[RFC] Enhancing Incentive Program Discoverability

[404DAO]

TLDR:

• Making sure protocols receiving growth incentives are easily discoverable, and ideally, making this discovery simple and accessible for users.
• Open Call: Apr 19, 2024 5:00PM UTC
• Ask of the reader: Respond with your thoughts on the potential solutions
• Main question: How do we ensure users can effectively and easily discover what is happening during the Incentive programs?

Background

As LTIPP and STIP.b move through Snapshot/Tally and into compliance, 404 DAO has had a couple conversations with workstream members and other Arbitrum ecosystem stakeholders, such as @AlexLumley and @BlueClarity, around the implementation of incentives to ensure a successful rollout.

From our discussions, one critical issue continues to resurface: making sure protocols receiving these incentives are easily discoverable. And ideally, making this discovery simple and accessible for users.

In a span of a couple months, there will be 100+ protocols that will distribute upwards of $60-80 million of ARB in incentives. Throughout the Arbitrum ecosystem, there will be an abundance of new engagement opportunities, but how do we ensure the right users can effectively discover what is happening?

With STIP, little to no adjacent marketing or communication was administered to supplement the incentive rollout, let alone a central base for users to know where incentives are being offered and how to earn them. Compared to other ecosystems, this is a major gap in Arbitrum’s overall execution strategy and we believe there needs to be action taken to ensure successful engagement of the programs.

Potential Solutions

At bare minimum, there needs to be some sort of incentive hub, a home base of sorts (ex. Base’s Onchain Summer), for users to discover the protocols offering incentives.

Some potential ideas on what this could look like:

A. Page on the Arbitrum Foundation website

• Ex. Something like the Portal or an additional section on the portal
• Pros
  • High visibility
  • Ideal for branding cohesion + ecosystem discovery
  • Simple and intuitive for end user
  • Can serve as a POC for long term programs
• Cons
  • Is this feasible given the short timeline?
  • Does the Foundation have the available resources?

B. custom, community created Incentives Program website

• Pros
  • Increased customization
  • Managed directly by contributors in the Arbitrum DAO
  • Can also serve as a POC for long term programs
• Cons
  • Unknown cost and timeline
  • Higher execution risk given tight timeline
  • Potentially low visibility if not distributed correctly across content channels

C. Dedicated incentive program Notion hub

• Pros
  • Managed directly by contributors in the Arbitrum DAO
  • Lower execution risk
• Cons
  • Limited customization and visibility
  • Not suited as a long-term solution

These are just a couple of options pulled together from an initial brainstorm. Implementation could be one of these or a combination of other explored/unexplored options.

Next Steps

Given the start of incentive distribution (mid-May) is less than a month out, we are presenting this RFC with urgency, hoping to receive ample feedback by early next week.

Open Call:
Additionally, we will be hosting an open community call tomorrow, April 19th, at 5PM UTC, to discuss potential ideas around enhancing discoverability and distribution of the incentive programs in addition to the other marketing needs of funded projects in STIP.b & LTIPP

Can’t make the call? Book a time:
For those unable to make the community call, 404 DAO is also opening up its calendar next week to take calls with protocols, delegates, and any other relevant parties to gather feedback and determine next steps forward.

To book a time, please use this link.

[BlueClarity]

Thanks for putting this proposal together.

I view this as a critical piece of the puzzle to improve accessibility and efficiency of incentive programs.

Discovery is a key element of any campaign. The Arbitrum ecosystem and incentives campaigns are very diverse and equally dynamic. Without a central information hub, it is incredibly difficult to track what is happening, even if you are a builder within the DAO itself.

As a user who may be yield hunting, profit maximizing, discovering, or simply just analyzing, building a funnel will help to maximize awareness and conversion at any point in the timeline for an incentives campaign, this in turn helps to maximise the efficiency of the incentives that are distributed.

A purpose-built solution would be ideal as it could be specced out with a long-term ambition in mind, so something that spans deeper v a simple discovery portal. But with current time constraints, opting for A may be more feasible for now, at least for the LTIP Pilot/STIP Bridge that might bide us time for a custom solution ahead of LTIP full launch.

Good discussion to start up and looking forward to helping move this forward for Arbitrum.

[juanbug]

Thanks for this! 100% agree that this needs to happen. With so many projects getting incentives, it will be incredibly hard to allocate and find them in an efficient manner without something like this that can tell you the basic stats on TVL, APR, etc. Maybe directly onto an Arb landing page would be most useful?

[Sydney]

Completely agree here with both comments above- from a architecture standpoint building this out cohesively to integrate with how community members are already accessing the ecosystem would align best with option 1. Lowest friction for user discoverability and high trust (no one questioning if they are on the correct website etc).

One way to also view this first step is a testing ground for a future robust buildout. Keep the lift simple and clean to start when it comes to ways of finding protocols offering incentives during the LTIPP & STIP.b programs and learn from this pilot project to inform a larger buildout and experience going forward- taking into consideration feedback from users.

Excited to explore this live - much needed for overarching project visibility and ecosystem engagement.

[JoJo]

We NEED arbitrum marketing. And we need to do marketing for our incentive program, to reach out people that are not currently on arbitrum.

I totally support the 404 initiative, and we need to start thinking in future about any initiative of the DAO to have at least some specific marketing plugged in (which means: having people able to work on it and execute it, having access or even better being owner of the infra involved, etcetera).

Likely, for LTIPP/STIP, option A would be likely the best in term of ratio for results/effort, but we want to move to B.

We just finished the first call, it is quite clear that all participants feels the urgency of filling this gap. So let’s do it.

[Dario_Spina]

Thank you for this great proposal. As a newer user to the Arbitrum ecosystem, a central location to discover and learn about incentive programs will be a key avenue for onboarding more users. Projects would undoubtedly benefit greatly from the increased awareness and engagement.

Option A would be the best long term solution as @Sydney outlined above. Meeting users where they are already accessing the ecosystem and reducing onboarding friction should be high priorities.

With that said, it seems that there is a strong urgency to make an incentive hub available so I fully agree with @JoJo statements to support Option B.

If there is a recording of today’s discussion, that would be great to post here as well. Excited to see how this moves forward!

[0x_Buidler]

This is a great idea, @404DAO!

We have built a dedicated section for the Incentive Programs on ArbitrumHub, which can be viewed here. We are also open to exploring the ways to expanding it further and open to collaborate more on the ideas:

Incentive Programs Hub

Thank you!

[Frisson]

This is a great initiative and I fully support it. I strongly favor something like option A. I think it will be difficult to reach most users without integrating into the main Arbitrum website. Maybe a long-term solution would be something like option B, but making it highly discoverable via links/navigation from the main Arbitrum website.

[0x_ultra]

I was’t able to join the call sadly but I fully agree that discoverability of incentives and opportunities is a big problem that needs to be solved.

I believe the best solution would be having a separate community ran website for each kind of initiative, and a “central hub” linking to all these directly on Arbitrum’s domain. This allows to take some work off resources at Arbitrum while still allowing the community to iterate fast and maintain arbitrum’s domain visibility.

[404DAO]

Thank you everyone for the great feedback here on the forums. Last week our team had over 15 calls with members of the Arbitrum community to discuss this idea and gather insights about what else the DAO can do to support the upcoming incentive programs. We will be compiling our findings and presenting what we think could be some next steps shortly.

[Tane]

We weren’t able to join the call either but fully agree with the sentiment about the visibility. Remembering the first wave of Arbitrum usage came partially from the success (and it was too successful that the traffic couldn’t be handled at the time?) of Arbitrum Odyssey campaigns, to achieve the success of the incentive programs or any programs for the growth of the ecosystem, we need a coordinated campaign/marketing effort around them. Having the central hub would be the first step, but more importantly we should consider how we can focus on marking what the DAO and teams have worked on to the general public.

[jameskbh]

Hello!

Any news on this initiative? Do you have a draft/doc with the finds?

[404DAO]

Thank you everyone again for providing feedback on this RFC! We have used this research and our conversations to create a marketing proposal focused on addressing this issue. It can be found here.