Thank you for the proposal, @danielo!
We support this top‑up because the shortfall has already occurred and, while the amount is far from negligible, we believe it is a reasonable cost to keep a DAO‑approved initiative on track.
At the same time, the way funds are distributed clearly needs streamlining as some already pointed out. We believe it would be effective to introduce an optimistic governance approval process similar to Lido’s Easy Track and a portion of the proposal by ImmutableLawyer, in which if a request stays within a preset budget and matches its stated purpose, it could progress without a full DAO vote. The process is such as below; simply post a forum notice, allow a short veto period for a few days, and treat the request as approved if no objections arise.
Looking ahead, although this measure would not fix the current shortfall, each future budget should set, in addition to its USD‑denominated amount, a hard ceiling on the number of ARB tokens that can be paid if prices fall sharply. This is already implemented in the delegate reward structure. This safeguard would let prevent the DAO from overspending relative to its treasury during periods of extreme volatility.
For example, imagine a grant budgeted at $5,000 with an ARB cap of 25k ARB. If, at the time of payment, 25k ARB is still worth at least $5,000, the grantee receives the full $5,000. If the market has dropped so far that 25k ARB is worth less than $5,000, the grantee receives the capped amount of 25k ARB instead.