Posting on behalf of the UADP. A couple points that may be important that we haven’t seen discussed yet is that this program as a whole encourages other similar grant programs to be held more liable and cumulatively increases the quality of grants and submissions across the board (competition to a degree makes all output better).
Additionally agree that the first trial program went well and should be renewed!
We are in favor of supporting the Questbook DDA Program Phase 2, acknowledging their significant past contributions However, we recommend a governance revision, particularly advocating for new elections for domain allocators, to encourage diversity and fresh ideas, avoid power capture, and ensure an equitable and dynamic selection process for those willing to undertake responsibilities.
We also agree with @jengajojo on this; however, we believe this position should be re-elected every phase.
I voted for this proposal on Snapshot because I think the DDA program phase 1 provided an important avenue for builders to get started/expand their work in the Arbitrum ecosystem and would like to see the program continued.
I voted in favor of the proposal, good luck
Hi everyone.
I’ve thoroughly reviewed the proposal for the continuation of the Arbitrum DDA Program, and I appreciate the detailed information provided about the previous program’s success and the plans for the next iteration. The increased budget, higher grant cap, and additional accountability measures seem well-considered.
However, I have a couple of thoughts I’d like to share for discussion:
Elections for Program Manager and Domain Allocators:
While the current team has undoubtedly done a commendable job, I believe it would be in the best interest of the Arbitrum DAO to hold an election to confirm their roles for the next program cycle. This would not only validate their good work but also provide an opportunity for past and new candidates to present their vision and potentially bring fresh perspectives to the program. Tools like Questbook offer valuable insights into the performance of the current managers, which should support their re-election if they choose to run.
Separate Proposals for Funding and Elections:
To maintain clarity and allow for focused discussions, I suggest splitting this proposal into two distinct parts – one for the funding request and another for the nomination and election process of the Program Manager and Domain Allocators. This separation would allow the community to evaluate the program’s budget and structure independently from the individuals proposed to lead it.
I believe addressing these points would further strengthen the proposal and ensure the Arbitrum community has a clear voice in the process. I look forward to hearing thoughts from the proposal authors and other community members on these suggestions.
Let’s continue the discussion to ensure the Arbitrum DDA Program remains a transparent, effective, and community-driven initiative.
Hi all. We would like to express gratitude to @Srijith-Questbook and all contributors of the program including Domain Allocators who put hard work into the it to make relatively small yet important projects to be funded to make impact on the Arbitrum ecosystem. Really appreciated.
We are in support of the continuation of the program and renewed budget and compensation and voted for the Snapshot proposal.
However, we’d also like to echo others who voiced the needs for the elections for program contributors to open up the opportunities for other potential contributors to get involved in the program regardless of what the current team has achieved or success they brought to the ecosystem. We think the current members should be allowed for re-election if they choose to continue.
As the snapshot vote is ending in 12 hours and my latest comment was left unanswered, I’ll be voting ABSTAIN on this proposal.
I understand it’s short notice to reply over the weekend, so I don’t fault the author for not addressing my concerns yet. However, I would prefer to wait for further discussion between the proposal author and the commenters who expressed their desire to run new elections for the Program Manager and Domain Allocator roles, as I mentioned in my comment two days ago.
I believe having this conversation is important for maintaining transparency and ensuring the community has a say in who leads this initiative. I hope we can revisit this topic and find a path forward that aligns with the community’s expectations for an open and democratic process.
The below response reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We will be voting FOR the proposal in the temperature check vote. We have analyzed the past performance of the Questbook program and believe it should be renewed with additional funding. We will provide a longer explanation with some suggestions for improvement shortly.
The Princeton Blockchain Club is voting in favor of continuing the Questbook DDA Grants program at the Snapshot stage.
The first phase of the program has demonstrated clear value for the ecosystem, and we’d like to see these smaller, more focused grants continue.
Michigan Blockchain is voting in favor of continuing this program. We believe it effectively leverages the success from the initial phase and demonstrates a commitment to support diverse areas of the ecosystem. This proposal aims to support existing projects while also attracting new builders and we are excited to see more domain-specific grants continue.
Thank you for your feedback @mcfly. I do understand the need for an election, however we believe that for the roles, going for re-elections would be sufficient past a 1 year term instead of every 6 months based on @jengajojo’s description here. The current program ended sooner than expected and has run successfully and we believe the existing structure should continue as it is atleast for 1 more term.
Thank you for your support @krst, @Sinkas looking forward to your review and suggestions.
Thank you for your support @PrincetonBlockchain
Thank you for your support @Michigan_Blockchain
Thank you to all the Delegates and community members who voted to pass the proposal with overwhelming support!
Before moving the proposal to Tally, we are adding the process through which the Arb will be converted to USDC and look for any feedback/comments if any.
In the process, we are requesting for 30% additional Arb in notional USD terms to make sure that there are $4M in the multisig in the end of the process due to any price actions, and whatever is extra, will be returned back to the DAO post the conversion.
In addition, if there is an important downturn in the value of Arb from the beginning of the Tally vote towards the end which affects the value received in USD terms significantly, we would potentially putup a second vote to re-fund the leftover USD needed as per the original $4M request.
Questbook will work with Aera, in collaboration with Gauntlet, thanks @Matt_Gauntlet for your help with this collaboration.
The following description is from the Aera team on the process of converting the Arb received to stablecoins.
As part of their engagement with the DAO, Questbook will be leveraging Aera to diversify out of the ARB tokens into USDC. Aera has engaged with the DAO previously to create a detailed report on treasury management. This report spoke in-depth about execution dynamics for ARB and specifically around the onchain impact of small and large ARB liquidations, particularly that there was outsized market impact relative to the size of liquidations from having grantees in individuals selling ARB themselves. Aera introduces a concept of Protocol Owned Execution (PoE), where the DAO would own the execution out of the governance token via Aera to achieve better execution on the whole.
In the context of the Questbook proposal, the flow for using Aera looks like the following:
To clarify how this works:
Questbook multisig will be the owner of the Aera vault. This gives only the Questbook Multisig the ability to withdraw and deposit from the vault at any time, as well as select which assets can be held, and which DeFi protocols can be interacted with.
The Guardian of the Aera Vault will be Gauntlet. Gauntlet acting as a guardian submits rebalance transactions against the vault to sell ARB for USDC.
Execution will be done in batches to prevent a outsized price impact. Furthermore, Aera has the ability to conduct operations under specific slippage requirements, if desired.
The Aera vault has hooks in place that prevent >3% loss per day due to guardian interactions, and it disallows interaction with anything not previously approved by the Owner (Questbook Multisig).
Questbook is looking to generate $4M in USDC from selling ARB. One risk here is that price fluctuations in ARB bring the initial ARB allocation below the needed $4M USDC notional. While there is fundamentally no way to mitigate this entirely (From Mar 13th - 19th the price of ARB dropped >30%), it is possible to hedge this by asking for a sufficient buffer. Given historical drawdowns a 30% additional ARB buffer (in notional USD terms) should be sufficient.
For this proposal of converting the Arb to stablecoins, Aera will be using Bebop as the primary exchange and Uniswap as a fallback. Bebop is an onchain exchange that taps into a solver network. Bebop is critical for this proposal due to its ability to tap into offchain liquidity (which is much deeper than onchain liquidity). In concept, Bebop is similar to CoWSwap in how it taps into an offchain network of solvers. Uniswap will also be enabled as part of the Aera vault, and will be used in a fallback capacity. Uniswap has the deepest onchain liquidity for ARB on Arbitrum, and we will use it as a fallback should Bebop have worse execution.
One important question is why Bebop and Uniswap and not other aggregators or exchanges. In many ways Bebop is an aggregator already, solvers filling orders on Bebop can tap into whatever onchain or offchain liquidity sources they want in order to fill an order. As such Aera doesn’t need to explicitly tap into alternative DEXes or Aggregators to fill orders.
Please do share or comment if there are any feedback, we will be moving to Tally soon!
We are going live on Tally by tomorrow, the vote is live at : Tally | Arbitrum Proposal
I look forward to the support of the DAO, delegates and community members in the continuation of the Questbook DDA program phase 2!
As mentioned before, I support the progress made by the program and I am voting FOR also on Tally.
Penn Blockchain / FranklinDAO voted FOR the proposal on Tally.
The first phase of Questbook’s DDA program funded a diverse range of useful projects, and we hope the 2nd phase leads to even more innovative projects. Setting milestone deadlines for grant recipients is a good step to encourage more recipients to deliver their projects on time and lead to less wasted time and work. Further, the increase to $50k cap will allow for funding of larger projects with longer term impact which we hope to see.
Blockworks Research will be voting FOR this proposal on Tally.
From what we can tell, the program has been incredibly valuable for its target audience. Moreover, the operational team has been extremely transparent and communications/documentation have been clear. We support most of the new changes made compared to the previous program. The capital to be allocated in two quarters seems to be on the higher side, but based on the previous program’s demand, makes sense, and the proposed OpEx is reasonable.
To echo what has been said by many in this thread, going forward, we would prefer that elections for the DA/PM roles be held each time the program is up for renewal. Although the current contributors have clearly done a great job, open competition is generally a good thing, and an additional election process shouldn’t cause too much additional workload for the community.
I decided to vote FOR this proposal in Tally.
The transparency and clarity demonstrated in the initial DDA Program, along with the professionalism of the team and the impact communication, solidify my support for continuing such initiatives.
Having been involved (as grantee) in one of these programs through the Arbitrum Onboarding Working Group, I observed the execution and transparent discussions firsthand.
I look forward to seeing more categories or domains in the future, understanding that it’s a current limitation of the Questbook platform but one likely already under consideration for future enhancements.
After considering the arguments put forth by @Srijith-Questbook and @jengajojo regarding the Request for Continuation of the Arbitrum DDA Program Request proposal, I’ve decided to cast my vote in favor of it at the onchain stage on Tally.
Jengajojo makes valid points about the benefits of term limits, including preventing entrenchment, encouraging new ideas, and mitigating potential conflicts of interest. Therefore, I believe Srijith-Questbook’s suggestion of annual re-elections strikes a reasonable balance. Given the program’s success and its unexpected early conclusion, allowing the current structure to persist for another term with the requirement of annual re-election provides both continuity and accountability.
This approach ensures the program can continue to build on its positive momentum while still incorporating checks and balances that prevent stagnation and promote fresh perspectives. As such, I believe supporting the proposal in its current form is the most pragmatic path forward for the Arbitrum ecosystem at this juncture.
