This week we would like to invite you to 2 fantastic events:
The first to mark the end of the first Co.Lab Fellowship
and the second as part of the final stages of the Co.Lab Venture selection process.
Co.Lab Fellowship Demo Day - Thursday, April 4 at 17:00 UTC
The ArbitrumDAO Co.Lab Research Fellowship is approaching its end after 3 insightful months. This Fellowship is the first part of the ArbitrumDAO Co.Lab, a new kind of entrepreneurship program in partnership with RnDAO & ArbitrumDAO. In December, 6 Fellows were selected from 100+ applications, and they have spent the past quarter undergoing deep research on fundamental challenges in the collaboration space.
In our live Demo Day, our 6 Fellows will present the results of their research and host an open Q&A with guests! Please join us to meet the fellows, network with the RnDAO community and become part of the research-first venture building movement.
We will be covering topics like: Compensation, Reputation, DAOifying IRL companies, Social web3 CRMs, Sensemaking and problem-solving in the cryptoverse with help of LLMs, & more!
Co.Lab Venture Pitch Day - Thursday, Mar 28 at 17:00 UTC
The second phase of the ArbitrumDAO Co.Lab is finally coming to an end! We’ve been looking for a collaboration technology venture to deploy 50K ARB (courtesy of ArbitrumDAO) and join the RnDAO venture studio where they will receive hands-on support and resources. After reviewing an overwhelming response of more than 50 applications from promising collab tech ventures, we’ve selected 12 to pitch their ideas live before the judges make their final decision.
We are delighted to invite you to our upcoming Co.Lab Venture Pitch Day event scheduled for Thursday, March 28th, at 5pm UTC. The event agenda will consist of a 3-minute pitch followed by a 3-minute Q&A session for each venture.
The selection process is still ongoing and it’s important to note that pitching is not a requirement for consideration for funding nor is it any indication of preference on behalf of the judges.
Join us, for the Co.Lab Venture Pitch Day, where the selected ventures will showcase their groundbreaking ideas and vie for a spot in the RnDAO venture building program.
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!
The Co.Lab Fellowship was the first of two initiatives run by RnDAO for ArbitrumDAO. It was a 12 week research program validating major challenges in collaboration tech.
The program officially ended on Thursday 4th April and celebrated at the Fellowship Demo Day at which our Fellows presented summaries of their final papers. We covered topics like: Compensation, Reputation, DAOifying IRL companies, Social web3 CRMs and Sensemaking with help of LLMs.
17:43 Dominik | From chaos to clarity: proposal evaluations in web3 grant programs
27:17 Artem | Enhanced sense-making and deliberation for governance professionals
37:04 Humberto | DeFi vs the Loan Sharks, how web3 can power micro-credit
45:50 Rich | Unlocking the power of off-chain data for better collaboration
Co.Lab Venture Selection
The second phase of the ArbitrumDAO Co.Lab, the Co.Lab Venture selection, is also coming to an end. This initiative is to find a promising Collab Tech venture in which to invest 50K ARB and about the same value in hands-on support.
We heard from some of the ventures who have applied and you can watch the full session here: https://youtu.be/jQpWUgL1c5E
Or watch specific presentations from the ventures here:
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 or concerns? Reach out to Daniel to discuss. We’d love to hear your feedback and how we can deliver even more value for Arbitrum!
Arbitrum DAO Co.Lab Cycle 1 (Pilot) - Impact Report
TL;DR
In Q1 2024, ArbitrumDAO and RnDAO worked together to launch a new kind of entrepreneurship program. The goal is to further Arbiturm’s positioning and network effects in the collaboration tech space (governance, operations, community, social, and contributor tooling) by supporting ventures with a higher success rate due to proper customer research and access to a strong support ecosystem of customers, partners, and collaborators.
We offered a 3-month paid fellowship ($2,000/month stipend) to 6 aspiring entrepreneurs for deep research into fundamental challenges in the collaboration space.
And we gave 50k ARB tokens and hands-on support to a selected venture to join the RnDAO+Arbitrum CollabTech product ecosystem.
The Fellowship ended on April 4th with our Co.Lab Fellowship Demo Day when our Fellows presented the results of their research with an open Q&A.
Co.Lab Fellowship Results:
100+ applications
6 fellows selected
5 published research papers mapping a problem space (one fellow dropped due to health issues)
11 published blog articles with deep research advancing their ventures
Recorded final presentations from the Demo Day
100k+ impressions & 300+ organic reposts on X
4 (potentially 5) new ventures into the Arbitrum CollabTech business cluster. See the Swarm section below for details.
4 ready to advance as ventures in Arbitrum if funding was available (1 lost to Cardano due to lack of funding in Arbitrum. Other 4 continue pending funding. 1 more in pause due to health issues).
Objectives & Goals of the Co.Lab Fellowship:
The Co.Lab program was designed with an innovative, value-generating program structure offering:
A complete pathway for venture building
An expert co-creation community rather than just advice from mentors
Learning by doing, while collaborating with peers working in the same specialized domain
And a more humane and fun approach to entrepreneurship
The 3-month paid Fellowship supported entrepreneurs conducting deep research around key challenges in the collaboration tech space, with the goals of:
Strengthening the support network between peer entrepreneurs, experts, and community
Producing deep research in the collaboration space on key challenges
Fostering the emergence of sustainable ventures based on proper research and data
Approach:
RnDAO led the recruitment strategy and execution for this program, launching communications and outreach end of November 2023:
Targeted outreach campaign on LinkedIn, X & Discord to 50+ relevant communities
These efforts aimed to ensure that the program attracted the right talent and high-quality applications for collaboration tech and the Arbitrum ecosystem.
121 applications were received by late December, and 6 finalists were selected by the RnDAO team.
The criteria were grouped into 3 assessment areas:
Potential benefit to Arbitrum, resulting in a protocol/dApp or otherwise addressing a key challenge of the ecosystem
Collab Tech focus
Track record of applicant: ability to mobilize others, builder and entrepreneurial skills, problem-founder alignment
The assessment process included a two-staged written application and interviews, followed by deliberation from the selection committee.
Achievements and Outcomes
Through this pilot, we were able to validate our ability to:
attract attention: 100k+ impressions, with our venture recruitment post getting over 300 organic retweets
and talent: 100+ applications for 6 fellowship slots and 70+ applications for 1 venture program slot
and convert said talent into a nascent business cluster of CollabTech ventures (see Swarm section below)
Final Fellowship Papers & Demo Day Presentations
The Fellowship officially ended on Thursday 4th April and was celebrated at the Fellowship Demo Day at which our Fellows presented summaries of their final papers.
On top of the brand positioning of Arbitrum as a welcoming hub for CollabTech, we now have a pipeline of builders with 70+ incoming applications for the Co.Lab venture program.
At the finalization of the Fellowship program, we hosted a Pitch Day to give venture applicants the chance to present their ventures.
I’m passionate about governance, sensemaking and democracy. I spent 10 years in creative strategy, product marketing and customer research, studied governance in DAOs and platform co-ops for my MSc thesis and was the gov lead at Protein Community (Seed Club alum). In addition to building Harmonica, I’m contributing to decision research unit at RnDAO.
What was most valuable?
The direct feedback from the mentors, and the forcing function of a clear deliverable and deadline.
I have not only been working in Web3 for many years, but also experience the described challenge on a daily basis, as I have worked with a variety of decentralized and remote teams. In fact, the topic of reputation first brought me into the Web3 space, as I was already looking for ways to create reliable and transparent reputation systems many years ago. Since this year, I have been working full-time in this area with TrustLevel and have already received grants from SingularityNET, for example, to investigate knowledge graphs for evaluating the reliability of information and to create a POC. This means that I am not only familiar with the topic of reputation and knowledge graphs, but this fellowship would give me additional capacity to better build this ‘thing’ in breadth and depth from the ground up.”
What was most valuable?
Mapping the space gave him a perspective he hadn’t had before.
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.
What was most valuable?
Writing in long form, rather than pitch decks. This provided discipline to articulate the beliefs behind the ideas.
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.
What was most valuable?
Saw that founding could be collaborative, and it’s easier to have good discussions about direction when you have solid insights to build on.
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.
What was most valuable?
He figured out how to use this information to make a decision - making business roadmaps based on what he learns, rather than just shipping features. Figuring out what to ask based on what decisions need to be made.
Richard shares his Co.Lab experience at GovHack in Denver:
We would like to note that our 6th Fellow, Isla, faced a health problem just at the crux point in the research phase. Rather than fall behind, she decided to step back and participate in the next cycle. For reference we have included her profile below.
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 first hand.
Swarm effects
Although we only had ARB tokens for one venture, the vision and peer support system of the CollabTech business cluster (aka the Swarm) also attracted others who applied to join even without capital support (but with support from us to pursue other grant opportunities as well as strategy, networks, talent referrals, integrations, and more.). The new ventures added to the Swarm (Arbitrum CollabTech business cluster) this cycle are:
CollabBerry (product. RnDAO Fellow) - On-chain rewards and compensation tool (website under construction)
Harmonica (product. RnDAO Fellow) - AI powered sense-making tool for decentralsied governance https://getharmoni.ca/
And we’re in discussion with 3 others!
These projects represent a set of builders that see significant value in the Swarm and are led by talented teams. However, their survival is dependent on finding additional sources of capital and closing early revenue, prompting us to expand and scale our program. We see a significant opportunity to support these teams and others like them moving forward.
Key Takeaways and Learnings
We encourage diversity through problem mapping. Prioritizing problem mapping before solution development is crucial to avoid groupthink and ensure that key challenges are adequately addressed. Initiatives should encourage builders to explore diverse problem spaces to uncover overlooked opportunities and avoid redundancy.
It’s hard to learn in public, and cultivating a culture of disciplined experimentation is essential for driving innovation. Emphasizing concept testing and providing support for individuals to experiment and learn in public can foster a more dynamic and effective ecosystem, particularly within the Web3 community.
Effective outreach and engagement efforts can attract attention and talent to collaborative technology initiatives. We were able to hit 100k+ impressions, with our venture recruitment post getting over 300 organic retweets. We also received 100+ applications for 6 fellowship slots and 70+ applications for 1 venture program slot.
Fierce competition for limited program spots can pose challenges in talent retention. One of our Fellows is being funded by both Cardano and SingularityNET to continue their project (after expressing a desire to continue working with us, but the Co.Lab pilot lacks the funds to include him). Strategies for better managing talent, including addressing funding limitations and providing ongoing support, are necessary to retain promising individuals within the ecosystem.
Continuous evaluation and refinement of support systems are vital for program improvement. Insights gained from the pilot program highlight the importance of refining the support structure to better meet the needs of aspiring entrepreneurs in the collaborative technology space.
Emphasizing market insights and IP development through fundamental research can lead to more targeted and meaningful opportunities for ventures and direct builders who otherwise build solutions but find no customers. Programs should include modules focused on identifying promising and underserved opportunities to better equip entrepreneurs for success.
Flexibility in program design is necessary to accommodate learnings and changes in strategy. Rebranding initiatives, such as transitioning from a Fellowship to an Entrepreneurs in Residence program, reflects a commitment to adapting program offerings to better align with identified needs and opportunities.
We were able to build a promising pipeline and also had the opportunity to refine our thesis on the ideal support system and progression for a Collab Tech project. A notable insight is that a significant number of applicants were rejected not because of a lack of talent but because certain problems are oversubscribed and they lacked an edge (meanwhile many critical but less popular challenges remain unexplored).
With 3 additional projects joining RnDAO despite our inability to provide ARB tokens to them, we’re getting some initial validation of the Swarm concept and tangible examples of the network effects. We’re anticipating more opportunities to support ventures beyond capital allocation moving forward.
Our programmes attracted a broader community that had value to offer even if they were not at the right stage for our programs. Despite our efforts to continue engaging with them, the Pilot program was underresourced to support ongoing community activities. Moving forward we’ll ensure we’re prepared to sustain and nurture this broader community, increasing network effects for Arbitrum and extending the support and talent network for the ventures incubated in our programs.
Conclusion
In this first edition of the Co.Lab Fellowship, we embarked on a journey to catalyze innovation and collaboration within the Web3 ecosystem. Our objective was clear: to nurture aspiring Collab Tech entrepreneurs, empower them with resources and support, and propel them towards building impactful ventures in the collaborative technology space.
Looking ahead, we are committed to building on this foundation in future iterations. We will expand our programs, integrate market insights and IP development, and refine our support structures to better serve aspiring entrepreneurs and grow the Arbiturm community and protocol usage through a CollabTech business cluster.
In conclusion, the Co.Lab Fellowship has been a journey of exploration, learning, and growth. We are grateful for the support of the ArbitrumDAO, mentors, and participants who have contributed to its success. Together, we are laying the groundwork for a vibrant ecosystem where collaboration thrives, and impactful ventures flourish.
This is an exciting outcome! Collabtech seems to be closer to a public good sustainability model at this time, but its fun being early not only difficult.
We’re also happy to announce we have brought in Common.io into the CollabTech Swarm.
We’ve been looking deeply at social and comms platforms (Discord is pivoting more and more towards gaming and away from organisations and communities, while Microsoft teams has huge traction but its also hated and Slack also has top-down permission management limitations). We lack a credible platform for comms for DAOs and Swarm-like organisations (networks of teams that are independent or semi-dependent and can aggregate and collaborate).
We have looked at all the options in the market for months and are excited to welcome Common.io to Arbitrum.
Common was founded by Mattan (previously founder of DAO Stack), and has a team of brilliant engineers who share our thesis on a future of work that’s more bottom-up/fractal (see Haier for how Web2 corps are moving in a similar direction than DAOs).
Historically, the team has been less good at fast user-centric research and iteration, but that’s exactly where RnDAO can support them the most.
This is a big moonshot bet. High risk and potentially very high reward, with a chance to bring the CollabTech business cluster together and facilitate a core UI for integrating multiple tools for onchain organisations into something that’s actually usable.
We’ll share more about out thesis and a public announcement on the days to come.
This venture selected marks then the official closing of all our deliverables and promises under the program contracted.
However, we’re already working on the next thing:
CollabTech Gitcoin Round with an experiment on a novel Threshold mechanism to improve outcomes
Arbitrum CollabTech Hackathon scheduled for October, and with additional partners including Q Blockchain, P2P Foundation, Developer DAO, etc etc.
We’re also exploring the idea of proposing market research into a series of key verticals to inform Arbitrum’s thesis development around this cluster (and analyse in-depth key opportunities identified by us and also by @Bernard and co in the M&A report ):
We have been through a rollercoaster since the last update.
Common.io imploded before we could transfer the funds (the cofounders who had worked together for 10 years decided to separate). We successfully negotiated a cancellation of the contract.
We then resumed our search for an ideal candidate and were very happily surprised with the progress of CommonGround, a similar tool that counts with a strong team and revisited their focus on modularity and composability in a way that made us confident to select them.
We have completed a long trial period with them where we worked weekly with the team to help them refine their strategy and address some tough questions. And have successfully signed them in.
Below our rationale for selecting them:
CommonGround
Mission
Common Ground aspires to bridge the social and fundraising layer for Web3 organizations. Unlike open social platforms such as Farcaster, it prioritizes structured collaboration rather than open chatter (i.e. more akin to Discord than Twitter). Unlike Slack, Mighty Networks or Discord, it focuses on modularity and composability, natively integrating Web3 primitives—wallets, tokens, governance—offering a seamless, decentralized social-fundraising experience. As a user-owned platform, it provides sustainable, community-first growth that stands in contrast to ad-driven social networks.
Market
Creator Economy’s Next Phase
The creator economy is flush with capital and poised for transformation through decentralized innovations. While Web3 is rich in ideas and experimental tools, it’s yet to achieve large-scale adoption. Common Ground positions itself as the “Slack + Discord” for Web3, boasting modular token features and community governance.
When Brand & Community Bond
Communities centered on information products (such as SheFi) are prime customers. In an era of AI-driven content, brand and community loyalty become key differentiators. With tokenization, members can invest in the community’s growth, turning users into owners and champions. Mighty Networks raises $50M to build a creator economy for the masses and CommonGround could improve here by integrating tokenisation and fundraising.
Next Billion Users
Web3 communities need flexible revenue streams, from DeFi and trading fees to membership tokens. Common Ground integrates these seamlessly, lowering barriers for both creators and their audiences. As Layer 2 solutions and user-friendly wallets proliferate, crypto becomes accessible to mainstream audiences. Common Ground offers an intuitive, community-focused entry point to capture this vast new user base.
Founders
Florian is a crypto lawyer and software developer who has been active in the blockchain space since 2014. Drawing on both legal and technical know-how, he helped shape Europe’s crypto regulations through co-founding the German Blockchain Association and the European Crypto Initiative. His advocacy efforts were crucial in removing operational barriers for exchanges under MiCA and securing exceptions for fully decentralized use cases. Beyond policy, Florian’s hands-on experience spans DAOs, NFTs, and DeFi, including launching the first fully regulated ERC20 security token. His blend of regulatory acumen and practical blockchain development underpins Common Ground’s legally robust, user-owned platform.
Jan combines over a decade of full-stack development with a keen focus on emerging web3 technologies. Skilled in TypeScript, Python, Solidity, and React, he has led teams in building high-performance applications at ThyssenKrupp. Jan also has deep expertise in knowledge management and graph databases—key ingredients for creating next-generation social platforms where data is contextualized and shared securely. His previous web3 prototypes included multi-chain gas cashback tokens, NFT-driven access gating, and advanced smart contract solutions.
Dominic brings a unique perspective to Common Ground’s user experience, having transitioned from a background in architecture to digital product design. This unconventional path sharpened his ability to blend aesthetics, functionality, and user-centered thinking—a perfect skill for crafting social platforms. Over the past two years with Common Ground, Dominic has driven key interface and branding choices, ensuring the app is both visually appealing and highly intuitive. He collaborates closely with engineers to refine user flows, incorporating feedback from diverse communities.
We think the founding team brings together legal, technical, and design expertise. Florian’s regulatory insights; Jan’s full-stack skills and knowledge graph prowess deliver a robust infrastructure; Dominic’s architectural approach creates a user-friendly experience.
Opportunities for Arbitrum
SocialFi Integration
Common Ground can mirror Farcaster’s success by bringing SocialFi elements to Arbitrum, increasing network transactions and fees.
Creator Economy on L2
The platform’s token-gated video calls, DeFi integrations, and revenue-sharing models are all affordable on Arbitrum. This shift invites creators and communities to seamlessly launch DAOs, tokens, and fundraising efforts.
Long-Term Partnerships
Through deeper collaboration, Common Ground can expand its NFT marketplaces and enterprise solutions, solidifying Arbitrum as the leading Layer 2 for mainstream on-chain adoption. The synergy boosts Arbitrum’s brand and fosters enduring community-driven innovation.
