[RFC] Arbitrum Multi-sig Support Service (MSS)

The following edits have been made to the proposal:

  1. The threshold for each bucket has been increased by 1.
    i. 6/12: <$1M
    ii. 7/12: $1M-$5M
    iii. 8/12: $5M-$10m
    iiii. 9/12 $10M-$50M

  2. The threshold for internal removal has been increased from 6 to 8.
    MSS Member Agreement: If at least 8 MSS members (8 out of 12 members) agree that a signer should be removed due to breach of duties or conflict of interest, they can initiate the removal process internally. The agreement must be documented and publicly disclosed to maintain transparency. Analytics on signer activity from Den may be used as supporting evidence.

  3. The expectation that a gradual transition where current multi-sigs finish our their lifecycle has been clearly stated.

We thank everyone for their feedback and plan to proceed to Snapshot on Wednesday!

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One more small edit has been made specifying that if token flow reporting is accepted by the DAO, it will begin the 1st of the month following the proposal passing tally.

Pricing for Token Flow Report: $6650 USD per month paid in ARB on the 1st of the month using USD/ARB spot price. This includes the fee for the web3 accounting sub-ledgers and other tooling costs. Token Flow Reporting will commence in the first calendar month after the proposal passes Tally.

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I want to raise this point again to argue that a 12 months term is too long. Other initiatives like the ARDC or ADPC have shorter terms.

If I’m not mistaken, no service provider has a term closer to this. We could also benefit from a rotation (meaning ppl can not run from more than 2 terms or something like that)

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This is a point we brought about for the questbook process as well. Limiting terms is a great idea, and I explain the rationale behind it here

After some thoughts, decided to vote “for”, including the reporting implementation.

I want to clarify a few things here.

  • inclusion of monthly report: it is a bit costly to be honest. But it makes a lot of sense to have data reporting on the txs executed, is the only way to really keep track of what the dao is doing
  • performances of signers: this should likely be included in the above report. With no judgment, just as data. Knowing how many tx were created and signed by each signer. It will be clear, over time, if there are outliers that never take part to the program or not, and at least the dao will be able in a future election to know who should not be re elected
  • i agree with users above stating that 12 months is not the standard time for these roles in the dao. To me tho, is not a detail significant enough to vote it down or even to change the proposal: a multisig should be something quite mechanic, quite reliable, quite boring. It can make sense to effectively have a 1y mandate on this (and potentially also on other boring, mechanic, reliable roles that we will need in future).

But, this is not necessarily an endorsement on a tally vote.
Initially i thought it would be hell cause signers would need to be able to create txs for all programs. And while this seems trivial for people outside of multisig world, is definitely not (ie: txs for a group of people, but excluding one that didn’t kyc yet; tx that is partially paid in fixed amount of arb, and variable amount of arb cause payment is in usd equivalent at the time of the tx itself; same as before, but with the usd value that has to be on a 30day moving average; etc).
Then, luckily, @dk3 educated me on the delegation feature that will allow external people to post a transactions in the safe for signers to sign. But I also understand there could effectively be issues, especially because not all programs are equal (ie: the delegate incentive program is one if the highest lift in term of number of transactions, variability of payout, problems with kyc and timing).

Regardless of the chosen solution, we need to address the above cases with a plan that will have to be integrated in every program using the MSS, in a way that scales and either allows one of the program main stakeholder to post transactions, or provide a way for a chair/signer to more actively participate to the single program. Which means, necessarily, a bigger overhead in time and costs. The latter solution also means finding a consensus mechanism between participants (=signers for that program) to choose the designated one. Either randomly, by internal election, they all fight in a room, but there is going to be one member who will effectively be paid more and also have more responsibility and will need to invest more time talking with someone from the program. If it’s the chair I am not sure. But in general, my suggestion for programs in which there is the need of scalability without effectively knowing the final size of labour needed (ltipp anyone?), should be to think about both a fixed comp, and the one proposed above is to me good enough, but also a potentially variable one tied to the number of programs one should interface with. Would dare to say, potentially even further specialise this component between programs with low amount and variance of transactions and high amount of txs or heterogeneous ones.
Hope the suggestion helps.

I will be voting “For”.

I find myself in agreement with most points raised by JoJo. On the expense side, costs are definitely high for what’s being proposed and for that reason reporting and accountability is even more important. 12 month terms are also abnormal within the DAO and would love to see this revised.

Overall this is a positive change, but I hope this is not the final form of the proposal that makes it to Tally.

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We will vote in favor of the MSS proposal with the additional report, as we believe this initiative will significantly enhance the overall efficiency of the DAO’s financial operations.

While several concerns have been raised by other delegates, they have already been addressed:

We also believe that the additional report will promote transparency and facilitate better decision-making within the community. However, we would appreciate more detailed information about the report’s price breakdown and how the allocated funds will be spent. Thank you @Entropy team again for this great initiative!

After carefully reviewing this proposal and the additional delegate comments, we believe implementing the MSS would be a net positive for the Arbitrum DAO and the broader ecosystem. The current multi-sig structure has become operationally unsustainable due to high costs and fragmentation. Consolidating to a single elected multi-sig committee should reduce unnecessary expenditures, increase professionalism, and streamline the proposal process for contributors.

However, we share some of the concerns raised by delegates, namely around potential centralization risks, ensuring fair compensation aligned with workload, and having clear criteria for electing signers. We’d like to see further discussion on these points in the final on-chain proposal. Mechanisms like staggered signer terms could help mitigate centralization. And the payment structure may need to be reevaluated if the number of multi-sigs and associated workload changes significantly.

Overall though, we believe the MSS is a well-thought-out framework that will benefit the DAO and ecosystem. The addition of Token Flow reporting is also a valuable step to increase transparency around DAO spending. While not perfect, this proposal represents an important restructuring to set the DAO up for long-term success as it scales.

On behalf of the Arbitrum community members who delegated their voting power to Bacon Labs, we’re voting FOR implementing the Arbitrum Multi-sig Support Service.

Makes a lot of sense, this is needed and will optimize costs. Concerns have been addressed in a valid way. Also supportive of the reports, at least as a trial, so that next iterations can include findings on new votes/elections. Voted in favour

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Thanks @Entropy for putting together the proposal. It’s definitely an important issue to be addressed and we appreciate the effort to modify the proposal as the feedback from the delegates are given.

We vote FOR the proposal at its Snapshot phase with the additional report included as the first selection. As described, this change will clearly increase the efficiency of the similar operations for the various initiatives. We would also like to see the election and term systems to be included in the Tally voting as suggested by other delegates. We don’t necessarily mind 1 year term, but it would be good to see staggered signer terms (e.g. 6 people cycles in 6 months.)

The Princeton Blockchain Club is voting FOR the MSS and r3gen’s reporting at the Snapshot stage. Standardizing multisig usage in the DAO would reduce costs significantly and also make things easier for proposal authors in need of a multisig.

Daniel raised a good point about this creating a potential weak spot for the DAO. However, we think that the election process (and the Foundation KYC) for the MSS members should reduce that risk. (On that note - are we just going through the regular Foundation KYC process, or adding in some kind of extra checks to assist in “[ensuring] their integrity and [reducing] the risk of coercion”?)

Perhaps more closely modeling the election process after the one we use for the Security Council (staggered terms, elections every 6 months) would also help reduce risks?

The Token Flow Report would be pretty helpful for transparency’s sake, so we’re in favor of that addon.

Thank you for the proposal. To begin with, the framework will lower operating costs so that it can be financially suitable in the future. Furthermore, the use of a more professional MSS will enhance the security of multi-signature transactions. For this reason, Token Flow Report will ensure openness and better control over spending. Thus, as ITU Blockchain, we will vote in favor of this proposal.

I have decided to vote FOR the Implementation and Reporting outlined in this proposal.

After reading the feedback and concerns raised by the delegates, I find them rational and am pleased to see that these issues have been addressed along the way.

The idea of regular reporting is sound. I understand that it might be a tedious task, but it is undoubtedly necessary to ensure the transparency required for our DAO to make informed decisions.

I wonder if one year might be too long to evaluate whether this implementation is effective for iterative improvement, or if a shorter timeframe should be considered to allow for quicker action if it does not meet our current needs.

Overall, however, I am excited about the execution of this proposal.

gm, the initiative sounds solid regarding cost-cutting, budget monitoring, and process improvement (signers and thresholds).

Voted FOR.

DAOplomats voted in favor of Implementing MSS and Reporting.

This is a very welcome proposal at this time as it aims to balance efficiency, security, and transparency in managing multisig operations across the DAO. Based on the analysis provided on what is already spent, implementing this proposal will definitely be protecting the interests of the DAO.

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The following 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’re voting in favor of the proposal as we believe the outlined multisig service has the potential to save the DAO and its contributors time and money, and it’s something worth experimenting with. We’ll also be voting in favor of having R3gen Finance’s monthly report, as we believe that information is useful.

Having said that, with the report priced the way it is, we expect the R3gen Finance team to allocate the necessary resources in terms of time and manpower to be available to the DAO to answer any questions related to their reports. We’d also expect them to be able to handle ad-hoc requests related to their financial reporting as they arise and adapt the reports’ scope and structure to changing DAO needs.

Furthermore, we have 2 things that we’d like to see addressed before the proposal goes to an on-chain vote:

  1. We’d like to work with R3gen Finance and delegates to ensure alignment on the report’s scope.
  2. In addition to signers going through KYC, we would like to see the structure of a legal agreement that binds the signers to act in good faith and protects them from any liability that comes with executing a transaction.

In the execution process outlined in the proposal, the multisig signers are not responsible for verifying the requested transaction or for vetoing it - that responsibility lies with the ‘payment approver.’ Therefore, we should protect the signers from any liability arising from executing a payment.

Lastly, we believe the MSS should be very responsive to ensure timely payment execution, and we’d like to point out that inactive signers should be promptly removed and replaced.

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Blockworks Research will be voting FOR the implementation of the MSS and the reporting services on Snapshot.

We think this is a great initiative, reducing expenses in a scalable way while likely also increasing operational efficiency. We also believe that the Token Flow Report is a solid addition, with accounting services seeming like a high value-add to the DAO.

Community members have discussed the signer committee structure quite extensively. On most points raised, we maintain a neutral stance. However, we believe that an extended term for this initiative actually makes sense, since it seems that robust guardrails are being put in place and the time spent on additional voting/operational ramp-up for new signers would be decreased. Moreover, we strongly agree with this point made by L2BEAT:

Do we understand correctly that the planned finance back-office functions are intended to cover only DAO programs valued below $50M? If so, we believe it would be advantageous to broaden the scope to encompass all funding initiatives. This would prevent potential complications arising from, e.g., multiple reporting entities and community members having to go through several data sources. Additionally, a beneficial inclusion that immediately comes to mind would be the addition of forward-looking figures, such as F12M revenue and expense projections, to the report.

I will be voting “For” this proposal, with the reporting feature included.

As a broad concept, I think this is a great idea. Naturally there would be concerns about centralization, however as we’ve seen from the data points a lot of the multisig projects have the same people working on them. Plus, it looks like changes have been made to alleviate some of the possible issues. Regardless, the reduction in costs and administrative complexities outweigh any increased centralization factors (that again, can largely be mitigated and possibly already exist).

Others have brought up great ideas / concerns, of which I largely agree with or atleast feel are valid enough to warrant the discussion. Of note, I will echo others about having some more guidelines for those on the council. Whether that is term limits or shorter voting periods. The report should be be helpful as well and welcome its addition.

As for the discussion of current-running multisigs, I think the best course of action would be to let them run out as originally voted on unless there is a consensus reached by all the multi-sig signers that they would like to turn over control the new MSS.

I support this proposal. The provided framework clearly addresses and standardizes many of the problems with multi-sigs, including inefficiency (corralling signers), high-cost (paying signers a non-standardized amount), “blind signing” (a lack of standardized formatting with what’s being signed), conflicts of interest, and reputation/trust of signers.

One pain point of releasing payment is the KYC process. I admittedly don’t fully understand the issue but after personally experiencing long payment delays after receiving a grant, I gathered that it has to do with each payer’s uniquely established KYC process.

Will the proposed framework address the KYC issue described above? (I’m happy to try to provide more context if my description of the problem is not clear).

Lastly, I would like to suggest medium-length term limits for the signers in order to create opportunity for others in the DAO to be signers.

The proposal has passed with overwhelming support and the above feedback has been noted. There will be one more round of small edits to ensure the feedback has been implemented before proceeding to Tally.

Below is a draft of the Application Template for the MSS. This draft will live here for 1 week before being posted in its own thread with the 2 week nomination period opening. Please feel free to leave any feedback around the application in this time.

Application Template for Multi-sig Support Service (MSS)

Prerequisite:

  • You must possess a hardware wallet capable of generating a fresh address specifically for this election.
  • This hardware wallet should be dedicated solely to activities related to the MSS, and not used for other applications.
  • Ensure the wallet is funded with sufficient ether to cover transaction fees on Arbitrum One. All fees will be refunded at the end of the MSS term.
  • You must be able to pass Arbitrum Foundation KYC
  1. I have read and oblige by the above prerequisite:

Personal Information:

  1. Name:
  • Applying as organization: Yes / No
  1. Contact Information (if applying as organization, please designate one point person):
  2. Country of Residence / Time Zone:

Professional Background:

  1. Current Occupation:
  2. Relevant Work/Educational Experience (Please list any relevant experience in governance, DAOs, and multi-sig operations): :

Technical Skills:

  1. List any technical skills that are relevant to multi-sig operation:
  2. Experience with EVM that makes you well suited for this program (SAFE, Using a module, etc)?

Conflict of Interest Declaration:

  1. Have you been involved in any projects or proposals funded by the DAO? If yes, please specify.
  2. Do you have any interests that might be seen as a conflict of interest if you are selected as a multi-sig signer?

Motivation:

  1. Why are you interested in joining the MSS and what do you believe you can contribute to the MSS?

References:

  1. Please provide contact information for at least two references who can attest to your qualifications and character.

Signature:

  1. Please type your full name below as a confirmation that all information provided is accurate and true.

Date:

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