I’ve been doing a little bit of digging into the DIP data, and I wanted to share what I found in more detail.
As a reminder, these were the approved KPIs of the DIP, as per the onchain approval of the original DIP 1.5 version.
Then, with DIP 1.7 that was approved with an offchain vote, the KPIs changed for the remaining 3 months of the program, as can be seen here with the introduction of new KPIs for DIP 1.7.
Either way, we should look into the performance of this delegate incentive program, and therefore of @SEEDGov as it’s program manager, as per the KPIs they themselves defined in October 2024, that are quoted above from the original proposal.
So during the first 9 months of the DIP, taking into account the results from November 2024 to July 2025, here is the performance data of the DIP:
KPI #1 – Achieve that 50 delegates receive incentives – 
FAIL
I’m assuming that this means 50 delegates receiving incentives, per month, and not 50 unique delegates in total for the duration of the program. Since the program was originally designed and funded to give incentives to up to 50 delegates per month, let’s assume it’s 50 delegates per month.
As I shared with the preliminary data in the post above, this KPI was not achieved.
The average number of delegates getting incentives, for the past 9 months, is 31.89, not 50. And the trend is not going up, as can be seen in the chart.
KPI #2 – Engage 100 delegates in the program – FAIL
I’m assuming that this means 100 unique delegates opting-in and qualifying to receive incentives, per month, for the duration of the program.
As can be seen, this KPI was not achieved.
The average of the number of unique delegates opted-in and qualifying, for the past 9 months, is 63.44, not 100. And the trend is not going up, as can be seen in the chart.
If, on the other hand, we consider that this KPI pertains to the total number of delegates that ever applied to the program in the official forum thread for that effect, up until the end of June (to be able to qualify for the July results) that cumulative number is 84 delegates, which is still not 100 unique delegates engaging with the program.
KPI #3 – Achieve an average Total Participation (TP) of 80% among participants in the program within six months – FAIL
This is the KPI that is the most important, in my opinion, for justifying Arbitrum DAO investing on Delegate Incentive Program, since this is a good proxy for quality participation of delegates in the DAO and overall engagement in the program.
As can be seen, this KPI was not achieved.
Total Participation was never at an average of 80% during the program. At the 6-month mark, the average TP was 62.16% and at the 9-month mark, it was at 56.55%, not at 80%. And the trend is not going up, as can be seen in the chart.
KPI #4 – Introduce improvements to the program after six months – FAIL
This is obviously a subjective KPI, and changes were indeed introduced even before the 6-month mark, and even retroactively. Unfortunately, none of those changes improved the program, as can be seen by the performance of the previous KPIs. Therefore, I consider that this KPI was also not met.
Conclusion
Running a Delegate Incentives Program is indeed challenging, and @SEEDGov has been iterating and changing the program to suit the changing landscape of the DAO. However, the changes introduced, retroactively, with DIP 1.6 in February 2025, clearly led to all the self-imposed performance metrics starting to trend down. This shows, that the design and management of this program by SEEDGov, since the introduction of the 1.6 version, was clearly not effective, according to the KPIs that were defined by themselves, that were never met during these 9 months of the DIP 1.5/6, and started abruptly trending down in February (the first month when the 1.6 changes were put into effect). Specifically, I believe the introduction of the officially named Voting Power Multiplier (which is not a multiplier at all, but is in practice a penalization for small delegates since it multiplies their voting power by a number smaller than 1 if they have less than 4M ARB delegated to them) changed the very nature of the program, and should be reverted.
Disclaimer: I’ve been a heavy participant in the program up until I was explicitly penalized in the May results. For 7 months, I’ve disputed results, I’ve offered feedback and suggestions for improvements, and I’ve now cross-checked all DIP transactions (they are all correct) and overall data, to better understand what happened with this program, and offer this analysis to the community. I’ve done this because I believe that Arbitrum DAO needs an independent analysis of the DIP that his not done by the Program Managers, which are obviously biased. The fact that, up until now SEEDGov have not reported on the progress of the KPIs that they themselves defined at the beginning of the program, is shocking to me. So that’s why I did this analysis. Please cross-check my data and give me feedback on this analysis. Thank you!