Appreciate the comment @ACI, we’d like to address a few points directly.
Starting with the following question:
Thirdweb’s application (900k) was the only submission included in the initial budget that was over the recommended soft-cap. Below is the exact wording from the original Stylus Sprint proposal:
Thridweb was funded as part of the 5M budget for a variety of factors - including its timeline compared to some of the other recommended applications who were more flexible in being delayed, the scope of work outlined, the strategic importance of the partnership to the Arbitrum ecosystem, and taking into account the team’s willingness to greatly reduce their overall request to ensure work could start immediately.
We understand that such factors may lead to the impression that the original accepted applicants are overall better than the 9 recommended, as evidenced by the following comments:
However, we would like to strongly emphasize that this is not the case, but rather the result of the program’s multiple priorities and tracks. The committee had several different objectives, such as including applications that could help scale Stylus usage, highlight a core strength of Stylus, or tools/infrastructure that fill a specific need. The scoring system was designed to introduce a level of objectivity and help the committee compare applications when necessary, but deciding which applications to accept, reject, and recommend was partially a subjective process to determine how we could best accomplish the above mentioned goals within the 5M budget. The committee worked together to come to these decisions, with the scores and rationale then being aggregated and posted to Questbook.
The 17 accepted applicants allowed us to partially achieve these goals and cover several of the RFP categories, but not all of them. As outlined in this request’s rationale, the committee believes the recommended applications are impactful ideas paired with qualified teams. Funding them would help the Sprint and the committee by extension, fully deliver on its stated goals and lay a strong foundation for the Stylus ecosystem over the Sprint’s duration.
Finally, regarding the following statement:
Rather than sending 9 applications to the DAO, some of which require a certain level of technical expertise and understanding of the current Stylus ecosystem, it was communicated to Entropy that it was preferred to present the applications together as opposed to having delegates vote on each application individually like for example during STIP. The request for an increase in budget can be seen as the applications being directed to the DAO. Entropy strongly believes that giving the evaluation committee agency over an increased budget is a better path to this effect than 9 (with more likely coming in unendorsed) proposals coming in individually.