the details.
This is something that we should in general explore. We already spoke about this topic several times.
Assuming the proposal passes, it will be difficult to totally change the current structure. But refinements can indeed me made as well as more important change. Letâs sync on this and see what can be done with the current iteration
I want to end on a high note. I think @Entropy can give an extremely good contribution to the program without being directly involved in it, through a more detailed feedback on what we can realistically be done without breaking the terms of the proposal. As the PM, I will gladly listen to everybody and try to tune the program as much as I can toward the DAOâs expectation. From a practical standpoint, I am eager for example to see the results of the SOS proposal, and see if the budget and rules of the D.A.O. program can contribute toward that.
Finally, despite the opposing vote, I want to thank @Entropy for their feedback. A dissenting voice, when it comes from someone who shares your passion and mission, can be extremely valuable and helpful in elevating you toward the goals you are striving to achieve.
Voted For: Since Arbitrum DAO launched, there have been so many grant programs for different stages and levels of builders, run by different teams. So much experimentation was already done. This was a great way to see what works and what does not so much. Today, we can see that Arbitrum D.A.O. is a program that brings good results, itâs simple for builders to understand, and most of all, it has an awesome team like Jojo and other domain allocators as part of the program.
At the moment, there are a lot of builders waiting for this program to pass so they can apply and hope to receive a grant. We even publicly instructed many projects here on the forum to wait with their proposals for this program to pass and apply there. This really shows how much burden this program carries for the DAO. This is why I decided to support this proposal.
For the reasons I stated when voting on Snapshot, I am voting in favor of this proposal on Tally.
I would also like to share my pov regarding @Entropy 's stance, as it raises two interesting points that deserve in-depth discussion.
On one hand, it is true that there is room for improvement in the program, as with any initiative. @JoJo has already outlined a series of enhancements coming in this new iteration, along with mechanisms for better oversight of initiative execution.
That being said, this is the only general program (in the sense that it covers a broad range of areas among all four domains) that the DAO currently has in place where there is a clear counterparty to negotiate terms, milestones, funding amounts, and to enforce milestone execution.
The issue with not having this program is exemplified by proposals like sponsoring ETH Bucharest: the DAO votes to be present there, but it lacks the ability to negotiate terms, secure speakers or content before approving funds, ensure booth presence, or exercise sufficient oversight (this is not a criticism of the proposal or those in charge of executing it, just a fact). Without this program, the current state would be: Yes, why not? Letâs sponsor this, with zero negotiation or control. The domain allocator is highly effective in this regard, with administrators who already have experience, understanding what has been done, what works, what the DAO needs, and where redundancy should be avoided.
Is it expensive? It depends. The benefits are also significant, as it serves as a continuous onboarding platform for builders and users.
The second point Iâd like to address is the role of the Foundation. I welcome and am very pleased to see that the Foundation intends to become more involved in the DAO (at least, thatâs what they have expressed on Twitter in recent daysâTBD how they execute it; eager to see it).
That said, I donât believe the new status quo for the DAO should be to disengage from all programs or transfer the management of all initiatives to the Foundation. The DAO must create work frameworks that are sustainable over time and that do not rely on the Foundation, any specific program manager, or a particular service provider. Ideally, these frameworks should be strengthened over time, incorporating tools that enable automation where possible. In my opinion, abandoning incentive programs in favor of leaving everything to the Foundation would be a step backward.
I understand that this is not exactly what you are suggesting, but rather that you are relying on them while the new program is being developed. However, to me, that also feels like a step backward in the same sense. I do agree with exploring an alternative incentive program that could replace or improve the domain allocator in the future. However, the time to start iterating on that new program is nowâthroughout the year while this one is runningârather than leaving the DAO without a program that has already proven to be effective.
I think thereâs another side to this example, which is, since ETH Bucharest went directly to the DAO, it will need to report directly to the DAO on the outcomes it will produce, which is inherently a much higher bar to aim for, at least much higher than the current expectations for a typical questbook events grant in my opinion.
We previously voted FOR the snapshot of this but having further considered the state of the DAO and spending we believe a freeze of all non-essential spending is needed until a cleanup has taken place. We have therefore voted AGAINST this proposal on Tally.
voting FOR the current onchain proposal because all things considered, I think thereâs more pros than cons (barely) and the DAO needs an active grant program (up to $50k) right now. Thereâs a bunch of details I donât agree with this is proposal to be honest, but all in all, it gets my For vote.
I voted FOR on Tally. I think itâs important to have a grants program running, because we need a stream of new and innovative dApps in order to get to a few home runs which would bring a lot of users and liquidity to Arbitrum.
I understand that there can be improvements in the grants program, like @Entropy suggested, but I think it is not wise to vote against this proposal for something that may be better and itâs not clear when it will come.
Also, I donât mind having two (or even more) grant programs running in parallel. So if Entropy (or someone else) comes up with an even better grants program a few months from now, Iâm willing to support that one too. As I said, we need innovative dApps, preferably targeting end users, and with a great mobile UX.
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to âABSTAINâ on this proposal at the Tally Vote.
Rationale
First of all, and in line with our internal policy, we decided to abstain as we have economic interests at stake in this proposal.
That said, we would like to add our perspective regarding the discussions that have taken place in recent days:
It is true that the program currently saves the DAO from significant operational headaches. Considering that there were over 500 applicants in Season 2, we are certain it would be unfeasible for delegates to analyze, negotiate, and vote on each proposal individually. A few examples of this are the recent proposals in the forum requesting less than 50k, which have been âSent to Questbook.â Another case is the dozens of Stylus-related proposals that met the same fate due to budgetary constraints.
However, the other side of the coin shows that this alone cannot be sufficient reason to rush or delay a third iteration. We understand @Entropyâs argument that the focus should be on significantly improving the program. Given this, building a proper Arbitrum-branded platform for managing grant programs is not something that can be done quickly. The downside of delaying the program itself to achieve this could be very costly for the DAO and for delegates in terms of operational overload (although it is also true that the DAO could simply tell applicants to âwait until the new program is ready,â but that would also be a suboptimal solution).
Perhaps the ideal approach would be that, if this proposal is approved on Tally, a parallel initiative should begin to develop this platform so that it can be used in the future for this program and others (such as the previously mentioned Stylus Sprint).
Regarding the alignment of the program with the DAOâs objectives: We believe that the program has demonstrated alignment, even though the objectives are not yet fully defined. The reality is that the DAO (and we dare say also AF/OCL) has shown interest in the verticals proposed by the Domains if we analyze each one:
Education, Community Growth, and Events:
We have participated as a Domain Allocator in these last seasons and have maintained communication with AF on several occasionsâeither receiving feedback on specific proposals or avoiding overlaps with events already funded by AF.
We have prioritized content creation related to the latest Arbitrum innovations, such as Stylus and BoLD.
Gaming:
The necessary adjustments have been made to generate synergies rather than overlaps with the GCP.
This is a good indicator that the Program Manager and other program participants seek to align with the current context of the DAO.
Dev Tooling:
There have been high-quality proposals within Stylus Sprint that could have applied to this Domain, but they were not approved/funded due to budget constraints and because they were deemed a better fit for this program.
This Domain could leverage approved Stylus Sprint proposals, becoming a tool to amplify the impact of these projects.
New Protocols and Ideas:
This might be the Domain with the least direct relationship to other active DAO initiatives.
However, it is the Domain with the highest level of innovation and has brought valuable governance tools, such as the Curia Dashboard. Considering this, itâs hard to imagine that it would not be aligned with the DAOâs needs and the broader ecosystem.
Orbit Chains:
We also find it hard to believe that this is not aligned with Arbitrumâs priorities, given all the discussions about improving interoperability within the Arbitrum Stack.
Also knowing that OCL has shown interest in @Maxlomuâs proposal, this Domain is likely a must-have in this program and in the DAO.
Final Thoughts
Yes, it is trueâthe program has a lot of room for improvement.
It is also true that it is difficult to improve it properly without taking a step back to review past performance and gather feedback on how to move forward. However, in this case, there were at least two or three months to propose improvements before theon-chain vote.
What cannot be ignored is that the program has proven to add value to the ecosystem.
This is not just another initiative that can be shut down overnight for the sake of âcleaning house.â
Despite our abstention, we hope this proposal will be approved.
We are more than willing to support @JoJo and other stakeholders in a parallel improvement process for the next iteration (or even for the second half of the program, if operationally viable).
We understand that the ARDCâs ongoing research into the program will provide valuable insights on what can be improved and what aspects of the program are already strong.
The following reflects the views of L2BEATâs governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas. Itâs based on their combined research, fact-checking, and ideation.
Weâre voting FOR the proposal.
When we cast our vote during temp-check, we raised 5 points that weâd like to see addressed before being comfortable voting in favor of the proposal onchain. We appreciate the amount of time and effort @Jojo put into addressing our feedback both on the forums and in private, as well as that of other delegates.
Although we voted to continue the program with just the original four domains, weâre happy to see the DAO approving Max Lomu to lead the Orbit domain and believe heâll do good work as its domain allocator. Weâre also pleased to see Questbookâs reduced cost relative to Snapshot.
Weâd like to point out one thing, even though itâs not a deal-breaker. As things are, Jojo is to receive a retroactive compensation of 24,000 ARB (to be delegated for at least 180 days) after feedback that his compensation as PM was lower than that of DAs. We understand that this is meant to mitigate the difference in the compensation between the PM and DAs, and itâs not necessarily compensation for drafting the proposal.
lacking other mechanisms, these programs provide a needed entry-gate. I do hope weâll continue to experiment with investments and offering non-financial support to projects so we can increase the ROI of capital deployments. Grants should be paused/restructured but itâs too early to pause them now as thereâs only 1 pilot of investment programs
