Hey Max! I really like your SOS submission, we agree on a lot of things.
Let me go through all the pillars of your proposal and give you feedback + some open questions I have. I structured my feedback into sections (1a, 1b, 2a, etc.) so that it’s easier to read through and respond to specific parts.
1) Pillar 1: Empower builders to succeed
This is where there’s the most overlap between our matrices - mainly because my matrix focuses solely on distribution, while yours takes a more holistic approach and covers other areas too (giving premium to ARB, DAO internal processes etc.)
1a) As you’ve pointed out in your builders’ funnel image, the most important part of the funnel is distribution, aka acquiring users. Builders want to build where users are, and we cannot expect from most of them to be able to bring users themselves.
Most builders are great at building tech, but not necessarily at marketing or awareness. So if the DAO focuses on that part, we can attract more builders to Arbitrum.
1b) Other important parts in this pillar are increasing liquidity, RWAs, and yield innovation - which also overlaps with the SOS matrices by @tnorm (link) and @Gabriel (link). Perhaps we could all work together on a joint final SOS matrix submission.
2) Pillar 2: Give premium to ARB
This is a very interesting concept that often feels overlooked in the DAO, even though it is crucial for the long-term stability of our DAO, since ARB is our governance token.
So thinking seriously about how to give ARB a premium is important, and I agree it should be included in the final SOS matrix.
2a) One option is staking, as mentioned in your proposal. We could use ARB as the yield, but that might create additional sell pressure. Instead, we could distribute a portion of the revenue from Timeboost, but we don’t yet know how much sustainable revenue it’ll generate.
So for staking, I’d suggest a wait-and-see approach and evaluate it after at least a year of Timeboost being live. This also aligns with what @tnorm mentioned during his SOS presentation on April 14.
2b) There might be other ways to give ARB a premium though. At the Governance Day event in Bangkok last year, @krst from L2beat said he believes that in the future, institutions who will use Arbitrum will want to have a say in the governance, which means they will be interested in holding ARB tokens.
Since working with institutions will likely be part of the final SOS matrix, we should also think about how to encourage them to hold ARB, not just integrate Arbitrum.
2c) Besides that, what do you believe could be other ways to give a premium to ARB?
3) Pillar 3: Innovation & Sustainability
This pillar includes many things, but there are a couple of ideas that stood out and have an overlap with some other SOS proposals.
3a) One is support for other use cases, e.g. AI infra, privacy (overlap with @404DAO), and DePIN (also suggested by @dragonawr). The main dilemma here is how much focus to give these verticals compared to DeFi.
Some SOS matrices (e.g. Tnorm’s, Gabriel’s, and mine) put a heavy emphasis on DeFi. I see a lot of chains wanting to be big in DeFi, but they struggle to acquire and retain liquidity. Arbitrum was fortunate to capture significant TVL early on, and also retain much of it without any extra incentives, but we shouldn’t take that for granted. Instead, we should double down on it.
With that said, there are other use cases besides (or even complementary to) DeFi and we shouldn’t ignore them. The question is, how much focus should we give them?
This question was also raised by @DanielO in yesterday’s SOS presentation by Tnorm, and the final conclusion was to give around 80% of focus to DeFi, and the rest to other verticals, which I find reasonable. I wonder what your opinion on this is, Max.
3b) Similarly, I’d love to hear your thoughts on Arbitrum One vs. Orbit chains. Which one should we put more focus to, and approx. in what ratio?
3c) Another interesting topic of this pillar is the workstreams idea. Basically, how to organize DAO execution and make it more effective.
This is also the main topic of SOS proposals by @SEEDGov (link) and @Entropy (the latter being very much aligned with the recent @Arbitrum Foundation’s topic on AAEs).
I wonder which of these two approaches is closer to your thinking, especially when it comes to the execution part?
From what I understand, Entropy/AF want to separate the role of a delegate from execution, while SEEDGov wants to keep at least some execution within the DAO/delegates by encouraging specialization through workstreams (@SEEDGov, please correct me if I’m wrong here).
Max, since your SOS proposal came before AF’s vision was posted, have your views on this changed after that?