[RFC] Proposal to Adjust the Voting Power of the Arbitrum Community Pool & Ratifying the Agentic Governance Pivot

[Sinkas]

Abstract

The Arbitrum DAO voted to delegate 7,000,000 ARB from its treasury to Event Horizon’s Voter Enfranchisement Pool in September 2024 for one year. At the time of posting this proposal, Event Horizon’s pool is the 19th biggest delegate by voting power, with almost all of the voting power being due to the ARB delegated from the treasury.

This proposal seeks to officially approve the pivot from the original proposal toward agentic governance and potentially significantly reduce the voting power delegated to Event Horizon’s pool.

Motivation

The main motivation behind Event Horizon’s proposal, according to them, is that

…there are likely tens of thousands more incredibly talented community members who are very capable of adding to the collective cognition of the ecosystem, but simply lack the capital means to have a voice and are left discouraged from voting at all.

This is also the premise on which we (L2BEAT) decided to vote in favor of the original proposal — to experiment with enabling many community members to participate meaningfully in governance.

We haven’t seen the program fulfill this premise so far. Moreover, we understand that the program pivoted towards AI-agentic voting, which was not in the scope of the original proposal. Although we think the pivot is a good approach, we believe it deserves to be ratified by the DAO, and the voting power dedicated to Event Horizon should be adjusted until the community can get more context on and through the AIG proposal.

Regardless of how the original experiment went, we appreciate Event Horizon’s willingness to find a way to make it work. We have been communicating with them over the past few months, and we appreciate their enthusiasm for helping increase governance participation. We see value in them continuing experimentation with agentic governance, but at a point where it does not significantly impact the DAO.

Rationale

Simply put, a lot has changed since Event Horizon presented its original proposal. We think it’s reason enough to justify revisiting the topic of the voting power delegated to Event Horizon’s pool.

The DAO can discuss whether we should keep delegating the same amount of voting power to the voting block, amend the delegated amount, or wind down the whole initiative and return the ARB to the treasury.

Specifications

After posting this proposal to the forum, we’ll post a Snapshot vote with the following options on May 29th.

A) Do nothing - acknowledge the pivot but keep the same amount of VP delegated to EH.

B) Acknowledge the pivot and reduce delegation to 100,000 ARB.

A voting power of 100,000 ARB would keep Event Horizon among meaningful-sized delegates but would not put them in a position to swing any vote decisively.

C) Wind down the whole thing and return the ARB to the treasury.

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• If the proposal’s outcome is ‘A’, EH’s pivot will be ratified, but no change to VP will be introduced.
• If the proposal’s outcome is ‘B’, the MSS will return the 6,900,000 ARB (7,000,000 minus the 100,000 delegated to Event Horizon) from the respective Safe to the DAO’s treasury.
• If the proposal’s outcome is ‘C’, the MSS will return the entire 7,000,000 ARB to the DAO’s treasury.

The DAO will incur no overhead in terms of resources or additional costs for executing this proposal.

Timeline

May 22 - 29 → Forum Discussion

May 29 - June 5 → Snapshot Vote

June 6 → Appropriate action by the MSS if needed

[paulofonseca]

I feel 100K ARB is way too big of a difference to the 7M ARB they currently have and jeopardizes the whole experiment.

I think this proposal, as a temp check, should include other voting options like 500k ARB and 1M ARB, so delegates can have more sensible options between 100k and 7M ARB.

@Sinkas

After posting this proposal to the forum, we’ll post a Snapshot vote with the following options on May 19th.

also, it’s not gonna be posted on snapshot on May 19th, probably only on May 29th, next Thursday.

[EventHorizonDAO]

The Event Horizon team fully supports this proposal as part of the broader transition toward deeper investment in AI infrastructure and Agentic governance within the Arbitrum ecosystem. Further, we support, and look forward to working alongside, L2Beat in the months ahead. We are more optimistic than ever about the future of Arbitrum DAO and AI/Agentic Governance.

@paulofonseca

I think this proposal, as a temp check, should include other voting options like 500k ARB and 1M ARB, so delegates can have more sensible options between 100k and 7M ARB.

We appreciate the community support for the experiment, @paulofonseca, and others who have reached out. We view this proposal as a transitional step as we begin spinning up the Agentic Governance Initiative.

During the final drafting of the AGI, the community will have a clear opportunity to revisit and recalibrate appropriate delegation sizing based upon greater context including EH responsibilities, the shape of the emerging AI architecture and solutions, and a long-term vision for the future of agentic governance co-created by the EH team and the broader community.

In the meantime, we defer to L2BEAT and the delegate community to determine what is fair and appropriate for this pre-transition phase.

[EmmanuelO]

I support the idea of adjusting the current delegation to Event Horizon, particularly under Option B, which would reduce their allocation to a reasonable amount. However, I believe we shouldn’t simply return the remaining 6.9M ARB to the treasury and leave it idle.

Instead, I would propose that the adjusted ARB be reallocated to a new initiative, a staking-based governance access pool, inspired by the CrowdNode model used in Dash.

The idea is:

• The DAO retains custody of the remaining 6.9M ARB.
• A new “CrowdNode for Arbitrum” platform is created.
• Community members can stake their own ARB to receive proportional voting rights from the delegated pool.
• This structure maintains the goal of increasing voter participation, but with better alignment. Voters now have skin in the game, as they must stake their own ARB to gain influence.
• This would include slashing conditions or bonding periods to promote responsible participation.

This repurposing:

• Keeps EH’s agentic governance experimentation alive, albeit at a limited scale.
• Redirects the excess delegation to a decentralized, transparent, human-focused governance experiment.
• Builds on a model that has already proven effective in another DAO ecosystem.

I’d be happy to collaborate with others on scoping this further, but I think this is a unique opportunity to turn the delegation adjustment into a positive step forward one that strengthens participation and accountability.

[danielo]

I think this proposal makes sense. The pivot is very significant compared to the original mandate

[JoJo]

I am have not been following with a ton of attention the event horizon evolution but I know that both you and @krst have instead had a keen eye toward it, questioning if it was still executing based on mandate, if it would still make sense in the optic of what was it voted for etc.

Is pretty clear at this point that they are taking a different road from where it started. And it’s ok, since 1 year in crypto is a lot of time and pivots and changes can happen.

One thing I am very afraid of: option B and C might just be not realistically achievable right now.

With the current constitutional proposal to reduce quorum from 5 to 4.5%, we have the following:

@Arbitrum

As of April 2025, with ~4.3B ARB in votable tokens (formula is total supply of ARB token, which is 10B, minus the amount delegated to the exclude address), the quorum reduction would decrease the requirement by approximately 25 million ARB tokens, bringing the effective quorum from ~215M to ~190M ARB.

if we strip event horizon of 6.9 or 7 millions of votes, we would effectively negate a good quarter, numerically wise, of the proposal above. Unless, of course, we find a way to redelegate these 7 millions to other entities but knowing that what happend to event horizon was more of an exception than a rule and that we never pursued this road for other delegates it feels unrealistic to think it might happen in a short timespan.

I’m personally slightly neutral/negative on agents for governance. I have had a few calls with a few teams working on these iterations, and I have always suggested incorporating a series of data sources and behaviours consistent with what @danielo recently posted in a twitter thread to even try to get something that is not a simple rubber stamp.

This to say, I don’t love the pivot of Event Horizon, but I am way more concerned about losing 7 millions in active voting power in the same moment in which we are just putting a bandage on the quorum looking for stronger long term solutions.

As it is today, I would vote in favor of option A, not specifically to support EH, but to ensure the 7 million arbs stay active in the pool of active voters.

[DonOfDAOs]

Hey @Jojo, one of the functions we’ve noted is our platform as a credibly neutral and open access source to support quorum.

That said, we’d also like to gain your perspective on the broader product. Critical perspectives very welcomed. Let’s chat when you’re free?: Calendly

[Zenithiaa]

If my understanding is correct, Event Horizon received 7M ARB to empower underrepresented community members and broaden human participation in governance.

@Sinkas

We haven’t seen the program fulfill this premise so far. Moreover, we understand that the program pivoted towards AI-agentic voting, which was not in the scope of the original proposal.

Their pivot toward AI-agentic voting is a completely different direction — one that, in my view, deserves its own dedicated proposal and approval process.

I’m not against experimentation or AI in governance, but this kind of shift should go back through the DAO for explicit consent. The original delegation wasn’t meant to cover a fundamentally new approach.

For now, I will continue following the discussion and hear all sides, but I’m leaning toward option B, or even C.