Pilot Phase: M&A for Arbitrum DAO

[Bernard]

M&A Pilot Phase Bi-weekly #2 (June 26) - Week 3+4

Thank you all for joining our second bi-weekly call!
The bi-weekly updates call are an opportunity for interested parties to contribute, ask questions, and most importantly challenge deliverables. Find below key items of consideration:

• Recording: Bi-weekly Call #2 June 26
• Telegram Group: Invite
• Next interaction point: M&A Discussion Session at GovHack (6th July - 16:30 CET)

As always, for any questions or remarks in the meantime - feel free to reach out via TG @bmitte.

Looking forward to the next interaction!

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Summary: Bi-weekly Call #2 - 26 June

Agenda

We used the first bi-weekly to guide through the following topics:

1. Pilot Phase Status
2. Workstream Updates & Exercises:
   a. M&A Value Upside
   b. Strategic Target Areas
   c. Operationalization of Fund
3. Discussion & Next steps

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TL;DR:

• The first 2-3 weeks of the pilot phase were spent on establishing the basics, working through analyses, creating educational material for the final report and developing initial strategic target areas.
• With these fundamentals in place, the focus shifted to the application area for Arbitrum DAO, addressing key questions about the Arbitrum M&A case and its feasibility. With on-going feedback, we are now tackling the big questions on how an M&A unit fits into Arbitrum and how it can succeed.
• At GovHack in Brussels, we will test our current setup and gather the DAO’s opinions on the value of an Arbitrum DAO M&A Unit and its target areas.

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Summary of Outcomes

Here are the highlights of the call outcomes. We decided to include the key slides here as they are the easiest to grasp vs. written text.

Chapter 1: We discussed the status on key deliverables

1. Pilot Phase Project Plan: Timeline and key deliverables

Updates: Shifted our next online governance call to after EthCC to meet calendars and highlighted EthCC M&A discussion session on Saturday 6th July.

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Chapter 2: We discussed the and status for 3 workstreams

M&A Value Upside

This workstream forms the basic of understanding on M&A and its role in web2 and web3. The mix of educational material and own analyses is wrapped up and will be part of the final report to get the DAO up to speed on the topic.

2. Updated Workstream Approach: M&A Value Upside Analysis

2. Workstream Status: Example of current work in progress for education

2. Workstream Next Steps

Strategic Target Areas

In week 4, we created a distilled list of strategic target areas and mapped them on a value impact and feasibility for M&A graph. You can find many of the detailed analyses in the appendix or in the document shared last week. For the GovHack, we will guide you through the three main categories for M&A that are emerging for Arbitrum DAO.

2. Updated Workstream Approach: Strategic Target Areas

2. Workstream Status: Strategic Target Areas

2. Workstream Next Steps

Operationalization Details for M&A Unit

This workstream has begun by mapping out all the key questions for the unit. Additionally, we developed structures to address the priority questions highlighted in dark blue, which we will guide you through at the GovHack in Brussels. Getting these right over the next few weeks is crucial to determining the feasibility and potential benefits of the unit.

2. Workstream Approach: Operationalization Details for M&A Unit

2. Workstream Next Steps

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Chapter 3: Feedback and amendments

Topics highlighted in discussion by call participants

These are topics highlighted by call participants that we deem high priority. Some were already included in our work packages and will now receive extra emphasis due to their importance, while others will be added anew.

• Clear objective between financial and strategic ROI: Map out ROI for different asset categories.
• Management structures for sustainability: Emphasize on how is this going to stay for the long-term / How to prevent buying assets that will then die a slow death.
• Unit compensation and long-term incentives: Map out how incentives work for the unit.
• Map out DAOs involvement in management decisions: Show decision-making power of the DAO in day-to-day management, which should be minimal.

Topics integrated from last bi-weekly Call and forum

• Post-acquisition integration: Details on integration of M&A targets into the DAO, incl. views on incentivization of stakeholders (team, managers, DAO participants) and integration flow.
  → Mapped out three different integration and incentive schemes to discuss.
• Buy/fork vs. build framework: Framework on buy/fork vs. build decisions.
  → Created and attached to the report.
• Open feedback to Strategic Target Areas: Platform for the wider community for feedback on strategic target areas next to direct outreaches to delegates (beginning of this thread).
  → Received feedback on the forum, TG chat, and in bilateral calls and assessed relevant target area additions in our analysis.
• Areta research vs. delegate coordination exercise: Own in-depth research on strategic target areas, besides views collected from delegates and other stakeholders.
  → Included as core part of our work
• Build up on existing strategy work: Inclusion of existing pieces on strategic target areas exercise.
  → Continuous exercise to include all relevant sources.
• M&A acquisition upside metrics: Framework to measure financial/value upside for Arbitrum DAO.
  → Mapped out ROI measurement.
• M&A next to other capital allocation initiatives: Overview on how M&A sits next to other initiatives.
  → Created overview and collaborated with other initiatives in virtual working session (GCP, AVI, EVM).
• Acquisition payment in liquid ARB: Considerations on paying acquisition prices in liquid ARB (vs. equity and/or cash).
  → Emphasized on ARB payment being at the core part of our sustainability considerations and developed incentive schemes.

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Next steps for next two weeks

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Helpful links:

• M&A Core Proposal: here
• M&A Telegram Group: here
• Easy-to-digest Video Summary (s/o to Sinkas): here