Plurality Labs: Arbitrum DAO x RnDAO Co.lab

DAO Programs & Initiatives
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Hey all

I’m Daniel from RnDAO. We just concluded our first phase of the project. So here’s an update to the community.

We have created this dec that explains the Co.Lab

Quick Overview:

  • The Co.Lab is a program to build applications in Arbitrum with a focus on Collaboration Tech.
  • Collab Tech (DAO tooling, community tooling, and other tools for the future of work) is poised to grow to a $380bn market by 2030, addressing $8 trillion lost per year in productivity worldwide, and with positive impact across all challenges where humans have to collaborate. Collab tech is a huge opportunity for Arbitrum to become the leading ecosystem.
  • We’re helping to develop the Arbitrum ecosystem (and advance the governance and operational capabilities of the Arbitrum DAO and all Arbitrum projects) through incubating ventures that build Apps on Arbitrum.
  • Our methodology is based on a fellowship to deeply understand the challenges and ensure real-world usage, and then a venture-building program to quickly prototype and develop an MVP.
  • We’ve launched a Pilot in December of this program with a 156,000 ARB grant through Plurality Labs

Progress so far:

  • Attracting developers and entrepreneurs: Over 100 registered applicants in just 3 weeks for only 6 slots
  • Brand positioning for Arbitrum as hub for DAOs and collaboration tech: 60k+ impressions
  • Over the next 3 months of the program: research and apps in the Arbitrum ecosystem, with real use cases.
    (fellowship winners to be announced next week)

And we’re running a survey to identify key collaboration challenges, and would love to have your thoughts!

Also feel free to engage with us here or via the details at the end of the deck.

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Update to confirm we’re very excited to have confirmed the 6 Fellows!

We’re preparing their bios and a summary of the challenges they’ll be exploring.
We’ve also begun assessing applications for the venture building programme (and 50k ARB grant).

Stay tuned :slight_smile:

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ArbitrumDAO Co.Lab Fellowship Winners

1 Isla

https://www.linkedin.com/in/islamunro/

Problem space - [Governance, Finance]

Isla will research investment curation, decision-making and reputation in investment DAOs, so that anyone, anywhere can easily build an investment track-record.

Why they won

Isla has been thinking about designing better venture capital for almost 10 years. She’s been with the FTW DAO team since 2021, and they’ve already created a community to launch. She joined SAFE as Grants Lead in 2023 and has worked closely with the team in the Gnosis ecosystem, delivering Grants and seeing many of the pain points firsthand.

Why the Arbitrum Co.Lab?

Given her involvement in capital allocation, she appreciates the approach of prioritizing product and user research before project development.

2 Humberto

https://www.linkedin.com/in/humbertobesso/

Problem space - [IRL, Finance]

Bringing Web3 to the streets! Researching how Web3 can power micro-credit to undercapitalised people through co-ownership.

Why they won

Humberto holds 14 years of experience in IRL community building and social entrepreneurship. His business partner, with over 8 years in traditional finance and street commerce, owns a micro-credit company that can pilot the research. Humberto has been involved in web3 projects since 2017 with organizations like MetaGame, The Commons Stack, and Proof of Humanity. He has also presented peer-reviewed papers, spoken at events and on podcasts.

Why the Arbitrum Co.Lab?

  1. The RnDAO team’s extensive research in web3 governance offers valuable insights to avoid errors and improve ways

  2. Their project’s hands-on approach allows them to provide distinctive perspectives to both Arbitrum and the RnDAO.

3 Rich

https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardjameslopez/

Problem space - [Community]

How to embed transparency in Ops tools for web3 Orgs such as a decentralized CRM, a collaborative treasury tracking tool, and other everyday tools for Orgs to use internally.

Why they won

As the Sales lead at Pocket Network, Rich experienced community demands for transparency in aiding growth. He conducted user research interviews on this topic for over six months and has a good understanding of the obstacles experienced by operators in different Orgs.

Why the Arbitrum Co.Lab?

Rich met Ed Felten (co-founder of Arbitrum and Offchain Labs) at ETH Denver 2 years ago and again at a Columbia Crypto Economics workshop and was impressed by his more serious approach to scaling Ethereum.

RnDAO research expertise offers him the mentorship to get lost in the weeds of user research and accelerate product market fit.

4 Dominik

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominikstumpp/

Problem space - [Governance, Culture & Trust, Reputation]

Decentralized reputation systems, crucial for collaboration, often face limitations. They tend to lack context sensitivity, standardization, and interoperability, struggle with subjective rating classification, and are susceptible to manipulation. Dominik’s research focuses on these issues within reputation systems, exploring potential solutions possibly using knowledge graphs.

Why they won

Dominik has been working full-time in the area of reputation systems and is investigating knowledge graphs for evaluating the reliability of information. This fellowship gives him additional capacity to better build something foundational in the reputation area.

Why the Arbitrum Co.Lab?

Dominik sees Co.Lab as the ideal platform to deeply explore the realm of reputation and is looking forward to the support in the areas of user research, ecosystem mapping, conceptualisation and storytelling.

5 Milena

CV-final.pdf

Problem space - [Rewards allocation, Incentives]

Compensation is a recurring pain in DAOs and Collectives, who lack a trustless and automated method to distribute gains within the collective and its community.

Why they won

Milena brings three years of DAO experience, co-founding Aut Labs (formerly SkillWallet), which underscored collaboration hurdles within DAOs, stressing the importance of early-stage user testing and feedback. Active in hackathons, she enjoys constructing prototypes, blending technical skills with community-driven strategies. At EthIstanbul, she developed a profit-sharing network prototype and aims to conduct comprehensive research on community and collaboration dynamics related to this project.

Why the Arbitrum Co.Lab?

Milena believes that RnDAO excels in research and project development, while Arbitrum’s technology is of significant interest for exploration and that the CoLab’s guidance in these areas and the fellowship experience will be more rewarding than working independently.

6 Artem

https://www.linkedin.com/in/temazhiganov/

Problem space - [Governance]

Validate the need for enhanced sensemaking and deliberation among governance professionals, confirming their challenges with current tools .

Why they won

Artem’s passion for governance, sensemaking, and democracy, is backed by 10 years of experience in creative strategy, product marketing, and customer research. Artem’s in-depth study of governance in DAOs and platform co-ops for an MSc thesis. He also built Harmonica (a conflict resolution bot).

Why the Arbitrum Co.Lab?

Artem’s interest to enhance sensemaking within governance can accelerate decision making without sacrificing decentralisation in Arbitrum DAO and Arbiturm based DAOs.

What’s next?

These 6 Fellows have started working with RnDAO’s team and mentors to address these challenges. They’ll be exploring the Arbiturm community for user insights and finding ways to add value. Their learnings will be published for the benefit of the Arbitrum community and the fellowship used as a launchpad to design protocols that provide robust answers to these problems.

The RnDAO team will also now begin reviewing applications for our venture builder program, where we’ll select 1 venture for a 50k ARB grant plus co-founder-type support by the RnDAO community. We hope to soon expand both the fellowship and venture building programme to more amazing fellows and ventures!

RnDAO believes in collaboration and movement building. If you’d like to get involved, contribute, partner or otherwise engage with any of the fellows, you can find them in our Discord (link in rndao.io) and our community managers are happy to facilitate any collaboration.

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@danielo thanks for announcing these winners to the RnDAO Co.Lab initiative. I have high hopes for this program and look forward to the output from these 6 individuals. Daniel, I am sure making the final decision was likely not easy given the number of submissions you received for this program, but if this pilot program delivers impact, I am hoping the next cohort might be larger.

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Arbitrum Co.Lab Venture Recruitment

Our fellowships are well underway. Fellows have been learning user research techniques, thinking about the speartip (aka beachhead) market and are now speaking with potential customers (a few of you have already been contacted to share a bit more about Arbitrum’s situation :slight_smile: ). Soon the fellows will start to share their learnings publicly with the community as we approach the deliverable of their first milestone (due end of the first week of Feb). We’re exciting to see them gaining a deeper understanding of their problem and some have started prototyping already.

We’ve also started the process of selecting one venture for funding (the step after the research fellowship in our builders pathway).

We’ll be providing 50k ARB and about the same in hands-on support to a lucky winner to build a sustainable, thriving venture on Arbitrum.

If you’re working on a Collab Tech product (solutions for operations, governance, community, and/or contributor tooling), you can still apply here! We’re reviewing cases 1 by 1 and will decide once we find an attractive fit, so don’t wait too long!

What we’re looking for:

  • Collab Tech
  • Building on Arbitrum (already are or will be if selected)
  • Founder-Problem fit (this matters to you!)
  • Viable business case
  • Deep understanding of the problem (you’ve researched your idea and market and can teach us about it)
  • Either you already have a Prototype or MVP, or otherwise the skills to build one and can argue why the specific solution and not another.
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How does the ArbitrumDAO Co.Lab benefit Arbitrum?

We believe the Arbitrum Co.Lab will significantly enhance the Arbitrum ecosystem by creating network effects on venture success and community growth. Through careful selection of the most promising venture projects, in-depth research before building, comprehensive venture building support and a clear focus on the domain of building ventures that improve collaboration, we believe we can significantly boost innovation and ecosystem development.

Funding one venture in isolation does little to prevent migration; in contrast, our business cluster approach creates network effects through integrations, talent density, and cross-venture collaboration. Our program not only promotes sustainable growth (market-ready ventures) but also generates research and technologies to improve DAO governance and operational capability.

The Co.Lab network effects attract and retain developers, sustainably increase the use of Arbitrum infrastructure, and improve the governance and operational capabilities of Arbitrum DAO and Arbitrum-based projects.

The Fellowship

This is a 12 week program to validate a problem thus making sure that whatever is built doesn’t get quickly abandoned. The Fellowship is the first part of the entrepreneurship journey and is followed by the Venture Building program where teams build and launch an Arbitrum-based solution together with us.

We’re currently in week 4, and Fellows are in the middle of customer conversations. This week they will practice pulling insights out of the data.

In these Forum updates, we’ll dive into the subject matter of each of the Co.Lab research Fellows with an emphasis on how their research benefits the Arbitrum ecosystem.

This week we are starting with Isla.

Isla Munro-Hochmayr

The project proposed by Isla addresses the need for a flexible, open-source protocol for investment DAOs. This protocol aims to enhance investment curation, decision-making and reputation building. The goal is to democratize investment opportunities, allowing anyone to build a credible investment track record and thus improve funds allocation for ventures. The project recognizes the necessity for a curation primitive that supports high-quality investment decisions and permissionless membership across all investment DAOs.

Isla’s research into investment DAO curation aligns with Arbitrum’s goals by fostering innovation and community engagement. Her protocol design can enhance transparency in investment decisions and foster decentralized participation, aligning with Arbitrum’s decentralization ethos. By attracting diverse talent and fostering novel investment strategies, the project supports the ecosystem’s growth and sustainability, offering new financial models and broadening user engagement.

By facilitating high-quality investment decisions and broadening participation, this project can significantly enhance the efficiency of capital allocation within the Arbitrum ecosystem.

Selecting a Collab-Tech venture for The Venture Building Program

Beyond the fellowships, we are now looking to fulfill the second stage of our grant, which is to find a promising Collab Tech venture in which to invest 50K ARB and about the same in hands-on support. We wrote about this in the previous update (see above) but please forward this link to anyone you think might have a project that fits the criteria.

Any questions or concerns? Reach out to me (Daniel) to discuss. We’d love to hear your feedback and how we can deliver even more value for Arbitrum!

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The Co.Lab Fellowship Update - Week 5

The Co.Lab Fellowship is the first of two initiatives run by RnDAO for ArbitrumDAO (see second part below). It is a 12 week research program validating major challenges in collaboration tech followed by the Venture Building program where teams build and launch an Arbitrum-based solution together with us.

We’re currently in week 5, and after interviewing potential customers and distilling their insights, Fellows will be reassessing their original problem statement and understanding any implications on their venture strategy.

Introducing Humberto Besso Oberto Huerta

In these weekly ArbitrumDAO Forum updates, we want to dive into the subject matter of each of the Co.Lab research Fellows with an emphasis on how their research benefits the Arbitrum ecosystem.

This week we are focusing on Humberto’s research.

Humberto’s project is centered on micro-credit systems for IRL applications. The objective is to transition a traditional micro-credit business into a Web3 model, which involves co-ownership by workers, clients, and investors, and redistribution of all profits for communal goals. The project aims to integrate web3 technologies like on-chain treasuries, a crypto Mastercard to enable customers to spend their crypto in real time, and a neighborhood banking system into the micro-credit model, along with plans for decentralized KYC and proposal-making on-chain. This project explores whether the application of the DAO model can eliminate pervasive incentives (loan sharks predating on vulnerable populations).

Humberto’s integration of blockchain with real-life financial services, particularly in DAO-based micro-credit systems, directly supports Arbitrum’s goals of financial inclusivity and decentralized governance. Utilizing Arbitrum for micro-credit operations and a decentralized KYC framework, this project could greatly widen access to financial services, aligning with Arbitrum’s vision of financial sovereignty. Here are Humberto’s own blog posts about the program so far on LinkedIn:

Week 1 | Week 2

Selecting a Collab Tech venture for The Venture Building Program

Beyond the fellowships, we are now advancing to the second stage of our grant which is to find a promising Collab Tech venture in which to invest 50K ARB and about the same in hands-on support. We wrote about this in the previous update (see above) but please forward this link to anyone you think might have a project that fits the criteria.

Any questions or concerns? Reach out to me (Daniel) to discuss. We’d love to hear your feedback and how we can deliver even more value for Arbitrum!

What is the ArbitrumDAO Co.Lab and how does it benefit Arbitrum?

The Arbitrum Co.Lab is a venture studio designed to exemplify the aim of the Arbitrum chain to be the premier platform for building crypto ventures. Our specific focus on collaboration tech ventures, apps that improve DAO governance and operational capability, will enhance the network effects of the grant we have proudly been awarded by ArbitrumDAO. By developing advanced research, market-ready ventures and best-in-class DAO tooling, the Co.Lab is designed to attract developers, promote the sustainable growth of the Arbitrum app ecosystem and significantly increase the use of Arbitrum infrastructure.

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We saw this comment on another thread, and were wondering if someone from RnDAO can verify if it’s accurate, and also provide a little context around it if so.

Thank you!

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TLDR:
The fellowship takes no equity. The venture program does require a SAFE/T commitment from the ventures, which is key for the cross-ownership between ventures, which incentivizes collaborative behavior and is the key to creating network effects, which means the grantees stay in Arbitrum instead of migrating.

Explanation:
Without said cross-ownership, the narrow topic focus (high overlap) between ventures would create competitive dynamics between them, which is why historically, accelerators have limitations on the amount of collaboration they get from ventures, i.e., a DeFI project can only collaborate so much with an NFT one and a DAO tooling one. If you get a cohort of collab tech (say all DAO tools) they might see each other as competitors and suddenly you can’t run group workshops and they no longer want to support one another.
We have solved this problem through cross-ownership, as well as a set of P2P workshop formats (inspired by the work one of our members did deploying $25m of innovation grants for the UK government), and collaborative databases we’ve built for this purpose. Thanks to this we have achieved very deep collaboration between ventures:

  • sharing user research insights
  • cross-marketing
  • cross-selling their product
  • integrations and bias toward modular and composable architecture
  • referring talent to one another
  • etc

Essentially, we have turned entrepreneurship from single-player to multiplayer to reduce the failure and migration rates of grantees, and instead have more sustainable ventures.

Happy to share more over a call if any confusion, doubts or concerns about this remain (I understand how if seen out of context this could create distrust/concerns, so please let me know if any remain!).
We also made a forum post about why we believe this approach should be expanded to other ecosystem development programs in Arbitrum. (the forum post is pending approval but I’ll share the link to it here and DM it to you when approved)

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Yes, please share here when you can. It’s difficult to understand at the moment. Does Arbitrum governance get equity in the things its funding? It looks like Arbitrum is both funding the start up costs of the venture and then giving equity to other, unrelated ventures through this cross ownership model? And does RnDAO or its legal entity itself get equity in these ventures?

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Thinking about this a bit more, we’re skeptical that a grant should include any handover of equity.

It does not seem like a fair deal for Arbitrum governance to fund someone else getting equity off of a grantee. No other grantees have been required to disgorge equity or tokens. It seems unfair to Arbitrum and unfair to the grantee.

Flagging this for @DisruptionJoe and requesting RnDAO and Plurality work out an alternative arrangement for the remainder of this grant, and make sure that it’s actually a grant and does not have equity or token warrants as a requirement for funding originating from Arbitrum governance.

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The best way to understand it is probably by understanding the objective we’ve been trying to accomplish first and then seeing how the current design aims to fulfill that (we’re very open to feedback btw). I don’t know why the forum post is not approved yet but here’s the draft

More details after reading the forum post

A simplified explanation of the incentive aligment model:
RnDAO gets some equity in the ventures and the ventures get some equity in RnDAO. By proxy, the ventures get some equity in each other (so indeed the current cohort could get equity in RnDAO’s previous ventures and vise versa). What this enmeshment does is create alignment between everyone in the cluster, and that encourages collaboration and integrations, which is the goal.
As the number of ventures grows, the cluster attains critical mass and starts to attract others organically (it makes more sense to join Arbitrum and integrate with existing tools than try to build everything from scratch somewhere else. Also, as the number of ventures also attracts a lot of talent interested in this vertical, this leads to more ventures being started already in Arbitrum by said talent. And aligned investors will flock too as it becomes the go-to place).

Additional nouances
Equity is likely to become of little value if the ventures succeed and tokenize as protocols (which is an ideal scenario, albeit with a degree of uncertainty). Also, the agreements do not enforce an equity transfer but just a SAFE type of instrument (both for RnDAO participation in the ventures and vice versa, as that protects from certain attack vectors and optimizes attention).
Currently, the level of funding allocated was for a tiny pilot (about a 1/3 of what we requested for a full pilot); this has led us to focus on validating the ability to attract talent (succeeded with 100+ applications for 6 fellowship slots), and then the design of the fellowship program (which is half the pipeline and is to be followed by the venture building program. Note that the fellowship agreement doesn’t include any equity nor SAFE).
We’re hoping to apply for the next stage of pilot funding to validate the model fully and develop the key systems and operational capabilities (currently, we’re running very very lean).
After completing the second pilot cycle (full pilot), we have indeed considered a scenario where if Arbitrum could provide continuous funding for the program, then we could do some form of allocation for Arbitrum (tokens/shares, the legal/tokenomics side here would need some time and budget to be figured out, hence why we’re first validating the operating model). However, note that the value for the treasury is likely to be negligible in the short term and the medium-to-long-term benefit of Arbitrum succeeding to establish itself as a relevant key player in the L2 wars might well outweigh any benefit of participation in the ventures.
The other thing to consider is that giving Arbitrum a %, this will further divide the pie and might negatively affect the quality of talent we can attract, especially when compared with more generous programs run by other ecosystems (e.g., Optimism).

The ideal scenario, as we see it, is that after some initial period of grant funding, the cluster will be mature enough to become self-sustaining, and then Arbitrum will continue getting the benefits without the need to keep funding it. Right now, we’re in a fledging/embryonic stage, and the grant funding has been key to jump-start the network effects.
A final consideration is that Arbitrum is not funding the total cost but only a fraction. The RnDAO team is working at well below market rate and essentially subsidizing the program in exchange for participation in the ventures. This creates further incentive alignment between all stakeholders as then Arbitrum, the venture founders and teams, and the RnDAO team are all aligned on making sure the ventures succeed (instead of the incentives being to just deploy funding quickly and collect fees).

Happy to discuss this over a call as we have been researching this for about 3 years now, so there’s quite a bit of nuance to unpack that can easily get lost here.

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This consideration was made to push the experimentation in the ways funds are allocated. I think we all see the vast potential for DAO to DAO relationships.

That said, we are open to reconsidering things, but there should likely be a process for overturning agreements. This isn’t saying that the DAO doesn’t feel the way you do, but we simply don’t know. Do you have any steps in mind that you would like to see play out?

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In this case, it’s not a large sum, so it’s a good learning exercise on how to do this. We don’t want to micromanage what the process would look like for Plurality or how you evaluate validity when a possible issue has been raised.

Our main objections here are:

  1. A grant should be a grant, and an investment advertised as a grant just doesn’t seem correct.
  2. Leaving aside the above, the 10% SAFE/T goes to RnDAO’s legal entity, which is controlled by a single person legally. Arbitrum governance grant funds shouldn’t require a grantee to hand over 10% of equity/token rights for the benefit of someone else.

Number one is largely one of preference and reasonable minds can disagree.

Number two, in our opinion, requires remediation. That could involve separating the 10% SAFE/T from eligibility for the grant, or finding some way for the SAFE/T to accrue to an entity that’s not for profit and centrally controlled. There may be other creative ways to unbundle the 10% SAFE/T from the grant funds or for the SAFE/T to accrue for the benefit of governance or another neutral actor.

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Thanks for the clarification. Point #2 makes a lot of sense. I do agree that a genuine DAO to DAO relationship would be more intriguing than to an entity. We will discuss and come back with some ideas.

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GFXlabs, Lino from RnDAO here. I have a lead role in the Co.Lab program and am the colleague Daniel mentioned who’s been involved with deploying millions in government grants in the UK as well as structuring for-profit funds.

First of all, I wanted to say that I really appreciate the scrutiny you’re applying here and it brings me positive sentiment to how Arbitrum is governed. Your concerns are completely legitimate.

I’ll add a bit of additional context briefly as I’m in the middle of workshops and would be delighted to expand on this tomorrow or jump on a call together with you and Daniel as well.

  • You’re correct that we shouldn’t advertise something as grants and then untransparently ask for equity later on. If this were the case, I’d consider it unethical and wouldn’t personally stand for it myself. While I can see how it looks from a more public POV, we’ve been very proactive in explaining the model to all direct stakeholders and have been fully transparent, as I’d welcome Plurality Labs to comment on from their pov.
  • It’s true that the short-term model is not ideal, and it has never been our intention to keep it as is.
  • However, from experience in structuring funds, when you want to put the correct full legal structure in place, including managing direct ROI for Arbitrum, which we’d welcome, it becomes hard to do so when you’re dealing with less than $10M.
  • This is meant to be a pilot to produce, before all, useful learnings, and we felt, as you’ve also indicated, that sums are still small enough that it’s more in the spirit of lean to optimize for speed and learning and use it as a starting point for enabling something much bigger.
  • In these efforts, we’ve been doing our best to take the interest of Arbitrum at heart and work towards positive outcomes, where some of the thinking is already documented in the post Daniel is referring to, among other things.
  • RnDAO already has a venture-building program that has been validated by market precedents where other ventures have issued 10% of their equity in exchange for the support offered. What’s added here is indeed a grant coming from Arbitrum, which only has an additional component related to aligning with the use of the Arbitrum chain on top of the very same deal otherwise. You could legally look at this as 2 separate transactions. I, of course, recognize that when they’re part of the same relationship, this should be scrutinized.

Our highest priority here is to validate the model and keeping it as close to what it would be in a fully-fledged scenario, would produce the best learning, thus maintaining the equity aspect of the deal and cross-ownership in the RnDAO Swarm feels critical to us. However, the motivation is not primarily related to producing ROI for RnDAO itself just yet.

Thus, we’d welcome a discussion on what’s the best way to proceed here to alleviate any concerns. Please share your thoughts.

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This chicken n egg problem is why we thought it reasonable for the experiment in the first place.

The size of it was definitely a consideration.

I believe this is how we considered it as well. It may have also been that we see the grant to RN DAO to be for RN DAO to use as it wills, the judge being our community as they evaluate the grants. Our community-led grant review process would give us feedback if they indeed were against this arrangement.

We tried to keep an open mind and bring in as broad a swath of funding mechanisms as possible. There is an assumption here which says that the DAO does not approve of this. If our grants governance framework is successful, there will be a clear path for engaging in this dispute and resolving onchain. We aren’t there yet, but this is important context for understanding why we need the framework to continue learning and building.

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The Co.Lab Fellowship Update - Week 7

The Fellowship is the first of two Co.Lab initiatives run by RnDAO for ArbitrumDAO (see second part below). It is a 12-week research program validating major challenges in collaboration tech followed by the Venture Building program where teams build and launch an Arbitrum-based solution together with us.

At week 7, we are mid-way through our Co.Lab Fellowship program so we wanted to review our progress and update you on where we are heading as we head towards our finishing straight.

The Co.Lab Fellowship Program so far…

Month 1: Learning

The first month focused on deep conversations with potential users to understand their goals and the concrete problems they face. The fellows used the insights they synthesized to revise their problem statements into something they are confident in and helps to focus their product strategy. Their first public posts tell the story of that journey.

Along the way, the Fellows produced blog posts that help voice the Co.Lab experience from their perspective:

Humberto, Feb 20 | Dominik, Feb 15 | Richard, Feb 10

Month 2: Strategy

In our second month, the fellows are mapping out the bigger space they are working in, to put their users’ problems in the context of other players in the system, big concepts, and critical constraints. They want to understand who is working there now, what has failed in the past and why, and what a real solution to this problem will look like.

What’s next?

Month 3: Action

As a swarm, we revise our plans for the final report so that it’s a better vessel to hold all of the knowledge the Fellows have gathered. The goal is to gather all the insights that a venture would need in order to begin testing and creating a great solution.

Selecting a Collab Tech venture for The Venture Building Program

Beyond the fellowships, we are now advancing to the second stage of our grant which is to find a promising Collab Tech venture in which to invest 50K ARB and about the same in hands-on support. We wrote about this in the previous update (see above) but please forward this link to anyone you think might have a project that fits the criteria.

Any questions or concerns? Reach out to me (Daniel) to discuss. We’d love to hear your feedback and how we can deliver even more value for Arbitrum!

What is the ArbitrumDAO Co.Lab and how does it benefit Arbitrum?

The Arbitrum Co.Lab is a venture studio designed to exemplify the aim of the Arbitrum chain to be the premier platform for building crypto ventures. Our specific focus on collaboration tech ventures, apps that improve DAO governance and operational capability, will enhance the network effects of the grant we have proudly been awarded by ArbitrumDAO. By developing advanced research, market-ready ventures and best-in-class DAO tooling, the Co.Lab is designed to attract developers, promote the sustainable growth of the Arbitrum app ecosystem and significantly increase the use of Arbitrum infrastructure.

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The ArbitrumDAO Co.Lab Update - Week 8

The Co.Lab Fellowship is the first of two initiatives run by RnDAO for ArbitrumDAO (see second part below). It is a 12 week research program validating major challenges in collaboration tech followed by the Venture Building program where teams build and launch an Arbitrum-based solution together with us.

As we approach the end of Week 8, the Fellows have completed mapping out their problem space to put their users’ problems in the context of other players in the system, big concepts, and critical constraints to understand who is working there now, what has failed in the past and why, and what a real solution to this problem will look like. Next month, we will get our heads down in preparation for the final reports, gathering all the insights that a venture would need in order to begin testing and creating a great solution based on the research from each Fellowship.

Beyond the Fellowships, we are now advancing to the second stage of our grant, the Co.Lab Venture program funding. This initiative is to find a promising Collab Tech venture in which to invest 50K ARB and about the same in hands-on support. All told we have received around 70 applications for this venture funding stage, and we are going through the process of evaluation and shortlisting now. However, it is still not too late to apply so please forward this link to anyone you think might have a project that fits the criteria (detailed in the linked page).

Milestones update

The Arbitrum Co.Lab project was initially proposed with two milestones: the first one for the Fellowship funds and the second one for the Venture program funds. We have proposed and agreed on a slight redesign of these milestones to accommodate the delays incurred in relation to contracting and to retain alignment, sharing the new configuration here for transparency:

Milestone 1 - 86k ARB (already paid at kickoff): funding 6 Fellowships and program setup

Milestone 2 - 72k ARB (now due to fund venture): funding for one venture to enter the Venture Program and associated support.

Milestone 3 - 14k ARB: Completion: fellowships completed and funding for venture deployed

The program is scheduled to be completed as planned (second week of April).

A recap: What is the ArbitrumDAO Co.Lab and how does it benefit Arbitrum?

The Arbitrum Co.Lab is a venture studio designed to exemplify the aim of the Arbitrum chain to be the premier platform for building crypto ventures. Our specific focus on collaboration tech ventures, apps that improve DAO governance and operational capability, will enhance the network effects of the grant we have proudly been awarded by ArbitrumDAO. By developing advanced research, market-ready ventures and best-in-class DAO tooling, the Co.Lab is designed to attract developers, promote the sustainable growth of the Arbitrum app ecosystem and significantly increase the use of Arbitrum infrastructure.

Any questions, concerns, or feedback?

Reach out to me (Daniel) to discuss. We’d love to hear your feedback and how we can deliver even more value for Arbitrum!

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The ArbitrumDAO Co.Lab Update - Week 9

Last week the Co.Lab visited ETHDenver where the program mentors met up with some of the Fellows in person for the first time. They both spoke at the Arbitrum GovHack event and we wanted to share the recordings of their short presentations with everyone here in the ArbitrumDAO Forum.

In the video linked below, Daniel Ospina shares his journey from being a chef to leading innovation within the startup ecosystem. He discusses the limitations of conventional startup support systems and introduces the concept of venture builders as a more sustainable approach. The focus is on creating a program that aids entrepreneurs through research, market validation, and leveraging collaboration technology in partnership with ArbitrumDAO, aiming to streamline the journey from idea to mass adoption.

And below, Rich Cuellar, an ArbitrumDAO Co.Lab Fellow, discusses his journey with his project - Ourmada. He emphasizes the shift from market to user research, highlighting the importance of foundational questions and collaboration. Rich shares insights on prioritizing ease and collaboration over extensive features, reflecting on how the fellowship has shaped his approach to tech development.

A recap: What is the ArbitrumDAO Co.Lab and how does it benefit Arbitrum?

The Arbitrum Co.Lab is a venture studio designed to exemplify the aim of the Arbitrum chain to be the premier platform for building crypto ventures. Our specific focus on collaboration tech ventures, apps that improve DAO governance and operational capability, will enhance the network effects of the grant we have proudly been awarded by ArbitrumDAO. By developing advanced research, market-ready ventures and best-in-class DAO tooling, the Co.Lab is designed to attract developers, promote the sustainable growth of the Arbitrum app ecosystem and significantly increase the use of Arbitrum infrastructure.

The Co.Lab Fellowship is the first of two initiatives run by RnDAO for ArbitrumDAO (see second part below). It is a 12 week research program validating major challenges in collaboration tech followed by the Venture Building program where teams build and launch an Arbitrum-based solution together with us.

Beyond the Fellowships, we are now advancing to the second stage of our grant, the Co.Lab Venture program funding. This initiative is to find a promising Collab Tech venture in which to invest 50K ARB and about the same in hands-on support. All told we have received around 70 applications for this venture funding stage, and we are going through the process of evaluation and shortlisting now. However, it is still not too late to apply so please forward this link to anyone you think might have a project that fits the criteria (detailed in the linked page).

Any questions or concerns? Reach out to me (Daniel) to discuss. We’d love to hear your feedback and how we can deliver even more value for Arbitrum!

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