Oversight and Transparency Committee (OAT) - June 2026 Elections Application Thread

Applications for DAO programs
14

Applicant / Nominee Information

  • Full Name: Tom Berry (@atomist)

  • Contact Information: atomist@castlelabs.io / @atomist on Telegram

  • Current Occupation: Co-Founder, Castle Labs

  • Country of Residence / Time Zone: United Kingdom / BST (UTC+1)

Nominator Information

N/A

Applicant / Nominee Qualifications and Experience

Identify one of the domains described within the Desired Qualifications section in the OpCo - Oversight and Transparency Committee (OAT) Application Process Overview forum post in which you have the most experience and describe that experience:

I am applying to the Corporate Finance, Capital Allocation, and Financial & Risk Management domain, with a profile that also has strong coverage in Business Development, Venture Building, and Strategy & Operations domain.

Most of my relevant experience in the primary domain lies at the intersection of capital allocation, programme oversight, and DAO operations, roles I have held within the Arbitrum DAO itself.

As an advisor to the Long-Term Incentive Program Pilot (LTIPP) and STIP Bridge, I worked directly with applicants to refine their funding requests, justify budgets, and design incentive mechanisms that the DAO could actually hold them to and that would deliver broader benefits to the ecosystem. Across both programmes, Castle reviewed more than 60 protocol applications. The collaborative revision process helped reduce total grant requests by more than half, from 152.4M ARB to 65.9M ARB, making DAO fund allocation more efficient.

The allocator-side work continued through Castle’s role as a Research Member of ARDC V2, which I led, where our outputs included:

We took this experience a step further by continuing our role as allocators through Castle’s Domain Allocator role in the New Protocols and Ideas domain of the D.A.O. Grants Program. We were responsible for evaluating live funding applications against criteria for budget transparency, measurable impact, execution credibility, and post-grant sustainability.

I am a co-founder of Castle Labs and have led the company from its bootstrapping and incorporation through to today, establishing it as a well-known research company. That has meant managing budgets, pricing, runway, hiring, and cost reductions through difficult market periods, while making the capital allocation decisions required to build a sustainable business from zero without outside funding. Running a self-funded company in the sector has deepened my understanding of what fiscal controls mean when the money being protected is your own.

Building and growing Castle from a community research collective into an advisory firm serving institutional clients, protocols, and Arbitrum-aligned entities has allowed me to strengthen my experience in Business Development, Venture Building, and Strategy & Operations and Human Resources & Talent Management. I have anchored on capital allocation because it is where my Arbitrum-specific track record is strongest, and because the OAT’s hardest recurring decisions, including budgets, salaries, third-party deals, and performance accountability, sit closest to that domain.

Describe your network and reputation within the blockchain/technology industry. Have you previously represented a crypto brand and/or navigated DAO governance:

I have publicly represented Castle Labs since its founding, and Castle has represented itself within Arbitrum since the DAO’s earliest days.

Castle’s work has been utilised, amplified, and referenced by Arbitrum-aligned entities, delegates, ambassadors, ecosystem contributors, and research organisations. In addition to the service work we have done for the DAO, we have run multiple media campaigns for Arbitrum, with Castle’s coverage becoming one of the ecosystem’s most consistently referenced editorial voices.

Castle’s research reaches 1,600+ organisations across some of the largest institutions, exchanges, protocols, investors, foundations, and media companies in the world. We are currently laser focused on onchain finance, across RWAs, tokenisation, compliance infrastructure, onchain credit, neobanks, agentic payments and more, with our network growing in these sectors everyday.

Separately, Castle has worked with or supported protocols and ecosystems including Mantle, Starknet, Ink, Berachain, Stacks, Almanak, Resolv, Curvance, and OpenEden. This gives me a broad view of how other ecosystems structure incentives, reporting, and contributor accountability, while my deepest governance experience remains inside Arbitrum. Furthermore, I have delivered keynotes and conducted founder interviews at major industry events, including EthCC and ETH Milan, where Castle co-hosted Arbitrum Day last year.

Detail your experience in advisory, governance, and/or oversight roles:

  • Advisor and allocator: Through my experience within LTIPP, STIP Bridge, ARDC V2, and the Domain Allocator role, I have spent more than two years evaluating other teams’ requests for DAO capital, designing or applying the scoring rubrics and application frameworks used to assess them, and holding funded teams to their stated milestones. That work requires the same basic judgement the OAT needs: separate ambition from practical execution, ask for evidence before approving spend, make trade-offs explicit, and stay useful to contributors without becoming captured by them.

  • DAO Relations partner to AGV: In March 2025, the Gaming Catalyst Program brought Castle in as its dedicated DAO Relations partner during a period of significant delegate concern and scrutiny, including the clawback debate. Castle was brought in to improve consistent updates, create a structured communication calendar, and facilitate two-way engagement between GCP and the DAO. Since then, our mandate has been to rebuild transparency and trust by supporting AGV’s Transparency Reports, running communications for the 2026 AGV Council election, coordinating delegate-facing updates, and re-establishing a predictable information flow between the entity and the DAO. During our work for AGV, I have led the engagement, sitting between an AAE and the delegates who fund it, ensuring the information flowing between them is timely, accurate, and honest. I have seen first-hand what happens to an AAE when that flow breaks, and what it takes to repair it.

  • GMX Governance Committee Member: I currently sit on the GMX Governance Committee, giving me direct, ongoing experience of protocol-level governance on Arbitrum’s largest native perpetuals exchange, as well as representing them within Arbitrum DAO governance.

Have you previously contributed to the Arbitrum DAO? Describe any relevant experiences through which you’ve gained an understanding of the DAO’s current structure, contributors, and programs:

  • Delegate since the DAO’s inception, through Castle Labs, participating in research, proposal feedback, and voting through an internal committee process.

  • LTIPP Advisor and STIP Bridge Advisor, reviewing and refining more than 60 protocol applications, supporting applicant teams through budget and mechanism design, and helping reduce aggregate funding requests from 152.4M ARB to 65.9M ARB.

  • Multisig Signer Service member, contributing to operational reliability and trust in DAO execution.

  • ARB Staking Rewards Source working group contributor, participating in one of the DAO’s core incentive and token utility discussions.

  • ARDC V2 Research Member, in partnership with DefiLlama Research, producing grant programme recommendations for Season 3, governance vulnerability research, incentive programme analysis, and ecosystem mapping.

  • Supervisor to the Domain Allocator, D.A.O. Grants Program, in the New Protocols and Ideas domain, reviewing live funding applications and supporting grant programme execution.

  • DAO Relations partner to GCP/AGV from March 2025, supporting structured DAO communications, transparency reporting, council election communications, and delegate engagement during a period of low trust between the entity and the DAO.

  • Education domain grantee, through Arbitrum Unlocked 1.0 and 2.0, delivering roughly 845k aggregate impressions of Arbitrum-focused educational content across ten months, meeting 100% of milestones, and publishing full public final reports.

Through these roles, I have worked directly or indirectly with the Arbitrum Foundation, Offchain Labs, Entropy Advisors, Nethermind, AGV, SEEDGov, Questbook, DefiLlama Research, active delegates, grantees, service providers, and protocol teams across the ecosystem. I know the DAO’s current structure not from reading forum posts, but from operating inside its programmes since they were created.

Given the scope of OpCo is relatively broad in its current form, describe how you view OpCo’s role within the DAO and what it should accomplish to deem the entity a success over the next 3-5 years:

OpCo exists to professionalise DAO operations: clearer ownership, better coordination between AAEs, comparable reporting, and faster escalation when mandates drift or delivery falls short. OAT should not run OpCo, but it should make sure OpCo and the AAEs are legible to delegates and accountable to their mandates.

My assessment is that OpCo’s initial phase has delivered less visible coordination than delegates likely expected. Some of that is obviously structural: operating without a Head of OpCo limited its ability to set cadence, coordinate across AAEs, and make its work consistently visible to the DAO. The next phase should be judged less on intent and more on whether it creates predictable reporting, clearer ownership, and decision-useful information for delegates.

Over the next 3–5 years, success would mean

  1. AAEs have clear mandates, visible priorities, and reduced duplication.

  2. OpCo’s key roles are filled by credible operators, with public KPIs and regular reporting.

  3. Major programmes report against a common minimum standard, making cost, delivery, and impact comparable.

  4. The DAO has a clearer path to financial sustainability, with budgets, revenue opportunities, and new entities assessed through disciplined accountability and clear strategic objectives.

References

  • JoJo, Blockworks (worked together in LTIPP, STIP Bridge, D.A.O.)

  • Dan or Rick, Arbitrum Gaming Ventures

  • Matt Fiebach, Entropy Advisors (worked together in ARDC V2)

  • Tamara, OpCo (worked together in ARDC V2)

Disclosures

Please disclose all of the applicant’s/nominee’s actual and potential conflicts of interest, including but not limited to financial, personal, DAO governance, and professional:

  • Castle Labs currently serves as the DAO Relations partner for Arbitrum Gaming Ventures (AGV)

  • I sit on the GMX Governance Committee, which controls 8M ARB voting power from GMX DAO.

  • Castle Labs has previously provided research, advisory, content, and distribution services to protocols deployed on Arbitrum as well as competitor ecosystems, and may do so again. Any future engagement that conflicts with Arbitrum would be disclosed to the council, and I would recuse myself from it internally.

Please disclose all active contributor roles and payment streams related to the Arbitrum DAO that the applicant/nominee, and entities that they have a professional or financial relationship with, have and is receiving:

  • Castle Labs <> AGV DAO Relations engagement, paid and ongoing as above. If elected, I would recuse myself from any involvement with AGV re: Castle operations.

  • While Castle Labs is signed up to Arbitrum’s RAD, we are below the 200k ARB voting power to receive any rewards. If elected to the OAT, I would resign from the RAD program.

  • While Castle is a Domain Allocator within the D.A.O. Program, I personally do not receive payment from this service. The program has a few months of maintenance left.

Declarations

I acknowledge that any offer to join and hold a position in the OAT is contingent on:

  • Successfully completing as well as maintaining updated all relevant non-disclosure agreements, KYC requirements, and other necessary documents

  • Not being a direct representative or full-time employee at network competitors (e.g., Solana, Polygon, Optimism, etc)

  • An individual will be entitled to run as a candidate for the election. No single organisation should be overly represented in the OAT. There should be no more than 1 candidate associated with a single entity.

  • If a candidate is elected on behalf of an organisation, then the OAT membership is tied to them and cannot be rotated to someone else in the organisation. It will be up to the current OAT to enforce the above policy, and if a candidate is excluded from the election, then the rationale must be publicly disclosed to the ArbitrumDAO

  • Being aligned with the community values listed in The Amended Constitution of the Arbitrum DAO, following the Code of Conduct for delegates, being committed to prioritizing the Arbitrum DAO’s needs, and acting in absolute good faith and utmost honesty to fulfill their duties to the best of their abilities.

  • If nominating someone else, the nominator confirms that the nominee is aware of their nomination and the essential details related to it

  • The applicant/nominator confirms that they have read and understood all the content within this form and that the information submitted is accurate and complete: Yes

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