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.
Regarding Synapse, with STIP incentives their objectives were:
Regarding objective 1, we think it was met positively. The trading volume has been very good. What we noticed is that there’s a difference between what is reported in the OBL dashboards, defillama, the synapse explorer, and their own Dune, regarding the volume metrics they report in the addendum:
Also, we are concerned about the significant drop of that volume after incentives have ended:
We recommended the applicant to clarify in the addendum the difference between the dashboards and the reasons for these differences. In Discord, they explained that the difference was because the first three dashboards didn’t track the RFQ volume.
Regarding the support & grow of Arbitrum projects, it is a hard objective to measure. Synapse hasn’t provided specific data regarding the outcome of that objective.
Point 3 was not only unmet, but the TVL from Ethereum today accounts for more than 70% of Synapse, while that of Arbitrum is around 25%. For Synapse, as well as for other bridges running incentive programs, the volume coming into Arbitrum and the amount of Tx and unique users should be measured.
Something we noticed and was then brought up to the forum by Blockworks, is that they sent 750K ARB to 3 wallets without much explanation of the reason. In Discord they explained to us that The Synapse DAO voted to spend that specific allocation half on bridger rebates and half on relayer incentives, which is why those wallets received ARB. They also gave the same explanation on the forum.
Also, they used that ARB to delegate to Socrates0x, a team member of Synapse.
Both things were against the STIP rules: Altering the use of the funds and using them to delegate to one of the team members.
About incentivizing relayers, on this opportunity they are including it in the addendum:
Conclusions
This applicant has had some positive results and others not as much. They have not been thorough in the execution of the incentive distribution and have failed to comply with the STIP rules.
Additionally, we believe that the addendum still needs to justify the amount allocated to fee rebates with more data and establish objective, measurable KPIs to make the proposal’s success quantifiable for the DAO.