AIP-3 is more focused on microgrants or prototypes for projects typically in the early stages of development. However, I believe there will be some shared learning, AIP-3 is more of a shotgun type of allocation of small grants, whereas the Roundtable will be larger allocations to established projects building on Arbitrum. The Roundtable will target larger research projects like shared standardization or cross-project margin. Ecosystem level bug bounties, auditing agreements, or marketing campaigns. Syndicated deals to reduce infrastructure costs, think pooled RPC costing, Graph costing, etc. Establish streamlined ways to remove hurdles that Arbitrum Projects face, so Arbitrum Projects can focus on building.
I made this fancy graphic for you.
AIP-3 is ran by Plurality Labs and their delegates to explore funding exploratory projects or early-stage ideas and is limited in grant allocation. The Roundtable will focus more on established projects and shall act as the spiritual successor to STIP.
The Roundtable will be made of 9 Arbitrum Projects - Their appointed Steward, and their communities. The Steward’s focus will to establish the procedures to request larger ticket grants, what those grants can be spent on, to help coordinate on shared research, resources, or costs. They should have communities to lean on for example Treasures ARC program, the Premia Parliament, GMX Blueberry Club, etc. As a Steward it will be important to gather their community’s interest when passing a vote on any contested decision.
The support group will be specific service providers that carry out unique tasks or responsibilities on behalf of the Roundtable. This could be onboarding approved third-party vendors that grant spend can be used on, to create research reports on the most effective grants, to monitor approved grants for compliance, etc.
The Calls of the Roundtable will be recorded or even streamed if there is interest to ensure nothing is hidden, any contested decision that would require a vote by the roundtable would be done on an Arbitrum subspace so the Arbitrum DAO could see how each steward is voting as well as for what reason. Regular updates will be posted on the forum so the community has ample capacity to weigh in on what has been achieved or the direction the Roundtable is headed. Then as stated above, Stewards should be working with their respective communities to address any community-specific desired outcomes.
The ultimate deliverable being a framework for a cyclical grant process that can be streamlined, removing unneeded bureaucracy and governance fatigue by the wider DAO. However, with mechanisms in place to hot-swap stewards or components out if the DAO thinks the program is not going in the desired direction. Then to kickoff this process in early 2024.