Title: Introduce Contributor Onboarding to Arbitrum DAO
Non-constitutional AIP
Problem statement: In a bull market, human-led onboarding processes cannot scale with the number of new contributors coming in without deploying extensive resources.
Proposed solution: Build an autonomous onboarding process that helps new members orient and understand how the Arbitrum DAO works and how to contribute to the ecosystem. This onboarding flow will include key information and sources of truth for new members learning the ropes.
Why it’s important: DAOs are the sum of their contributors. Having contributors that know how to contribute makes the entire DAO work more smoothly. Not every contributor has the bandwidth to orient themselves by reading backlogs of Discord and the forum. By establishing a clear onboarding process, new members all have the same baseline set of information when starting their DAO journey.
Abstract
This proposal explores the problem space and proposes a three-month experiment in building out an Autonomous Incubator for the DAO.
Motivation
DAOs are built by their contributors, and The Arbitrum DAO already clearly has a thriving community. But as we enter a bull market, there will be floods of new faces pouring into every DAO in the space. Our goal is to ensure the new Arbitrum DAO contributors are well-equipped to contribute and add value to the DAO.
Specifications
Here are a few solutions we’ve explored as a team:
Solution 1: Mentor-mentee (determined too difficult to scale):
@jengajojo , who supported and advised this proposal, is pioneering a mentor-mentee program for new delegates at Optimism. We explored setting up mentors and mentees, or even a talent scout program similar to what was successful in BanklessDAO, but after discussion determined that it would be too challenging to scale so we continued to solution 2 and 3.
Solution 2: Onboarding flow—Autonomous Incubator:
The onboarding flow is an automated email workflow that delivers emails to new members after they sign up for the forum. Each email will contain a video and a summary of key points. Members can opt out at any time. We believe this will be both effective at reaching new members and have low costs of maintaining, since it will basically run autonomously.
Solution 3:Governance Hub—Arbitrum GovHub:
A next step after the launch of the Autonomous Incubator could be to launch the Arb GovHub, which takes inspiration from Gitcoin Passport. In the GovHub, new members could watch the onboarding videos, read the handbook, and connect with other new members in dedicated sessions. The GovHub would be a friendly, welcoming homebase for all new DAO members.
Steps to Implement
Below, we have outlined new contributor onboarding steps along with our video presentation (Click Loom link here):
Onboarding email flow
New forum joiners will be added to an automated email flow, which they can opt out of at any time. Here’s the example of our onboarding email flow.
Video Pack
These videos will be token-gated to 1 ARB token using Livepeer
- What is Arbitrum? Overview of the technology and founding of Arbitrum
- What is the Arbitrum DAO and its role in the greater ecosystem
- How does governance work at Arbitrum
- How to connect with the Arbitrum community online and IRL
Samantha will lead this and record the videos. She produces video onboarding content regularly for Aragon.
Contributor Handbook
The contributor handbook will be the source of truth for new members joining the DAO. Think of it as a map for navigating the DAO and learning how to plug in.
- Includes information presented in the videos
- Can be viewed/printed as a pdf, or explore printing and distributing at events (Samantha has made printed zines so has experience doing this)
- Will include interviews and stories from Arbitrum DAO contributors to show the strength of the community
- Samantha will head up production of this. She has organized and produced something similar to this, called the DAO Anthology dropped with Metalabel. She also has a background in writing and journalism and would love to interview community members to put this together.
Arbitrum GovHub built in collaboration with Together Crew
Another option we would like to explore is building a digital Hub that all new contributors can land in immediately after joining the forum. @decentralizedceo will head up this side.
- In the GovHub, new members could watch the onboarding videos, read the handbook, and connect with other new members in dedicated sessions—all in one UI.
- The GovHub would be a friendly, welcoming homebase for all new DAO members and help them get oriented.
- It could be token-gated using a platform like Guild.
- Another option to explore: translating the GovHub content in Spanish and Mandarin, leveraging the Media Nodes translation project in BanklessDAO.
Overall Cost
We request 50,000 ARB tokens to complete this project. We expect it will take about 3 months. We will set up a multisig of contributors on this project.
Team
Our team is composed of Samantha (Aragon), DecentralizedCEO (GreenPill), and Heather (Giveth), with support and advice from Jenga JoJo (DAOplomats).
Team lead: Samantha Marin, @ samanthajmarin on Telegram