Hi there, Arbitrum community 
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. This report provides updates on programs, deliverables tracking, financial details, and our asks of the community.
As always, if you have any questions, feedback, or ideas, feel free to leave a comment. 
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(a) programs as of July 31st, 2024. All but one program are now completed and paid out.
| 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 | |
| Open Data Intelligence | PAID | Evan Powell | |
| Biggest mini-grants Joke Race | PAID | Diana Chen | |
| Gitcoin Match | PAID | Zer8 | |
| MEV Research | PAID | Lexicon Governance | |
| Grant Ships | In Progress | DAO Masons | August |
1b Milestone 1b programs
Allocator Programs
- Applications received: 122 - submitted program ideas
- Passed stage 1 screening: 64 (53%)
- Passed stage 2 screening: 20 (16%) - selected for planning grants
- Approved for funding: 8 (7%)
| Allocator Programs | Total Funding (to be distributed) |
|---|---|
| Amplifying Impact - Bonus Funding for Outstanding GG20 Arbitrum round projects | 296,000 ARB |
| Cartographer Syndicate | 330,000 ARB |
| Farcaster Builder Program | 273,000 ARB |
| GIV-ARB Ecosystem Accelerator Program | 162,1000 ARB |
| Oasis Onchain Quick Grants | 85,752 ARB |
| Oxcart Delegation Engine | 82,000 ARB |
| ReFi in Arbitrum | 320,000 ARB |
| RWA Innovation Grants | 335,000 ARB |
Firestarters
Firestarters aims to rapidly address urgent needs within the Arbitrum DAO by empowering a decentralized group of community members to allocate resources and continuously improve projects through feedback loops. Grant allocations are under ARB 50,000. This program is managed directly by the Thank ARB team, with reviews outsourced to a group of decentralized reviewers from the Arbitrum community.
- Applications received: 70
- Passed screening: 50 (71%)
- Approved for funding: 15 (21%)
| Firestarter Grantees | Total Funding (to be distributed) |
|---|---|
| Arbimistic Governance Module (Optimistic Governance Module) | 24,000 ARB |
| Arbitrum Treasury and Sustainability Working Group | 48,000 ARB |
| Astral | 29,311 ARB |
| Farstar Web3 University Incubator | 33,333 ARB |
| Forse Analytics | 50,000 ARB |
| Gardens | 30,000 ARB |
| Gitcoin Passport | 24,000 ARB |
| Grant Ships | 50,000 ARB |
| Granting Access | 4,800 ARB |
| Hypercerts for Arbitrum | 50,000 ARB |
| Oxcart Delegation Engine | 37,000 ARB |
| Polity GRADE (Grant Review & Decision Enhancement) Program | 20,000 ARB |
| SheFi | 50,000 ARB |
| The OASIS | 17,264 ARB |
| Web3 Grants Registry - Data & Analytics with Open Source Observer | 32,350 ARB |
Gitcoin GG20
Gitcoin GG20 ran entirely on Arbitrum due to a strong partnership formed during Thank ARB M1(a). Consequently all grantee proposals, donations and smart contracts deployed on Gitcoin were moved to Arbitrum. M1b contributed $200k to matching pools with the remainder of the $1M mathing pool coming directly from Gitcoin. Individual donors added over 600k USDC equivalent to the round overall.
- Observed 9,095 wallets transacted on Arbitrum for the first time in April or May
- 8,879 (25.40%) of GG20 donors were new to Arbitrum
- 216 (41.38%) of grantees were new to Arbitrum
- Facilitated 35,473 total addresses transacting on Arbitrum, the result was transactions totaling more than 2 million USD on Arbitrum during GG20
- Doubled the number of open source projects from the previous rounds which meant a wider range of excellent projects to potentially support and attract into the Arbitrum ecosystem
July has been focused on the Execute stage of 1b Milestone. With newly captured data revolving around milestone updates and progress reports from our allocator programs and grantees, we’re evaluating the successes and failures of these programs.
This will ultimately lead to ‘cuts’ in our cut/coach/grow process - underperforming programs that fail to reach target milestones will not receive continued funding originally allocated to their program, thus saving the Arbitrum DAO experimental funding that would otherwise be ineffective and wasted.
X/Twitter Spaces with M1b Grant Programs
For the month of July, we continued Thank ARB’s Grant-a-palooza X/Twitter space series to generate additional awareness and have in-depth conversations with its program managers to cover the projects they’re looking to fund, the funding mechanisms they’ll be using, and how they plan on making an impact within Arbitrum.
- Cartographer Syndicate
- ReFi in Arbitrum
- RWA Innovation Grants (RWAIG)
- Oasis Onchain Quick Grants
- Farcaster Builder Program
- GIV-ARB Ecosystem Accelerator Program
- Amplifying Impact Program
- Oxcart Delegation Program
Thank ARB Season 11 on Thrive Protocol
Thank ARB Season 11, Thriving Arbitrum Summer, is an ongoing season that focuses on supporting our allocator programs and grantees with various contributions that onboard them and their community into the Thank ARB ecosystem.
With a little over a month in the season, we’ve captured over 4,800 contributions for the Arbitrum ecosystem and the number will grow rapidly in August as these allocator programs begin funding their grantees, along with Gitcoin Grants 21 round coming around the corner - expect much more activity as these programs get active.
More contribution opportunities will launch to continue supporting all of our programs in the growth stage of these experiments.
Additionally, we will continue to provide decentralized review opportunities as we evaluate the output, outcomes, and impact of grantees and grant programs.
2. Oversight Board & Milestone Delivery Tracking
Board meetings
In July, we held our monthly Oversight Board meetings. We continued publishing weekly updates on the forum to keep the community in the loop on what was discussed at these board meetings. For transparency, you can listen in to the board meeting and hear what was discussed.
Milestones Delivery Tracking
Our milestones delivery tracker reflects our weekly progress towards each deliverable of the Thank ARB pluralistic grants program Milestone 1b. Here’s the status of our milestones as of July 31, 2024. Feel free to use the link to the live version to follow along during the month.
One highlight from the month is that after reviewing progress and ongoing efforts of our program allocators, we’re close to cutting an underperforming program. The learnings we gathered from this program is that social media-centered impact is difficult to quantify and without clearly defined milestones it’s much more difficult to quantify value creation.
We’ve determined that further funding these efforts will not provide equal or more value back to Arbitrum and the DAO. Once this is finalized and the program has been notified of our decision, we’ll be able to share more details.
3. Finances & grant spending
M1 spending
In July, we paid out a total of ARB 108,764.20 to get one step closer to closing out all Milestone 1 programs. We made the following payments:
- ARB 100,000.00 to the Pluralistic MEV Research Tooling program
- ARB 7,161.00 to Gitcoin Citizen Match
- ARB 1,603.20 to the Open Data Community “Permissionless Suggestion Box” program
As of now, the only M1b program spending left is the final disbursement for Grant Ships once they finalize their last milestone. This is delayed due to the amount of development work they needed to do to gain practical insights from improvements made based on their first round of funding grants. There are also a few grantees which we are waiting on milestone updates to make their final payments.
You can see which programs still remain open in the program update section above.
M1b spending
In July, we paid out a total of ARB 323,528.00 toward our programs.
- ARB 1.00 to the Cartographer Syndicate, a grant allocator program
- ARB 240,000.00 to GG20, an ecosystem allocator
- ARB 33,757.00 for Thank ARB participation incentives
- ARB 34,770.00 for the Grant Impact Index, mostly going toward rewarding our decentralized reviewers
- ARB 15,000.00 for oversight board per diems
I hope you found this monthly update insightful and helpful. If you have any questions, please leave a comment! Additionally, if you have suggestions on how we can better inform and involve the community, feel free to share your ideas.