JANUARY 2025
SNAPSHOT (JANUARY 2025):
Snapshot Proposal: Non-Constitutional: Stable Treasury Endowment Program 2.0
Voted: FOR
Reasoning (link):
I voted FOR the proposal on Snapshot. The operational expenses are low enough to be easily covered by the earned interest (by my calculations, expenses currently represent less than 30% of the profits - on a monthly basis). That said, I would like to see monthly expenses as a category in each report. ARB liquidation will be done by the Arbitrum Foundation, hopefully they will do it in a way that it least effects the price (e.g. OTC)
Snapshot Proposals: Arbitrum D.A.O. Season 3 Elections (domain allocators)
- New Protocols and Ideas: voted for Gabriel
- Education, Community Growth, and Events: voted for SEEDGov
- Dev Tooling on One and Stylus: voted for ariutokintumi
- Gaming: voted for Flook
Reasoning for all (link):
First of all I would like to thank everyone who put in the work and applied for any of the positions. It was hard to choose from so many very good candidates. None of them would have been a bad fit for the role, but only one can be selected for each position. I also gave a slight preference to teams over individuals, just because they can handle the workload better. Perhaps some of the applicants can team up in the future when they’ll run for domain allocators again.
In New Protocols and Ideas, I voted for Gabriel and Diego. Gabriel has been very active in the crypto space and also has extensive experience from the tradfi world, including evaluating investments for a family office. He has presented a good overview of how he intends to work as domain allocator, focusing on bold new ideas in the most important niches of crypto today, including AI which is probably the hottest of them all.
In Education, Community Growth, and Events, I voted for SEEDGov. They have past experience as domain allocator, and they have successfully demonstrated their diligent work in other initiatives, too. They have a clear vision and well-defined key factors for approval or rejection of an application.
Dev Tooling on One and Stylus - this was a tough one. All three applications are great. In the end, I went with ariutokintumi and Arturo. They are both software developers who won several hackathon prizes, organized a hackathon before (which means good connections with developers), and developed multiple libraries on their own.
In the Gaming domain I voted for Flook and Nikki. Flook brings previous experience as a domain allocator as well as experience from running a gaming studio. Nikki brings good connections with creators from the web2 world, and personal experience as a Twitch streamer.
As I said, all the candidates are great and I wish whoever is chosen all the best with their work as domain allocators!
Snapshot Proposal: The Watchdog: Arbitrum DAO’s Grant Misuse Bounty Program
Voted: FOR
Reasoning (link):
I think this is a good proposal. As for the rewards for reporting, perhaps the fixed amounts should be somewhat lower, because the 5% share of recovered funds is a good enough incentive in my opinion.
Also, the fixed amounts for rewards should be denominated in USD (but paid out in ARB), just in case the ARB price goes up significantly.
It would also make sense to have a pilot phase for the program (measured in months or until funds run out - whichever is first), and evaluate everything after it (including the platform), so that it can be properly improved upon.
Snapshot proposal: Arbitrum Strategic Objective Setting (SOS) – Defining the DAO’s Interim Goals
Voted: FOR
Reasoning (link):
This looks like a good process/protocol to define Arbitrum’s goals and objectives - and also to re-evaluate them every year. Based on these objectives, it will be easier for delegates to decide which governance proposals to support and which ones not (same goes for proposal authors).
Snapshot proposal: Proposal for Piloting Enhancements and Strengthening the Sustainability of ArbitrumHub in the Year Ahead
Voted: AGAINST
Reasoning (link):
I voted against the proposal. As I mentioned before, the team size is too big and the proposed salaries are way too high for the location the team comes from (India). An average yearly salary in India is well-below $10k. If the proposal was, let’s say, $20k per year per person (which is still very high for the region), and the team size was reduced to 3 full-time persons, I’d consider supporting the proposal even though monthly website views are not that high (1700 monthly non-unique page views). I suggest the team applies for a Questbook grant instead.
Snapshot proposal: Approve the Nova Fee Sweep Action
Voted: FOR
Reasoning (link):
I agree with the Timeboost upgrade. I’m curious to see how it affects latency and UX on Arbitrum One mainnet, but if it turns out to have unexpected issues I’m sure we can revert back to the old approach. I also support the Nova fee sweep action, it’s a no-brainer, that’s why I voted FOR the proposal.
TALLY (JANUARY 2025):
Tally Proposal: [Constitutional AIP] Activate Arbitrum BoLD + Infura Nova Validator Whitelist
Voted: FOR
Reasoning (link):
I voted FOR this proposal on Tally. I think it’s a good and necessary step towards making the Arbitrum ecosystem more secure, permissionless, and censorship-resistant.
Tally Proposal: OpCo: A DAO-adjacent Entity for Strategy Execution
Voted: AGAINST
Reasoning (link):
I voted AGAINST this proposal on Tally. While I agree with having an OpCo, I think the proposal’s budget is too high and the team size is too big. I see no point in having a full-time, in-house legal counsel, as well as some other employee roles at this point. I’ve seen in other DAOs that they started similar entities with as little as one employee and would scale later on if necessary.
The correct approach is to start lean, with a narrow scope, a short initial (pilot) phase, and then evaluate and scale the budget and the team if necessary. If the proposal was framed like that, I would have supported it.
Tally Proposal: Non-Constitutional: Stable Treasury Endowment Program 2.0
Voted: FOR
Reasoning (link):
I’m voting FOR the proposal on Tally for the same reasons as stated in my Snapshot vote.
GOVERNANCE CALLS (JANUARY 2025):
- I attended the bi-weekly Arbitrum governance call on 14 January 2025.
- I attended the bi-weekly Arbitrum governance call on 28 January 2025.