Hi there Arbitrum community 
This is Kat, the Thank ARB Grants Manager, and I’m working with the Thank ARB team to deliver the Thank ARB program. We have hit the ground running and wanted to give you an update on all the things that happened in April 2024. If you have any questions, feedback, or ideas, feel free to leave a comment. 
Welcome to our April monthly status update! This ongoing report series serves as both a monthly summary of our work and an ongoing record of our progress. Additionally, this report is intended to be a transparent clearinghouse of information related to the operations of the Thank ARB (formerly known as Plurality Labs) grants program. To enable this, this update has sections for program updates, deliverables tracking, financial details, and our asks of the community.
Before we jump into updates on programs, milestones, and finances, we would like to celebrate three new members joining the Thank ARB team this month 
@rebecca joined as Grants Architect and is leading the charge to facilitate the progressive decentralization of our community assessment and review process. This is a big, complicated, and exciting step forward for this program.
@katharina_thrive (hi, that’s me ) joined as Grants Program Manager and assists clients from start to finish through onboarding, training, implementation, evaluations, and gathering feedback.
@JZhao joined as Marketing & Communications Manager and works cross-functionally to help our partners exceed their goals by creating and managing content, creating distribution strategies, and ensuring continual alignment with our deployment objectives.
1. Program updates:
This section provides a series of brief updates as to the progression of our currently active suite of Arbitrum Plurality Grant Programs.
1a Historical programs
Below you can see the close-out status of the Milestone 1 programs. As you can see, seven programs are completed and paid, three are incomplete and in the process of being paid, and two are still running.
| Project name | Status | Project Manager | Expected payment completion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Arbitrum Citizen’s Retro Funding | PAID | Zer8 | |
| Arbitrum Co.Lab by RnDAO | PAID | RNDao | |
| Firestarters by PL | PAID | Disruption Joe | |
| Questbook Support Rounds | PAID | Zer8 | |
| Sense and Respond: Thank ARB | PAID | Martin | |
| GovBoost by PL | PAID | Disruption Joe | |
| Gitcoin Hack on Allo | PAID | Buidlbox | |
| Biggest mini-grants Joke Race | Complete - partially paid, partially KYC Pending | Diana Chen | May |
| Gitcoin Match | Complete - KYC pending | Zer8 | May |
| Open Data Intelligence | Complete - KYC pending | Evan Powell | May |
| Grant Ships | In Progress | DAO Masons | July |
| MEV Research | In Progress | Lexicon Governance | June |
1b Milestone 1b programs
Request for Program Proposals
We launched an RFP process for innovative program ideas and program managers. You can read all about it in this announcement forum post.
This initiative aims to draw a wide range of innovative ideas for grant programs and pinpoint forward-thinking program managers to lead them. We are committed to strategic funding that emphasizes plurality, diversity, and meets the immediate needs of the Arbitrum DAO, paving the way for transformative change. There’s approximately 3 million ARB of funding available, which will be distributed across 5-10 programs. We encouraged applicants to consider scalability in their proposals, focusing on achieving a “one dollar in, two dollars out” impact. Applications closed at the end of April, and decisions will be made by a decentralized group of reviewers in mid-May. We have finalized the rubrics for both. The selected programs are expected to roll out from June to September.
Gitcoin Grants 20 (GG20)
The Thank ARB program has enthusiastically embarked on a collaboration with Gitcoin Grants 20 (GG20), marking the first time all core rounds and Allo protocol V2 operate exclusively on Arbitrum. This significant transition has moved all grant contracts and proposals under Arbitrum, streamlining donor contributions and matching fund payouts through this platform for Gitcoin’s 20th quarterly grants round.
This initiative has already drawn approximately 35,000 users, many of whom are new to the community, and generated approximately 5 million on-chain transactions. With over $1.5 million in matching funds available, the transaction volume exceeded $2 million equivalent on ARB.
The application period for these opportunities opened on April 2nd and closed on April 16th. The donation phase began on April 23rd and will run until May 7th. Thrive Protocol is supercharging the Gitcoin grants round, aiming to create a flywheel effect where strategic rewards and the assessment of impact together generate epic wins for our community. These strategic rewards have been designed for diverse roles within the community, from builders and promoters to curators, to boost involvement and attract top talent to our ecosystem.
Key initiatives include the Thank ARB Builders Bonus and substantial rewards for hosting engaging Twitter Spaces. The goal of these efforts is to expand community engagement, increase transaction volumes, and promote wider adoption of the Arbitrum infrastructure. This synergistic approach is enhancing the vitality and reach of the Arbitrum ecosystem during this grant round and beyond.
2. Oversight Board & Milestone Delivery Tracking
Board meetings
In April we held four Oversight Board meetings. We started publishing weekly updates on the forum to keep you in the loop on what is discussed at these board meetings. For transparency, we always include the agenda, a recording, and a transcript.
We also finalized the Oversight Board Charter, which lays out the objectives, rights and responsibilities, culture and conduct and success metrics of the board, and sets how conflicts of interest, per diems, decision-making and meetings are to be handled.
Milestones Delivery Tracking
We’ve renamed the delivery scorecard into the milestones delivery tracker, have reworked it significantly, and have given it a little facelift. This document shows our monthly progress towards each deliverable. Here’s the status of our milestones as of April 30, 2024. Feel free to use the link to the live version to follow along during the month.
One highlight from the month include the first DAO workshop led by @DisruptionJoe on April 23, 2024, on Arbitrum ecosystem goals. To find out more read the forum post.
3. Finances & grant spending
M1 spending
In April we made four payments for a total of 129,832 ARB to get one step closer to closing out all Milestone 1 programs. We made the following payments:
- 32,500 ARB to 13 JokeRace “Our Biggest Mini Grants Yet” recipients
- 2,432 ARB to GovHack EthDenver, which was funded under the GovBoost program
- 4,900 ARB for grant process buildout and optimization, which was funded under Firestarters
- 90,000 ARB for the grants DAO Masons will distribute as part of Grant Ships
You can see, which programs still remain open in the program update section above.
M1b spending
None yet, but feel free to view our working budget. 
I hope this monthly update has been insightful and helpful for you. If you have any questions, please leave a comment!
If you have ideas for how to improve upon how we keep the community informed and involved, feel free to share your ideas and suggestions.
Cheers,
Kat
Thank ARB Grants Manager