After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to “FOR, WITHOUT POAP” on this proposal at the Snapshot Vote.
Rationale
We have known @ostanescu.eth both personally and through our interactions as Domain Allocators during Questbook Season 2, where they successfully met all proposed milestones. Overall, our impression remains positive after these engagements. Additionally, we appreciate the proposer’s efforts to address every question raised in the post.
That said, there are a few points we would like to highlight:
We believe the $15,000 allocated for providing POAPs is excessive, especially since this tool tends to be suboptimal for measuring attendance. From our experience organizing events and in the Domain, POAPs often serve as a floor metric for attendance since not all participants claim them. For this reason, increasing the budget by 25% solely for this purpose seems unnecessary.
Some costs within the Genesis Block Package also appear high. For example, the $8,000 allocated to the Exhibition Booth aligns more closely with events of significantly larger magnitude.
As mentioned by @pedrob, we believe there should be a partial release of funds tied to specific milestones (at least 2 or 3). While we understand that sponsorship packages require upfront payment to cover pre-event expenses, as noted by the proposer, other components like the Hackathon bounties budget could be milestone-based. Additionally, in our view, part of the budget or an incentive should be allocated to a final milestone for post-event reporting. We encourage the proposer to implement these changes to better safeguard Arbitrum DAO’s interests.
Ideally, this project should fall under Questbook’s Domain. Even without the POAP allocation, the budget remains close to the $50,000 threshold. However, we understand that due to timing constraints, this may not be feasible. The Domain is expected to resume operations in February, which would leave only two months before the event—insufficient time considering expenses like venue rental and other upfront costs.
Finally, we would like to clarify that we did not abstain from voting this time, despite having previously approved a grant for the same proposer. We do not believe there is a conflict of interest in this case. Unlike the Hackathon Continuation Program—which represented a continuation of the Hackathon we funded through Questbook—this proposal is for a completely separate and independent event (aside from the proposer) and is unrelated to the Hackathon funded in Romania.