[Request for Comment - Draft Proposal] Building a Pluralist Grants Framework - Milestone 1

[DisruptionJoe]

Through this forum and the Twitter spaces we’ve received a lot of great feedback. We are going to bring it together with a new draft which we will post on Monday.

Please continue to share comments between now and then - we will continue to listen and respond in the new draft.

@tnorm

We worry the proposal might stray from Arbitrum DAO’s main objectives to grow and steward an L2/L3 network. While innovative governance is commendable, it might be better done in straightforward service of Arbitrum network growth rather than merely for innovation’s sake.

We’ve had a few one on one convos where people expressed this. We definitely need to both make adjustments and better clarify how much is directed to the ecosystem growth.

@tnorm

This program risks inadvertently creating bureaucratic layers and diverting DAO funding towards administration. This results in prioritizing new, expensive programs over the quality of new builders on Arbitrum. Further, proper fund allocation should discern whether potentially costly governance experiments (such as continuous voting, on-chain appeals, and quadratic staking) align with the DAO’s requests, needs, and desires.

@tnorm

Multiple grant programs are great, but Plurality Labs’ utility as an administrative layer is unclear. The DAO could fund multiple grants programs w/out Plurality Labs’ oversight; does the community require such costly advisory services?

This proposal is designed to remove the bureaucracy. We know that when a DAO doesn’t do any mindful intervention, they centralize fairly quickly. We can absolutely fund these grants programs directly with no Plurality Labs. However, the pattern that is most likely to play out is this one.

This proposal will immediately begin funding L2/L3 development. It is a key metric for the proposal. That said, I think this is a great callout you are making because this proposal is specifically about solving the problem of centralization over time.

You are correct in pointing out that to support this proposal, one must ALSO support the following in addition to funding ecosystem development.

• You believe the DAO should be able to maintain decentralization over time
• You’ve seen and understand the pitfalls of grants programs without oversight
• You recognize that different funding models work better for different goals

One other consideration, we do think there should be other grants going out to fund the ecosystem outside of this program.

@tnorm

One can also consider the inherent incentive structure a misalignment. To tiredly quote Charlie Munger, “Show me the incentive, and I will show you the outcome.” How does aligning program manager compensation with spending ensure grant quality, the effectiveness of allocated capital, or the accountability of program managers? What will Plurality Labs do to help program managers evaluate their programs and optimize for performance?

As for the incentive being aligned, this is a good point. We will consider options here.

For the answers to the other questions, we can include some of this information in the next draft. It was in a previous draft and we took it out to make it shorter.

@tnorm

Based on the clarifications above, 500K ARB will support a four-person team (at least 50% appear to be external FTEs) to execute three relatively vague tasks in < 6 months of work.

This was not communicated well. We took out a ton of the granular details to shorten the proposal. We had a lot of feedback from reviewers that the proposal was way to long. Hopefully, the next draft communicates this better.

@tnorm

Finally, the proposal references checks and balances but only mentions a multisig; I may be overlooking something. I will note Disruption Joe has a strong reporting record from the FDD committee, and we’d expect similar commitments in reporting and budgeting in the future.

Thank you for your recognition. Some think it should be a multisig which is elected, others think appointment. Do you think voters will participate in a multisig election for a 6 month project? We aren’t sure what’s best and are looking for feedback on this.

@tnorm

We’re certainly not against the arguments here, attracting Allo protocol to Arbitrum would be a huge win, but It’d be great to hear from Gitcoin directly on whether an SP layer is required or if a commitment of matched funds in a separate proposal would suffice.

We have a direct comment from @azeem with Gitcoin above. He is a workstream lead. Is there someone else you’d like to represent Gitcoin here?

@tnorm

Ultimately, the DAO will decide whether these programs align with Arbitrum DAO’s goals. We hope these comments can help make a more clear and convincing proposal and look forward to seeing future iterations. Currently, it feels vague for the admin budget it requests and emphasizes funding governance projects over actual builders.

Hopefully we are more aligned than you currently see it. Thanks for some valuable input. There are key items we can communicate better and some that we need to change. It will all be taken into consideration before we post a final draft.

We want to cocreate this with the community. If you are interested in participating in a workshop about this next week, please dm!