Proposal: The Arbitrum Coalition

Proposals
30

Today, the Coalition parties and a few Delegates had a call to address this proposal openly. Generalized notes from this session can be found here

Agreements:

  • Economic, Research & Security Services on retainer are needed in principle.
  • Not all Delegates can make informed decisions based on proposals alone; more nuanced expertise is and will be needed for third-party evaluation of new proposals.
  • We believe L2BEAT, Blockworks, Gauntlet, & Trail of Bits to have upstanding character and would operate in good faith, however, there are components of this proposal that entrench single points of failure and unilateral control.
  • There is no method for course correction outside “raise another proposal”
  • Service Provider onboarding is a task that will be assigned to Blockworks to create a framework to streamline the onboarding process, Blockworks will not be the KYB party, and Blockworks will have a neutral stance allowing any party to apply, and once complete for their products/services to be listed as available to the DAO.

Concerns:

  • Concentration of Voting Power amongst the Parties
    • L2BEAT: 18.87M
    • Gauntlet: 8M + 4.66M
    • Blockworks: 7.95M
    • Trail of Bits: Unknown
    • TOTAL: 39.48 MILLION ARBITRUM DELEGATION
  • Security Council Influence - 3/12
    • 25% of all Security Council Members
  • Concerns around gatekeeping what should be a “focus”

Having the same parties review and provide opinions on proposals, cover those proposals publicly via Media Networks, vote on proposals, review the security concerns of a proposal, and then execute the Arbitrum network upgrades is fundamentally lacking separation of powers.

Below are my personal opinions, which I have shared already:

  1. I would like a council to act as advocate, controlling how the coalition’s efforts are focused. I have no concern with L2BEATs historic integrity, however, as a project building on Arbitrum, L2Beat is not, and the changes of Arbitrum do not affect them the same; their point of view may be quite limited compared to project developers. Given my concerns above, you can see how the advocate role can control all parts of Arbitrum Governance by directing what is worthy of “focus” and what is not.

  2. I would like to see the parties considered in this proposal abstain from voting on this proposal in both the temperature check and on-chain vote.

  3. Without proper separation of powers, the risk of collusion and censorship is too great for me to ignore. Again, I have no concern with the integrity of the parties, but the whole reason we build in this space is to build trustless systems. If the proposal is not willing to change the advocate role, then I would like to see how they plan to address conflicts of interest and separation of powers before going to Temperature Check.

  4. Pricing: I understand the costs associated with a program like this, but I would like all parties to provide a document for Rates and Standard Costs for transparency and future negotiations if the proposal is passed. I’m sure all the projects have documents like this for traditional retainer-based agreements.

I look forward to the revision before the temperature check snapshot later this week.

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