This report provides a comprehensive overview of the OpCo Oversight & Transparency Committee (OAT) and OpCo’s activities from November 1st, 2025, through April 30th, 2026. The previous transparency report can be found here.
For better formatting and a better viewing experience, you can find the PDF version of the report here.
Oversight and Transparency Committee (OAT)
The OAT is a group of five individuals (current cohort includes AJ, Patrick, Frisson, Pedro and Gavin) with the primary mandate to oversee OpCo’s operations, ensure the DAO maintains transparency into the DAO-adjacent entity, function as the coordinator between the DAO and OpCo, and establish clear communication channels with the separate DAO-adjacent entities.
With the search for a ‘Head of OpCo’ ongoing, the OAT has taken a more active role until that position has been filled. Below is a summary of the various activities the OAT has been involved in over the last 6 months.
Reviewing ATMC’s Recommendations
With Entropy’s proposal to consolidate the treasury management efforts under a single ‘Arbitrum Treasury Management Committee’ (ATMC), the OAT took on the role of the Voting Body for the committee’s recommendations.
Over the last 6 months, the OAT has reviewed 13 deployment proposals and approved all 13.
OpCo Hiring
Following the hiring of Tamara in September 2025 and Sinkas in October 2026, the OAT has continued interviewing for the ‘Head of OpCo’ and the ‘Head of Finance’ roles, while interviews for the legal counsel position have been put on pause for the time being.
Since October 31st, the OAT has received countless applications across the 3 different roles, between working with external recruiters and collaborating with the Arbitrum Foundation’s recruiting team. To date, the OAT has had 15 applicants who have made it to the final interview rounds (across all positions).
- Head of OpCo
The search is still ongoing, and the OAT is actively interviewing a few quality candidates.
- Head of Finance
The role has been filled as of April 8, 2026, and the new Head of Finance’s official start date was May 18th, 2026, allowing time for the notice period.
- Legal Counsel
While we have been searching for in-house legal counsel, we’ve been covering our legal needs with external counsel when necessary. Currently, we’re facing a chicken-and-egg problem with a legal hire: there’s not enough work to justify the cost of in-house legal counsel, but without it, we’re more mindful of what we take on.
At this time, there are no plans for any hire other than the ‘Head of OpCo’. This is subject to change if the current landscape changes, but our efforts remain focused on filling the Head of OpCo position and enabling them to make future hires as they see fit.
Entropy’s Bonus Pool Counterparty
The proposal for Entropy’s 2nd and 3rd years established that 10M ARB would be set aside for the OAT to negotiate directly with Entropy Advisors to establish short-, medium-, and long-term incentive mechanisms. These mechanisms could include, but were not limited to, milestone-based payments, an equity investment in Entropy Advisors, and bonuses tied to Entropy exceeding expectations.
The OAT has been actively negotiating with Entropy, and the KPIs governing the agreement are currently being worked on.
Making the DAO Exciting Again
Given that DAO activity has slowed down since early 2025 when compared to the early days of the DAO, one of the objectives that we set out to accomplish is to make the DAO more exciting and lively. Through exploring contribution pathways with the Firestarters, and organizing delegate events, we sought to reignite interest among stakeholders and contributors.
Firestarters
On October 17, we published a proposal to (re)introduce Firestarters Fund - a small grants program with the purpose of funding groundwork that could potentially lead to bigger initiatives and programs in the DAO. After delegate feedback and internal deliberation, we decided to not move forward with the proposal, but instead fund a smaller pilot out of OpCo’s funds to confirm that, a) the current landscape was fruitful for a Firestarters grant program, and b) that we have the operational expertise to manage such a program.
We then announced the pilot program and how it would be managed, with a strong emphasis on transparency, both around the program’s structure and around the applications themselves. The program’s official start date was January 1st, 2026, and the predetermined course of action was that we’d run the program for 3 months, or until the $50,000 budget we had earmarked ran out (whichever came first), before stopping to do a retrospective and decide the next steps.
Throughout the 3 months that the program operated, we maintained a public and up-to-date dashboard where one could see all the applications and relevant details, along with a changelog that reflected almost daily changes. Additionally, we published a monthly report at the end of each month (January, February, March) to make the information readily available even to parties who didn’t follow the dashboard but did frequent the forum.
Program Overview
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Total grant funding allocated: $24,100 of the $50,000 budget (48.2%)
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Number of applications received: 14
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Average quality of applications received: Medium-to-low quality
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Approval rate of funded projects: 28.5% (4/14)
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Milestone/project completion rates: 100% (still ongoing)
On April 17, we published a retrospective report covering the entire program, including quantitative and qualitative details and key takeaways. Reflecting on the program’s outcomes, we decided that the best course of action for the time being would be to stop accepting applications but to keep the operational rails for outbound grants, given on an ad hoc basis as needed.
For a more detailed breakdown of the program, we suggest you read the retrospective report available here.
Events
Since November, the OpCo has hosted three separate events, on the occasion of three industry conferences: Devconnect in Argentina, ETHDenver in Denver, and EthCC in Cannes. Our events focused on ArbitrumDAO delegates and contributors, while also being open to builders to help them better understand how the DAO operates. As such, the events were more private and curated, albeit freely accessible to people who wanted to attend.
We will not go into too much detail on each individual event in this report, since recaps of all events are readily available on the forum. Instead, we’ll use this report to go into our broader events strategy going forward and how things that have happened in the last few months have informed it.
OpCo Events Strategy
With the Arbitrum Foundation and Offchain Labs organising events focused on ecosystem growth, builder engagement, and brand awareness, there’s no point for OpCo in attempting to do the same. Instead, we’ve decided to focus solely on the DAO and how we can leverage in-person presence to break ground in discussions or initiatives that would otherwise take several weeks to progress online. At the same time, we want to keep our events open to the broader Arbitrum ecosystem and invite more stakeholders and builders to learn about the ArbitrumDAO and how it all works.
With that in mind, you can expect to see us organise events only alongside major industry conferences typically attended by ArbitrumDAO delegates and contributors, since that’s where we’ll have the biggest possible attendance.
D.A.O Program & DAO Events Budget
At the start of the year, we were contemplating submitting a proposal to the DAO proposing that if D.A.O Program were to not continue (conversations were still ongoing at that time), the OpCo would take over the remaining funds from the ‘Education, Community Growth, and Events’ domain, and use it to set up our own version of the previously established ‘DAO Events Budget.’
In tandem, through the Firestarters program, we issued a grant to Tekr0x to research and create a first draft of an ‘Events Playbook’ that we could utilise both for our own events, but also for events that would potentially be funded through the aforementioned events budget we’d administer.
Ultimately, we decided not to proceed with the proposal and instead had the funds absorbed into the ATMC, along with the surplus from the other domains, as proposed by Entropy. We made that decision because we hadn’t yet defined a solid events strategy, which also depends on the broader AAE strategy we’ve been working on, and to avoid the issues that arise when trying to secure funding first and deciding how to execute later.
Additionally, conversations with the Arbitrum Foundation’s events team helped us better understand their event priorities and strategy, which led us back to the drawing board on our own approach.
DAO Strategy & Growth
Apart from making the DAO exciting, we have also been thinking of how we can make it bigger and better by activating more stakeholders in governance and by creating a feedback loop with delegates and other stakeholders.
Delegate Drive
One of the less visible initiatives we undertook was what we dubbed ‘Delegate Drive’. Simply put, it was an effort to increase the delegated supply and the number of delegates who are also builders on Arbitrum.
We reached out to 32 projects building on Arbitrum but not yet participating in governance to understand what was holding them back. Out of those discussions, 12 projects were fully onboarded, meaning they created a forum account and a delegate address on Tally.
Concurrently, we were reaching out to major Arbitrum investors to persuade them to delegate their ARB, either to existing delegates or to one or more of the projects we helped onboard. We talked with a total of 9 investor firms that hold ARB, with 6 of them not wanting to delegate for a multitude of different reasons, 1 asking us to circle back in the future, 1 telling us that they’re already delegating their ARB to a few delegates, and 1 of them agreeing to delegate their holdings, without that delegation having materialised yet.
Delegate Retrospectives
At the end of 2025, we did a delegate retrospective where we talked with delegates of varying voting power to get their general thoughts and sentiment about the DAO and the broader Arbitrum ecosystem. We also used the opportunity to debrief on a number of smaller things that were happening in the DAO at the time.
At the end of March and throughout April, we did the same kind of retrospective with delegates, once again seeking their thoughts while also looking for feedback on OpCo’s activities during the first quarter of the year.
Going forward, we’ll be conducting these retrospectives on a quarterly basis to debrief with delegates, while of course also maintaining our regular communication channels and cadence, both on a public and on a one-to-one basis.
Creating Efficiencies in the DAO
One of the key reasons for OpCo’s existence is to streamline the operations of the DAO’s initiatives, which were previously handled individually by each initiative lead. Instead of maintaining multiple isolated units, the OpCo has consolidated multiple initiatives under its operational umbrella, resulting in quicker turnaround times, more timely updates, and lower costs.
RAD
In mid November, the Arbitrum Foundation submitted the ‘Rewarding Active Delegates (RAD) Program’ proposal. The program, meant to reward delegates for participating in votes and publishing their rationales, was intended to be administered by the Arbitrum Foundation from the outset and to transition under OpCo’s management as the latter ramps up operational capacity.
To avoid operational back-and-forth, however, we decided to take on program management from the very beginning, right after it was approved by governance. To do that, we set up a compliance process using a third-party service (Sumsub for KYC/KYB) and contracted legal counsel to help us draft the required grant agreements.
Additionally, we negotiated with SEED to be the Program Manager for RAD and to assist us in tracking participating delegates’ voting records and eligibility criteria, and ultimately in calculating monthly rewards for each delegate.
The Program Manager’s scope of work and compensation were published on the forum for full transparency.
Quick Adjustability
On March 9, after having no votes in January and only one vote in February, we quickly realised that the flat monthly fee for the Program Manager scope didn’t make sense. After negotiating with SEED, we agreed on a per-proposal compensation structure. That update was communicated to the DAO, both on the forum and through the OpCo Office Hours and the Open Discussion of Proposals call.
Subsequently, after SEED announced they were stepping down as Program Managers, we quickly adjusted once again and hired Ministro directly to continue carrying the torch. The per-proposal fee was once again reduced to reflect that Ministro was no longer representing SEED’s voting power, and, as a result, we didn’t have to account for the opportunity cost of SEED not participating in the program as a delegate.
Ongoing Monitoring
Following the publication of March’s results, we noticed a significant distortion in the dollar-per-vote between large and small delegates participating in the program. That happened because several delegates did not qualify, so the available budgets were split among those who did, resulting in all participants hitting the rewards cap. That meant delegates with a few million voting power received the same rewards as those barely above the 200,000 threshold.
In the monthly update we published in March, we highlighted this issue and attributed it to two culprits: the 75% participation threshold and the requirement for delegates to publish their rationales within 5 days of a vote ending.
Code of Conduct
The Code of Conduct active in ArbitrumDAO was previously ratified by governance for a 6-month trial period in July 2025. The proposal also included a path for the OpCo to take over the stewarding of the Code of Conduct once operational:
In the future and once OpCo is fully operational, responsibility for the resolution of conflicts can be transferred to the OpCo at the Arbitrum Foundation’s discretion. The Arbitrum Foundation will acknowledge when this transfer can take place and make it public on the governance forum when it goes into effect.
It also included a clause allowing the Arbitrum Foundation to extend the effectiveness of the Code of Conduct and DAO Procedures for another 2 months (through March 31st, 2026).
To ensure that the DAO has ample time to discuss such matters without the Code of Conduct and DAO Procedures losing its validity, the Arbitrum Foundation reserves the right to extend their effectiveness by up to two months through March 31st, 2026 as long as a new version has not yet been officially ratified.
On January 26, 2026, Arbitrum Foundation exercised its right to extend the deadline, giving Entropy, Arbitrum Foundation, and OpCo enough time to collect delegate feedback and input on the Code of Conduct and DAO Procedures, and to complete the handover to OpCo.
We then organised and hosted a call to discuss any feedback or input before making changes to the documents. Due to the low turnaround, we also created and circulated a survey that gathered feedback from 12 unique delegates.
That feedback culminated in Entropy’s March 18, 2026, proposal to update the Code of Conduct and DAO Procedures to make them living documents under the stewardship of the OpCo.
Following successful ratification by governance, the handover was completed, with OpCo publishing the updated Code of Conduct and DAO Procedures on the forum.
Watchdog
Another proposal, envisioned for transition to OpCo once operational, was the Watchdog, which was ratified by governance on May 27, 2025. On April 20, Entropy, on behalf of the reviewing committee, published an update that also included the plan and timeline for the transition and eventual handover of the program to OpCo.
The plan is for the OpCo to take the lead on new cases for programs that began after January 1st, 2025, while the existing review committee continues to process reports for older initiatives. That would give OpCo a clear starting point and allow older cases to be reviewed efficiently, given that the Arbitrum Foundation has been the primary point of contact for most participating parties in older programs before OpCo was established.
GRC & Open Discussion of Proposals Calls
Since early October, the OpCo has taken up hosting the monthly ‘Governance Reporting Call (GRC)’ and the biweekly ‘Open Discussion of Proposals Call’. We coordinate with stakeholders to be present and give their respective updates, publish the agenda on the forum and remind delegates, and publish the recording after the call for those who could not make it.
Active Initiatives Dashboard
For delegates who want status updates on DAO initiatives, the OpCo maintains a public, up-to-date Notion dashboard that provides key information for each active initiative. While in-depth updates are still found on the ArbitrumDAO forum, the dashboard offers a quick overview of what’s happening, along with an update log from each monthly GRC.
Forum Moderation
The OpCo has also taken an active role in moderating the Arbitrum forum. That mostly entails reviewing the moderation queue for flagged posts and taking appropriate action to keep the forum free of spam.
Additionally, we proactively reach out to topic authors to either request additional information or to point them in the right direction in case there is one. For example, a proposal author looking for a $20,000 grant from the DAO was unaware of the D.A.O grant program and we pointed him in the right direction instead of going through a forum proposal.
Creating Efficiencies Across Arbitrum Aligned Entities (AAEs)
One of the key roles envisioned for the OpCo is that of a ‘control-panel’ for the DAO and the entities that operate within it. Over the last couple of months, we’ve been strengthening communication and coordination between OpCo and the other AAEs, while also serving as a facilitator and coordinating party among them.
Inter-AAE calls and gatherings
We’ve established a monthly AAE call where representatives from OpCo, Arbitrum Foundation, Offchain Labs, Entropy and Arbitrum Gaming Ventures get together to discuss status updates and initiatives that span across them.
Additionally, we’ve organised physical gatherings next to big conferences for AAEs to come together to have those discussions in person.
Grants funnel
The OpCo started and led the discussion that ultimately culminated in the creation of a one-stop grants hub where builders can find all available and active grant programs, whether administered by the Arbitrum Foundation or the ArbitrumDAO. This was one of the outcomes of the cross-AAE communication and coordination efforts mentioned above.
AAE Vision Document
Since the beginning of the year, we’ve been at work collaborating with stakeholders across different AAEs in an attempt to synthesise a shared strategy document for the future of Arbitrum and the role the different AAEs play in it. This is a work in progress, and more information will be made public in due time.
Coordination & Execution Support for Cross-AAE Projects
The OpCo has taken on the coordinator role for a few cross-AAE projects that are currently underway. More information will be made available in due time, as the relevant projects are sensitive in nature.
Finances
Until April 30th, 2026, OpCo has incurred a total of USD 1,148,778 and ARB 100,000.
| Category | Amount |
|---|---|
| Admin & Operations | $561.907 |
| OAT Compensation | $367.500 |
| Incorporation and Legal | $192.316 |
| Event Hosting | $13.784 |
| Firestarter Grants | $13.270 |
| Total | $1.148.778 |
That means that, since the last transparency report, published on November 11th, 2025, reporting activities through October 31st 2025, the OpCo has incurred $568,179.27 USD and 100,000 ARB in expenses.
For better formatting and a better viewing experience, you can find the PDF version of the report here.