Proposal [Non-constitutional]: One-Time ARB Donation to Givewell’s Top Charities Fund

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Proposal [Non-constitutional]: One-Time ARB Donation to Givewell’s Top Charities Fund

Abstract

We propose a one-time charitable donation of ARB from the Arbitrum DAO’s Treasury to Givewell’s Top Charities fund.

We note that we, @GrangerIinclident are in no way affiliated with Givewell, and that as of posting this, Givewell has not in any way been consulted or informed about this proposal.

Motivation

We believe there are many strong reasons that the Abitrum DAO should consider a donation to a charitable organization unaffiliated with the Arbitrum ecosystem. We list three reasons here in order of what we believe are their strengths (starting with the strongest).

  1. Inherent Good: We believe that the amount of wealth that the Arbitrum DAO controls confers a responsibility to positively impact the world at large.
  2. Positive Public Perception: While the Web3 space and the Abitrum Ecosystem in particular continue to thrive, the perception of Web3 from the outside public grows increasingly critical and skeptical. We believe charitable donations like this are an opportunity to draw positive attention to the Web3 space, and put positive peer pressure on other DAO’s in the industry to follow suit.
  3. ARB Conentration: On March 16 (1 week from today as of posting), a significant unlock of ARB is scheduled. This unlock goes to insiders affiliated with Offchain Labs. This will mean a significant increase in the concentration of ARB holdings. We believe that this proposal (and others like it) to increase the circulating supply by sending funds to other parties not part of the upcoming unlock, and thereby moderately offsetting this ARB concentration increase, are a net good for ARB holders.

Why Givewell

We give three reasons why we choose Givewell’s Top Charities fund as the recipient of this charitable donation:

  1. Strong Reputation: Givewell has a very strong track-record reputation. See for example their 100% score from charity navigator.
  2. Neutrality: Givewell’s Top Charity fund grants 100% of the value of donations to charities they believe are currently the most cost-effective, with an emphasis on lives saved per dollar. We believe and hope the community will see this as being relatively neutral and uncontroversially positive as far as charitable donations go.
  3. Cultural Fit: Givewell has been supported and advocated by many in the Web3 space, including prominent thought leaders. We believe and hope the community will feel that Givewell is a good cultural fit.

Specifications

We suggest a donation of 5 Million ARB.

If there’s positive momentum supporting this proposal but debate on the amount to give, different options for the donation amount can be included in the snapshot poll.

The donation will be sent from the Arbitrum DAO Treasury. There are several options for transferring the funds to Givewell

  1. Send ARB directly to Givewell’s address: Givewell currently accepts cryptocurrency donations in a number of currencies, but does not accept ARB among them and does not accept donations on the Arbitrum One chain. If Givewell were to set up and share an Arbitrum One address, the funds could be sent to this address directly.
  2. Send To Arbitrum Foundation: Funds could be sent to an address controlled by the Arbitrum Foundation, who in turn could facilitate sending the funds to Givewell (for example, by converting the funds to one of their accepted currencies like ETH or USDC and sending them)
  3. Trustlessly Convert ARB to an Accepted Currency and Send to Givewell’s Address We believe it would be possible for the DAO to convert the ARB to an accepted currency and transfer it to one of Givewells receiving addresses without relying on trusted parties like the Arbitrum Foundation.

We believe option 3 may involve unnecessary technical complexity, but we include it for consideration regardless.

We suggest that if direct communication with Givewell is necessary, the Arbitrum Foundation should handle this as representatives of the Arbitrum DAO.

Note that regardless of the path taken, the DAO and Foundation should follow all of Givewell donations guidelines and policies.

Steps to Implement:

  1. Forum discussion among delegates and other community members.
  2. If there’s positive sentiment, move to snapshot temperature check, for signal on whether the DAO approves of any donation at all, and possibly also voting on options for the donation amount.
  3. In parallel to 2: coordinate with the Arbitrum Foundation (and possibly Givewell) on best way to send funds (as discussed above).
  4. If snapshot passes, submit proposal on chain.

We look forward to discussion and feedback from the community!

content hash: c422af8b5e2b1d27e6e1f97944a015b2724ce3c6d9de3f139d205320c348d5b2

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In my opinion, it is better to help specific crypto cases, such as oppression and persecution of developers and overly strict regulations in various parts of the world.
My arguments:

  1. I think it’s wrong to simply send money to someone unknown because the DAO has large reserves of tokens.
  2. ArbitrumDAO already has a positive public perception due to the allocation of grants for much larger amounts, which allow both Arbitrum and grant recipients to develop. Spending on charity can certainly be organized, but again for specific cases.
  3. An increase in the turnover of ARB does not in any way affect the funds of the DAO.
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Thanks for the response @cp0x! Some thoughts:

I think it’s wrong to simply send money to someone unknown because the DAO has large reserves of tokens.

We tend to believe that the norm for DAOs that control large sums of wealth should be analogous to successful businesses and high net-worth individuals; it should be expected that while they will mostly apply their wealth towards their core missions and goals, some portion of it should go towards charities with the intent of doing good more broadly.

We also emphasize that we aren’t suggesting a donation to “someone unknown”, but to a highly reputable organization (and via the appropriate means).

ArbitrumDAO already has a positive public perception

While this may be true from within the Web3 space, we believe the perception of Web3 from external parties more broadly is still largely negative, and initiatives like this could help to improve it.

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Appreciate the effort in drafting the proposal!

I have been in the space of crypto x philanthropy for 3 years now, through my nonprofit VoiceDeck that funds investigative reporters based on impact of their stories

I am against this proposal in its current form. I don’t think its healthy for web3 x web2 charity funding to be a one way street , where arbitrum funds these projects and they happily utilize the funding and this is the end of the story.

instead, have some requirement of these charities minting some artifact of theirs onchain (could be their database, annual impact reports, etc). When we then give funds to them, it results in an exchange between the artifact they created and funds we send them.

Reason being, our intention is not just to fund impact but also bring them onchain in a more meaningful way. we also want to redefine the relationship of grantor - grantee to that of product - customer.

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Thanks @thedevanshmehta. While we suspect this view —

Reason being, our intention is not just to fund impact but also bring them onchain in a more meaningful way

would be shared by many in the DAO, we want to emphasize the importance and value of a charity donation without any expectation of reciprocity; where the only direct benefits to the DAO (positive optics and reputation) are second order and incidental. We believe requiring the recipient to perform some additional on chain action is antithetical to this spirit.

We recognize many may currently see this actual as radical or misaligned with the DAO’s core mission, and thus welcome discussion and debate.

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I don’t come at this idea from the aspect of mutual benefit, more that the current fundraising structures in nonprofits are broken and we make much more impact by insisting that any organization wanting philanthropic dollars from us mint an impact artifact of theirs onchain which we would be happy to purchase

Grant agreements are like service contracts, benefiting incumbents with a built up reputation. Impact artifacts are products that we purchase, opening the way for even startup nonprofits to compete on a level playing field by creating good impact and recording it onchain for us to purchase.

Otherwise all we go by is reputation (givewell top charity, has to be good lets donate). Which i really can’t get behind

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I share the values that @cp0x exposed here. There is no reasoning about the amounts and we are talking about big money. The DAO should be working towards improving the ecosystem and sustanaibility. I do endorse making donations but imo those should be donations from individuals and not from DAOs unless there is strategic reasoning for that

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