Request to Increase the Stylus Sprint Committee’s Budget

Proposals
1

Non-Constitutional

Abstract

  • The Stylus Sprint program saw overwhelming demand, with 147 applications requesting ~31.92 million ARB, significantly exceeding the initial budget.
  • This proposal requests an additional 4 million ARB to extend the committee’s original budget. The funds will enable the evaluation committee to fund a set of exceptional applications that were excluded due to budget constraints.
  • The committee has provided the list of applicants that it strongly recommends deserve to be funded as part of the Sprint, in addition to the 5M ARB already allocated. Rationale and a summary of the applicants is linked in the proposal.
  • We will be moving this request to Snapshot next Thursday, February 6th. If approved, an onchain vote will move forward the following Thursday as to not further disrupt the proposed timelines of the applicants.

Motivation/Rationale

With 147 applications and ~31.92 million ARB in funding requests, demand for the Stylus Sprint program significantly exceeded expectations. The committee received a large number of exceptional applications, but unfortunately, due to the initial budget constraints, the committee was only able to fund 17 applications. They were chosen based on a combination of factors including cost, timeline, necessity for immediate start, RFP category importance, and the priority to fund both applications and infrastructure/tooling.

While the committee has accepted a subset of the applicants, there remains an important opportunity to support impactful ideas and high-quality teams. With Stylus as one of Arbitrum’s strongest competitive advantages, the committee strongly believes that enabling all impressive applications received as a part of the Stylus Sprint with funding is a worthwhile investment for the DAO.

This proposal seeks an additional allocation of 4 million ARB tokens to extend funding opportunities to promising projects that were not initially accepted into the Sprint. With this budget extension, the committee will be able to fund an additional group of applicants, outlined in detail below. While there are many more strong applications, the recommended list scored especially high during the review process and are ones that the committee is confident have the potential to provide value to the Arbitrum and Stylus ecosystems.

Specifications

As stated in the original Stylus Sprint proposal, large requests may be directed to the DAO directly to request funding. This process was communicated to applicants, some of which elected to go this route over reducing their request. The smaller applicants in this list are in the committee’s opinion worthwhile investments that have the potential to improve Stylus long-term.

The following list of applicants are the ones that come with a strong recommendation from the committee and to reiterate were unable to be accepted due to budget constraints.

Open Application

  1. Pyth Oracle Implementation in Stylus - ARB Requested: 1,000,000
  2. Sylow - ARB Requested: 700,000
  3. Nuffle Labs - ARB Requested: 460,000
  4. Syndicate MintVM - ARB Requested: 210,000
  5. Ember: LP Optimization with Volatility-based Dynamic Fees - ARB Requested: 60,000

RFP Track

  1. Moving Stylus: Move to Stylus-compatible WASM compiler - ARB Requested: 450,000
  2. Trail of Bits: Add Stylus as a Solang compiler target - ARB Requested: 440,000
  3. StylusFuzz: Advanced Property Testing for WASM Contracts - ARB Requested: 408,200
  4. CodeTracer - ARB Requested: 250,000

Rationale and a summary of each applicant’s proposed scope can be found in this document.

It is important to note that the decision to include the above applicants is based on the finalized version of their submission that was reviewed during the grading period.

Due to the open nature of the DAO, applicants not included in this recommendation maintain the ability to move their request directly to the forums in case they feel like they have a compelling case despite the non-acceptance from the committee, effectively circumventing the Stylus Sprint and evaluation committee. The committee is aware of some applicants that may bring revised versions and/or lower budgets than when they were originally reviewed. While we appreciate that Arbitrum DAO’s open and decentralized essence provides the freedom to make such requests, we’d encourage delegates to be mindful of the possible precedent funding projects circumventing the program would set. When appropriate, the committee has already directed certain applications to be on the look out for alternative DAO programs, such as the Season 3 of Arbitrum D.A.O program if it’s approved.

If this proposed extension is approved on Snapshot, we will move it immediately to an onchain vote the following Thursday, February 20th. The recommended applicants will be held to the current Stylus Sprint timeline, so the committee would like to not unnecessarily delay the ability to fund these projects. Projects funded as part of the Stylus Sprint’s budget increase will benefit from the infrastructure already in place as far as MSS/payments and milestone reviews by the evaluation committee.

The Snapshot vote will be a basic vote with For, Against, and Abstain as options.

Budget

The Stylus Sprint committee is requesting an additional 4,000,000 ARB to extend its Stylus Sprint budget. If approved, the funds will be sent to the existing MSS-controlled Stylus Sprint multisig.

Timeline

January 30th: Forum Post
February 6-13th: Snapshot Vote
February 20th - March 6th: Tally Vote
March 9th: Funds delivered to Stylus Sprint multisig
March 10th: Recommended teams join the Stylus Sprint

Conflicts of Interest

Entropy and the committee have no conflicts of interest associated with the recommended applicants or this proposal requesting an extension of funds.

11 Likes
2

Agree!

But…

I think this should only be done if there is a new application period for more projects to apply.

If we open applications again, I’m sure we will get projects that are even better than these already selected ones, that would score higher. It feels unfair for projects waiting for the opportunity, to see more funding being deployed, that they don’t even have a chance to try to get.

6 Likes
3

I don’t know if it’s the right way to frame it.

First, the submission period just recently closed: whoever wanted to apply, most likely did, as it’s testified by the 150 applications received.

Second, as the name suggest, this was a “sprint”, a way to bootstrap with strength a new technology, stylus. All the applications approved, and potentially this second subset, will definitely give a bit boost to other projects that want to fork, build on top, use the tools etc. But now we have to wait for these application to develop and bear their fruit. Remember, we are talking about mostly high funding application in this program; for smaller app, we still have the D.A.O. grant program that will launch in a few weeks that will also support stylus.

3 Likes
4

We’d like to show our support to the newly allocated budgets because we believe Stylus is a critical technological advantage that Arbitrum ecosystem has and it’s vital to encourage prominent developers to build great tools/products through the program like this Sprint campaign.

Just to be clarified: we haven’t reviewed all the applications in details, but does the committee review the size of the requested ARB for each application and conclude no need to reduce the scope of each app to minimize the size of the exceeding budget to be allocated? The listed applications seem all promising, but their requested asks are not small. Also, the total sum is 80% more than the original ask, which is a significant difference.

5 Likes
5

The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.

This proposal makes a strong case for increasing the Stylus Sprint budget. We appreciate the effort the committee has put into selecting high-potential projects despite receiving so many applications. Stylus is definitely a key advantage for Arbitrum, and funding strong teams will benefit the ecosystem.

The recommended list is the strong applications that if stalled for another round of application could equally harm the growth of Stylus. The moat of Stylus is paramount and we shall strive to let more teams build on it.

Being an applicant to one of the RFP, we have seen the demand for this program and this has come because of the right marketing of the program. Repeating this entire process when weighed against time is more costlier than allowing the budget extension. That said, we have one question that could help bring more clarity to the process.

Since the selection process was based on structured evaluations as mentioned in the Stylus Sprint grading rubric, would it be possible to share the applicant scores? The rationale has already been shared, and reviewing the scores as well would help delegates and community members understand how these projects were prioritized over others.

Irrespective of the logistical challenge of adding the scores for each application we support extension of the budget to support the projects that will add value to the Arbitrum and Stylus ecosystems.

(P.S. - Lampros DAO applied for the Stylus Sprint program for the GUI for the Stylus Cache Manager RFP, [MVP] but our application was rejected. We are also not mentioned in the recommended applications list. This means we have no conflict of interest in supporting the budget extension for the program as a delegate.)

4 Likes
6

I agree with the idea of increasing the budget.

But, since we are almost doubling the budget (from 5M ARB initial + increase of 4M ARB) to 9M ARB, we should also open an application to give an opportunity to new projects (like @paulofonseca suggested).

Since the last application window was from Nov 11th until Jan 6th, many projects that applied early have made progress with their project. Let’s give them a chance to apply again or update their application.

Without increasing the budget, this proposal could only fund 17/147 projects. If the proposal to increase it passes, we expect to double that to at least 34+ projects, right? @JoJo, do you think the new budget will cover high-funding applications that were left out?

3 Likes
7

I have a question about the forum post itself:

In the wording, it seems that there is no opening for suggestions of going through a different path (like others suggested). Is that correct?

So my other questions are related to the format:

Why this specific amount in ARB and/or projects? While I understand the reasoning, why not a shorter list and lower amount (as the current version doubles the original budget).

Or, as we’re proposing changing the value, why not a larger amount?

Are these the only projects that are worthy of funding in this initial cohort? What was the cut-off criteria?

As we don’t have access to the rubric, it would be helpful to have a better insight of what were the factors that generate the current proposal.

3 Likes
8

The extention of 4M would be to specifically approve the following applications:

Now, since most are asking, let’s say the dao approved 4M extention but also wants a new open process. What would likely happen is the following

  • we would have some (not sure how many) new applications coming in
  • all of the applicants listed above for which committee is asking for an extention would for sure reapply
  • it would be extremely hard, for the committee, to accept anything that is not the list above: if you think about it, all the proposals in the list have been marked as very good, valuable, up to the point there is an ask for further funds. How does a new application, not present in the list nor in the previous 150 proposals, fit into the 4M budget? It can only do it if it’s exceptional up to the point to be better of one of the application in this list. But then, it means you would have to reject, again, one of these 9 that are pre approved but with no budget, still falling in the issue of “we want to move this forward but we are overallocated”.

Hope this clarifies the pitfall of just opening a second track versus approving the extention. The two things are not mutually exclusive btw, but please take in consideration that this is a push for a new technology, and giving some time to see how the current investments pan out is likely the best approach.

4 Likes
9

for most applications, both in this list and in the approved one, we already did negotiate the budget.

This is a bit more complext to answer. All projects were evaluated based on the tracks; if not in the track, as open application, in term of dapp vs infra vs other. We naturally did tend to cluster application by theme, ie: cache managers for example, for which we had several applications, and decided to move forward a smaller subset to avoid too many overlaps.
For projects that were unique, we moved toward an approach of utility, with the advise of the most technical part of the committee (OCL, OZ) related to what we collectively think brings most value to Stylus 6 months - 1 year down the road.
Finally, specific dApp from strong team were also approved.

As far as I know a lot are loaded in the questbook page, and some others we are currently loading.

2 Likes
10

I agree with increasing the budget, we need innovative Stylus projects. It’s also great to hear that so many builders applied, running out of a budget in this case is definitely a good “problem” to have (better than seeing low interest from builders).

Also, I agree with @JoJo to not extend the application window, because this may lead to the budget shortage again.

1 Like
11

gm!

Thank you very much for the proposal to increase the budget.

As a general comment, I believe it’s very positive to have had such strong demand for application development and infrastructure with Stylus. That being said, the true success of the program will depend on the impact of executing these proposals and on Stylus adoption by developers. For this reason, I think the number of applications should not be the only parameter for evaluating the budget increase.

That said, I completely agree with this:

Stylus is indeed a competitive advantage that we should leverage to attract developers from other ecosystems.

From my experience with the LTIPP, designing new incentive programs is complex. This certainly includes the amount of budget allocated to a particular initiative. It’s difficult to predict how many applicants there will be, what types of initiatives will be submitted, or the unforeseen complexities that arise when evaluating submissions.

The committee behind the project selection has a lot of experience, and they wouldn’t bring this proposal forward without having thoroughly assessed the quality of the submissions and their potential impact. On the other hand, this approach allows the DAO to take advantage of the process, time, and money invested in the infrastructure to fund more high-quality submissions that can have an impact on attracting developers.

In particular, after reviewing the proposals, I believe there is a good diversity of submissions that mostly differ from those already approved, expanding both the applications (use cases) and the infrastructure available for developing with Stylus.

For this reason, I support the initiative and agree with increasing the budget.

My only comment is regarding the total amount. If I’m not mistaken, the sum of the selected applications comes to 4,108,200 ARB, while the amount requested is 4M. This detail needs to be adjusted.

5 Likes
12

Thanks for putting this together! It’s clear that a lot of thought went into evaluating these applications, and I really appreciate the transparency around the process.

That said, I don’t think extending the budget for the Stylus Sprint is the right move. The initial 5M ARB budget was set with clear expectations, and I worry that making exceptions now could set a precedent that future funding rounds are flexible. That kind of uncertainty can make it harder for the DAO to plan long-term.

I also know how much effort teams put into their applications, and it’s tough to see great projects miss out due to budget limits. The level of talent and innovation in this round is a testament to the excitement around Stylus, and I really hope these teams stay engaged and explore other paths to funding.

Appreciate all the work the committee has done to make this process fair and transparent. This isn’t a no to these projects—just a belief that we need to stay disciplined in how we allocate funds.

1 Like
13

We truly appreciate the work being done and are pleased to see that the program has received so many applications. That said, we believe that increasing the budget should not necessarily mean opening the application to more projects, as this could delay the program.

We are pleased with several of the applications and trust the selection process taking place. For this reason, we see no reason to oppose the proposed budget increase.

We look forward to seeing the progress and results of this program.

1 Like
14

I like this and explicitly disagree with Paulo’s suggestion to reopen applications.

1 Like
15

Thank you for your proposal, seeing so many applications means that Stylus is very popular and will add a lot of work, but selecting the best projects to fund will be good for Arbitrum. There are a few questions and suggestions about the proposal for additional funding of 4 million ARB.

  1. Is it possible to increase the funding by 4 million ARB this time? We have already approved 5 million ARBs, but the total amount of applications is as high as 31.92 million ARBs, which means that even with this additional 4 million ARBs, it is still far from being able to satisfy all the applications. The demand for applications far exceeds the budget, will there be further additions in the future?

  2. How will the funds be utilized and how will the return be measured? How will DAO measure the input-output ratio of the additional 4 million ARB?

What are the success criteria for the option programs? How to evaluate their real contribution to the Arbitrum ecosystem?

  1. Is there an exit mechanism? If some projects fail to meet expectations, will it affect the efficiency of DAO’s fund utilization?

It is suggested to set up a “transparent tracking mechanism for the use of project funds”.

For projects with additional funds, DAO should request quarterly progress reports to ensure that the funds are utilized appropriately.Evaluate the actual progress of certain projects. If the progress lags behind or fails to meet expectations, there should be a mechanism for withdrawing or adjusting the funds rather than releasing the funds unconditionally.

16

I don’t know some of the names in there, but others like Pyth and Trail of Bits to name a couple are quite important and have a very good reputation in crypto and in Arbitrum.
If they didn’t got approved in the first round it means that there were even better applications, which is good! But I think is worth extending the budget if the commission think is for the best.

17

Stylus It is indeed important, thank you for your proposal for temporary additional funds to fill the budget gap, why these 9 projects here and not other high quality applications? What were the selection criteria for these 9 projects? What are the criteria for the selection of these 9 projects? If the budget is increased this time, what if other projects want to bypass the evaluation and go directly to the DAO for additional budget in the future?
The DAO should establish a stricter mechanism for additional budgets, allow applicants to adjust their budgets and reapply, give a chance to projects that are willing to reduce their funding requests, and plan a long-term Stylus Sprint funding framework to establish a more stable fund management mechanism to avoid frequent additional budgets in the future.
In any case, I will continue to support the proposal and really hope and expect Stylus to be successful.

18

I’m in favor of the additional funds. We should take advantage of the ‘exceptional applications’ mentioned by @Entropy. In the end, this is meant to be a sprint, and the additional ARB to be spent will help achieve the original sprint goals.

If this is approved, could we get two different reports to see if this ‘increase’ was really worth it?

As a personal note, I really like the idea of Nuffle Labs, as it will allow Arbitrum to retain TVL and offer new yield sources on the chain.

19

We’re in favor of increasing the budget. After reviewing the applications and their potential impact, it’s clear that that the program had high-quality proposals unable to move forward (pyth’s high performance oracle implementation, solang support, nuffle’s stylus based contracts, among others.) The additional 4M ARB will allow to fund initiatives that align with Arbitrum’s growth and it is a strategic move to solidify Stylus as a core Arbitrum advantage.

Edited to reflect the budget number confirmed by Entropy.

20

Stylus is one of the key differentiators and competitive advantages that Arbitrum has, making it a crucial element to dedicate funding to. Given this, we believe it’s important to support builders who can contribute meaningfully to its growth.

As noted in the post,

Given the strength of these applications, we support increasing the budget for the Stylus Sprint to include these additional teams, as we are confident they will bring value to the ecosystem.

For clarity, we support the funding increase specifically to accommodate the above-mentioned list of teams. We align with the points presented by @JoJo and agree that applications should not be reopened.

1 Like