A completely new Arbitrum (ARB) holder and blockchain user here. Affiliated with reddit community 2-3M subscribers/5K active users /r/ethtrader, but a former Maker Delegate, etc. Prime reason I am here was to try to find a 20-50K grant to support the community $DONUT infrastructure move from Gnosis Chain to Arbitrum.
So I have been wading through all kinds of grant stuff just to figure out where to post a simple community grant for above community. In the Telegram group I saw the above posted and decided to read this post which inspired me to make an account and sign in.
What I have to say here is based on now years of experience with MakerDAO and many other DAOs as well as my own 40+ years as a former consultant team lead, and operations specialist passing through hundreds of companies. I can’t say I have done everything, but sometimes it feels that way.
Rather than comment on the above in specific ways I am going to make a couple general statements regarding business 'process
First…
Almost all business processes have to be cyclic. Which means whatever is decided now on ANY of the subjects in the post, there needs to be a process related to reviewing the associated KPI metrics, AND a method to incorporate feed back mechanisms allowing long term strategy, frameworks, pillars, even the KPIs themselves to be looked at and changed according to feedback from those subjected to them (managers, directors, delegates, developers, users, etc.)
Key point is, to be adaptable a system must constantly put forward a ‘vision’ for itself, define metrics for success (KPIs), operate the system, collect data, review, then adjust. This cyclic process needs to have reasonably practical and achievable cycle times. Far too often I see companies, DAOs get mired down and self destruct simply because they could not adapt quickly enough to changing environments or adapting too slowly or not at all. I also see very lofty frameworks that take huge amounts of time being put forward, which ultimately don’t meet the immediate community needs.
Great to have a 3-10 year focus but if you don’t spend time getting through the next 3 weeks to 3 months - irrelevant.
KISS, and focus on low hanging fruit to get you to next steps can help focus personal and community priorities. Not clear to me what Arbitrum envisions, also not clear to me what community envisions in this respect.
There is a fine line between being reasonably adaptable using above, and overthinking or over cycling. In the above Strategy document I see nothing regarding how this process ‘cycles’ allowing for introspection, and change leading to project/people/structure adaptability and how even the cycle time itself on some things might need to be very fast now, but slow later…
The second point.
While we all want to have our fingers in the governance process. I have seen the results far too often of what happens when too many cooks are in the kitchen, or when too many strong views are in the house. I want to urge some caution regarding community inclusion. Here again it may be necessary to have a lot of cooks initially, but maybe less better cooks are required to satisfy getting a community meal in a reasonable time.
We can all talk about visions for the future, but in the end we are focusing on what we need to do today, or tomorrow because maybe next month, or year, is so far out we can’t even begin to take a stab at what we should be building or talking about for next year. Unlike money that can just slather around to get something done, people time is limited and so we really need to look at what time horizons people/communities are looking at around here and maybe put some more care into what we can accomplish this week, or this month, than what we might envision 3-10 years from now.
I could go on, but the above I think captures two key things I have seen DAOs, companies futz or fluff on.
I will say that my first immersion in Arbitrum Telegram just trying to find what I feel is a smallish grant for /r/ethtrader far more daunting that I would have expected. It is great to see a lively and dynamic community, and I have had great help from some individuals to steer me, but just trying to connect as an appointed representative of the community I represent to the Arbitrum community in a personal way leading to a positive tangible result for the community I represent, time consuming and very difficult so far practically. Everyone very kind, respectful, and pretty focused but just no-one to act formally as Arbitrum liason to me Rman (Eth-Man/MakerMan) to Arbitrum community.
I am going to make one suggestion given so much going on. Please consider putting together a D2A (DAO to Arbitrum) group of professionals. The specific goal is basically to have DAOs looking to do things on Arbitrum, have a single or dual point contact for information, and assistance to achieving their tangible goals. I mean I would be fine if I presented my community case to someone knowledgeable and they said “nah we don’t have any grants for you”. This would have saved me many hours of time. Or better someone who could say “your community is exactly what we are looking for, this is our vision of how you can help us, and if that fits your community vision, here is what we have to help you”. I am suggesting dedicating resources to building a B2B or D2A business team with key goal to act as point people to bring DAOs, projects, businesses to Arbitrum. Here you can filter projects by size (people, $$ TVL, token market cap, developers, tech, what they want, etc.). This centralizes Arbitrum in a way that may help everyone looking to do things, vs. hunting around for grants or other information, and also provide a well balanced place for Arbitrum to share a vision of how it sees itself, but also learn about how other projects, communities see themselves within Arbitrum blockchain and community that is personal, building real community relationships.
/r/ethtrader is coming to Arbitrum, grants or no grants. Individually both our communities will just work towards our own singular visions. But if Arbitrum can work intimately with other communities this becomes more of what are ‘we’ doing together vs. what ‘everyone else is doing themselves’.
Too many times I see more ‘I’ than ‘we’ in DAO and even if no project in crypto gets there. I keep working on a completely alternative vision that may ‘give us a chance’.
I will give one example. How exactly does Arbitrum see itself in the whole ecosystem. One ring to rule them all (which I have seen people comment that they want Arbitrum to dominate the crypto environment - aka win), or one blockchain supporting the entire ecosystem? This also extends to how crypto sees itself with respect to Traditional Finance (which in most cases I read people believe crypto will replace or supplant Traditional Finance). I think we need to get away from competing to win, to how we can cooperate so we all win.