this is a long one, be prepared.
Clarifying and Strengthening our Builder-Focused Strategy
Introduction
I want to thank @Entropy for this proposal. I want to actually thank all delegates who took their time to draft all the SOS ones.
Mine is a feedback that applies in first instance to this proposal, and also to the one from @maxlomu. And, also, partially takes from the article My (Personal) Hope for the Future of Arbitrum: The Largest Digital Sovereign Nation from @ajwarner90.
Initially, I intended to prepare an SOS proposal centered on creating a clear and unified builder funnel within the DAO. My idea involved building a strategic path for protocols that could seamlessly connect several existing DAO initiatives into a coherent builder lifecycle. A practical example could see a protocol start from a defined initial grants in the D.A.O. program, with tracks voted/aligned with DAO, Foundation, and Offchain Labs objectives, and then proceed through, for example, the recently approved Audit Grant Program, opting into ADPC proposal for to get infra support, and evolving ultimately toward direct investment by the DAO (as opposed to traditional incentives).
What I am posting, while has been for months a personal idea, has also been shared and been communicated in way much better than mine by several other stakeholders, including among others the ARDC report on grants with a specific section on this topic (including below a screenshot from the slides, credit to @CastleCapital and @DefiLlama_Research).
Regardless of the paternity of the idea, is clear that to achieve such path, a central orchestrator would need to continuously track protocols on Arbitrum, identify market trends, and maintain awareness of what is happening in competing ecosystems like Base and Solana.
Such a unified builder pathway would allow protocols to enter or exit at multiple stages, receive sustained and strategic support from the DAO, and culminate in the DAO becoming not only a strategic partner but also a direct beneficiary of protocol success, both economically and reputationally.
However, upon reviewing existing SOS proposals, especially Entropy’s “Objective 1: Arbitrum is Recognized as the Indisputable Number One Home for Builders”, Max’s detailed funnel outlined in point 4, and Aj’s overarching vision, I noticed significant overlaps. For this reason, instead of presenting a separate proposal, I’ve decided to provide general feedback on Entropy’s proposal, implicitly addressing Max’s and Aj’s visions as well.
Current Gap: Moving Beyond “Supporting Builders” as an overarching but vague goal
Currently, across various discussions and proposals, it’s common (and frankly too easy) to say we “want to support builders.” Yet historically, as a DAO, we’ve not approached builder support with enough depth or clarity, in term of both strategy and execution. Past initiatives (STIP, LTIPP, STIP.b) reflected a simplistic and transactional approach—something that Aj highlighted clearly in his recent Blockworks podcast interview as initiatives often executed for the sake of “doing things.”
(I suggest everybody to watch it, is worth it).
The results can’t in all honestly be defined as a failure. The DAO always discuss about ROI of past incentive programs, and in general ROI of incentives/grants, with maybe also some data analysis behind, but we never discuss about second order effect such as what would have been of the Arbitrum ecosystem without these programs. But is instead quite easy to say that results have been suboptimal.
We need to explicitly challenge ourselves to go beyond simplistic builder incentives. The greatest strength of Arbitrum, its technological excellence and the credible neutrality aligned closely with Ethereum, is by itself not sufficient to guarantee Arbitrum becoming builders’ main destination. I’m going to state a very superficial truth about market, sorry in advance about being so superficial: technology alone rarely wins competitive market battles. We have multiple historical examples, for people old enough PalmOS vs. Windows Phone first, and Android later, or Dreamcast vs Playstation.
In my opinion, explicitly clarifying how we will strategically and practically support builders in the DAO is a priority: the importance of the topic is such that it demands more specificity than what we’ve currently outlined or historically executed.
But my comment here is not a full around critic or contradictory to what Entropy, AJ and Max posted, rather, should be seen as complementary. It represents a specification / elaboration from a builder’s standpoint, highlighting that even the detailed builder-focused sections (such as Max’s funnel or Entropy’s objectives around ecosystem support) lack explicit operational ownership and long-term strategic oversight. This point is crucial and should be ideally articulate; if not possible, put on the table in a more important light.
Some delegates will obviously note how, effectively, OCL and Foundation do, indeed, talk with builders. This is effectively true, and also my personal experience through Jones and Camelot for example, and is also the reason why I advocated for both AJ and Patric in the OAT: one of the hope I have for both is them spilling over these conversations into the DAO, helping creating that missing link which will hopefully culminate in the DAO being a strategic partner of protocols.
At the same time, I don’t think it would be enough.
Recent examples: what DAO thinks protocols want vs what protocols really want
There is a gap between the DAO and the builders. One of the many examples we can find is about the recently rejected Pattern proposal about incentives and acquisition offchain of users.
The situation is quite paradoxal: the last incentive program ended in September, and we have been without it for 7 months. You would think that, at least protocols, would be in favour of such an initiative, at least to kickstart the incentive narrative again which, regardless attracting mercenary capital, is usually positive for protocols since the growth of numbers correspond to also a growth of revenue.
Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, everybody can see how most votes have been casted against also by protocols. Scrolling the discussion and interviewing protocols, show that despite Pattern did a great job in addressing or trying to address some of the issues of past programs, the proposal is still far away from solving what protocols perceive instead as problems. We are talking about the same protocols who lived, first hand, STIP, LTIPP and STIP.b.
This is even more baffling if we think about the several detox incentive calls we have had for months hosted by L2Beats, and is honestly not fault of Pattern who did a good job: the main issue lays instead in the current disconnection of the Arbitrum DAO from Arbitrum protocols.
(note, this is not a critique to Pattern: they did spend a ton of time and resources for their proposal, I loved how they tried to have an analytic + marketing approach which were two huge gaps of previouses incentive programs, the vote and discussion just happens to be the most recent example fitting the narrative).
Clarifying Ownership and Strategic Intent
As we approach voting on SOS proposals, it’s fundamental that the DAO acknowledges clearly this existing strategic gap: we currently lack explicit ownership of the “builder vertical.”
We all understand that finalizing operational specifics and exact KPIs is probably premature at this stage for this topic. In addtion, we also don’t want to specify the “perfect plan” everytime in every proposal, and my goal is not to push for Entropy, Aj, Max, or for what is worth anybody in the DAO to put up now a plan for builders.
At the same time, ideally we would explicitly clarify who will ultimately take responsibility for strategically managing relationships with protocols and builders: either existing, or new Arbitrum-Aligned Entities.
If assigning immediate ownership is challenging or premature, it’s at least necessary for all AAEs to clearly commit to addressing this specific gap as soon as possible. Whether this occurs before the SOS vote, immediately after, or upon the formation of OpCo’s complete operational structure (OAT + Chief of OpCo), it should remain a clearly defined strategic priority.
If there is already a plan now, it would be worth spelling it out and put it in the spotlight; if there is no plan, acknowledge explicetly the gap, more than what we are doing now, and start providing a more strategic answer.
I don’t currently have a strong opinion on the how: I don’t know if it should be the DAO to create a specific vertical entity, if the ownership should fall in the lap of already existing DAO entities that could hire the equivalent of Head of Defi and Head of Growth figures, or if OCL/AF should just start to operate in a way that involves more directly the DAO on this topic.
I just know we need to do more.
Despite the current AAE setting being a good start, especially with a direct involvement of OCL/AF, I prefer to double down on this extremely important gap and put ourself in the situation of overallocating energy time and resources to it, compared to wake up in 6 months, 1 year, 2 years from now and say to ourself in the mirror that we didn’t did enough.
This path starts through explicitly addressing the gap as a collective and committ to a resolution.
We have the best tech in the business, we have the only DAO with full control of the treasury, we are building relationships with institutions, and is clear how in time of volatility and market turmoil users “go to Arbitrum” because is the most robust and reliable system to manage your assets. Let’s create an environment in which the DAO and the AAEs are, indeed, the most precious allies of builders.