Shell Protocol STIP Addendum

[SEEDGov]

Following feedback on the proposal to establish the STIP Bridge, it was agreed to involve the LTIPP Advisors in this process with the mission to “help applicants gain insights into their proposals. This not only guides applicants through the process but also ensures that the DAO will review better proposals.”

Despite the inclusion of Advisors, this process does not involve the Council, leading us to believe that this addendum places a significant burden on the delegates who must review all the proposals. One of the reasons for the LTIPP was precisely to avoid this excessive burden. Moreover, the optimistic model adopted in this phase could raise concerns about the real control the DAO will have over these proposals, as reviewing six months of data for each applicant is time-consuming.

For this reason, we decided to accompany each application we reviewed with a brief report. We ask the delegates not to take this as an in-depth or definitive basis for deciding your vote, but rather as a guide that can potentially raise questions for your own analysis.

As indicated in the proposal, due to a mix-up with the KyC they did not receive funding from the STIP Backfund as explained in the application:

@aleezagroks

3. What date did you start the incentive program and what date did it end?

N/A — Previous STIP incentive program was deferred.

The STIP grant delay was primarily due to the KYC process. We were simultaneously applying for a grant from the Arbitrum Foundation. Both the DAO and Foundation use the same KYC provider. We completed the KYC for the Foundation, under the impression that would also be sufficient for the DAO. That turned out to not be the case.

Nonetheless, we finished the DAO KYC process and were ready to receive the grant; however, the STIP Multisig advised that we formally reapply through the STIP bridge program—that way there would be more time to fully deploy the grant.

To provide a point of comparison, we asked the Shell team to publish the metrics achieved to date without incentives so that delegates could evaluate them. We also asked them to include more detail in the proposal.

Given these circumstances and the conversations we had with the Shell protoocol team in the public discord, we believe that the proposal is missing some details:

• It would improve the proposal to define quantifiable KPIs, the targets Shell wants to achieve with the requested amount of ARB tokens.
• More detailed selection criteria for pools to be incentivized. We recommend not to incentivize pools that include the SHELL token or derivatives.
• Token distribution criteria for LPs

Conclusions

We believe that this application should be evaluated based on historical data that can be presented by Shell explorer, defillama or any other metrics website.