Thank ARB monthly update: June 2024
Hi there, Arbitrum community 
I am Julian, and I am the Thank ARB MarComms Manager. I’m working with the Thank ARB team to deliver Thank ARB Milestone 1b. Welcome to our June 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. This update 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
Belo, you can see the close-out status of the Milestone 1 programs as of May 31st, 2024. 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 | |
| Open Data Intelligence | PAID | Evan Powell | |
| Biggest mini-grants Joke Race | PAID | Diana Chen | |
| Gitcoin Match | Complete - Payment pending | Zer8 | July |
| MEV Research | In Progress | Lexicon Governance | July |
| Grant Ships | In Progress | DAO Masons | August |
1b Milestone 1b programs
Request for Program Proposals
We received a whopping 120 program ideas for our RFP process for innovative program ideas, of which 64 (53%) passed our initial screening for spam, scams, and AI generation. We selected 22 applicants to receive a 1,000 ARB planning grant to refine their proposal before making a final selection. We compensated applicants for putting time and resources into designing a good program and hosted two workshops geared towards helping applicants refine their allocation mechanism, metrics, and overall execution plan.
As a result, we saw applications that were much improved, geared toward top-level objectives for the Arbitrum Ecosystem as a whole, and oriented toward those ecosystem goals that delegates deem most important for grant programs. We also received overwhelmingly positive feedback that applicants found this process both helpful, educational, and fun! 
Each application was reviewed by a minimum of 5 of 18 external reviewers sourced from the Arbitrum community. We then selected the eight applicants scoring the highest across four rubrics for funding. The selected programs will run from June to September.
We are so excited to be funding the following grant programs 
- Amplifying Impact – Bonus Funding for Outstanding GG20 Arbitrum Round Projects
- Cartographer Syndicate
- Farcaster Builder Program
- GIV-Arb Ecosystem Accelerator Program
- Oasis Onchain Quick Grants
- Oxcart Delegation Engine
- ReFi in Arbitrum
- RWA Innovation Grants (RWAIG)
X/Twitter Spaces with M1b Grant Programs
For Thank ARB’s Grant-a-palooza X/Twitter space series, we kicked off weekly spaces with the grant programs we selected 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. We’ve covered 3 grant programs so far and have scheduled others in the following weeks on every Wednesday.
Representing Thank ARB in other X/Twitter spaces
Our members, @DisruptionJoe and @BenWest, have been providing thought leadership in various X/Twitter spaces as guest speakers. They continue to promote Thank ARB and the great work we’ve been doing while having high level conversations about grants and the Arbitrum ecosystem.
- CCN Round Updates: Karma Gap + more - Hosted by Climate Coordination Network
- Decentralizing Grants - Hosted by Push DAO
- Oasis Onchain Quick Grants: AMA with Thank Arbitrum - Hosted by Oasis Onchain
Gitcoin Grants 20 (GG20)
Thank ARB helped facilitate Gitcoin Grants 20 round that was built on the Arbitrum tech stack, which was helpful to our program’s ability to generate results for the Arbitrum DAO for a few different reasons.
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Being part of the quarterly grants program differs significantly from simply using Gitcoin’s tools.
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We observed that 9,095 wallets transacted on Arbitrum for the first time in April or May
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8,879 (25.40%) of donors in GG20 were new to Arbitrum
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216 (41.38%) of grantees were new to Arbitrum
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360 contracts were deployed by these addresses in Q2 2024 - a 47% increase from Q1 2024
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These big competitive QF rounds attract additional funding directly from individual contributors who are motivated to vote with their wallets.
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The impact of every dollar spent expanded when it was matched by at least 50%.
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200k donated to matching pools and the remainder of the initial 1 million coming directly from Gitcoin, with a total of 1 million if you included community rounds run independently at the time of the round.
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Over 600,000 USDC equivalent to the round overall - more funding for builders in our ecosystem.
GG20 successfully met our immediate goals:
- Allocated 100k across four Open Source Software rounds, which is a key area of focus for ARB
- Distributed 100k among community rounds selected by the elected Community Council
- Budgeted an additional 100k for incentives based on impact assessments (might give details on how this went and tie to the results of the round being the best in some time)
- Facilitated 35,473 total addresses transacting on Arbitrum, which included 34,951 addresses contributing over 600,000 USDC-equivalent to 522 grantees. Including matching funds from Gitcoin, the end 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.
Firestarters
The Firestarters program aims to address urgent needs and high-impact areas for the Arbitrum DAO by linking problem identification with community-driven resource allocation. 
Grant sizes range from $5,000 to $50,000.
Our decentralized group of fifty high-context Arbitrum community members have reviewed 29 applications to date and selected the following projects for funding:
| Project | AI-generated summary of program description | Funded Amount |
|---|---|---|
| SheFi [Maggie Love] | SheFi empowers professional women and non-binary individuals to reinvent their careers in Web3 through an 8-week immersive program and large-scale in-person events, focusing on infrastructure, DeFi, and consumer blockchain use cases. Funding SheFi would enable the creation of content and quests related to the Arbitrum ecosystem, provide scholarships, sponsor community events, and develop a contributor program in collaboration with Arbitrum DAO. | ARB 50,000.00 |
| Arbimistic Governance Module [Axis Advisory] | Review and assess the Arbitrum Core Governor contracts with a focus on OpenZeppelin modules and the integration of the EasyTrack Governor mechanism for compatibility and security. Develop, test, and deploy the EasyTrack Governor, including modifications to the voting logic, proposal state transitions, and hierarchical governance structures, followed by thorough documentation of changes, architecture, and usage guidelines | ARB 24,000.00 |
| Web3 University Incubator [Farstar] | The Web3 University Incubator pilot, called the Summer School, will feature a 2-week intensive in-person program in London followed by 4 weeks of online support, leveraging our extensive experience in top universities globally and strong connections with blockchain societies at Imperial College, UCL, Oxford, and Cambridge. We aim to select 6-8 teams for an August kickoff, anticipate participation from organizations like A16Z, and leverage Farstar’s extensive experience in tech investments and Web3 to deliver a world-class program, which can be replicated in other countries through the newly established Farstar Swarms DAO. | ARB 33,333.00 |
| Gardens [Gardens DAO] | This program will fund Conviction Voting pools using Gardens v2, aimed at specific verticals within the Arbitrum ecosystem to build small, knowledgeable communities. Deliverables include creating a Gardens v2 Community with ARB as the staking token, establishing a Council Safe, publishing a Covenant, and creating 5-10 targeted Conviction Voting pools, with the first pool funded within 2 months and all funds distributed within a year, tracking metrics like TVL, daily active users, and qualitative surveys. | ARB 33,333.00 |
| Gitcoin Passport [Gitcoin Passport] | Gitcoin Passport seeks to use this grant to extend its onchain attestations to Arbitrum, expanding from its current support for OP and Linea, with over 100k wallets attesting to unique humanity. This extension will increase data availability and generate transaction activity on Arbitrum, with deliverables including the deployment of attestations on Arbitrum, schema deployment, and tracking, and integration within Passport, aiming for users to publish onchain attestations and enable new use cases such as devcon ticketing and role-based delegation on Arbitrum. | ARB 24,000.00 |
| Arbitrum Hub - The Gateway to Seamless Navigation and Exploration in the ArbitrumDAO Ecosystem [BoldPanther] | Our project developed a comprehensive Sync Platform for the Arbitrum DAO, featuring key web pages such as the homepage, community hub, grant hub, work-group hub, proposal hub, blog, network activity page, ecosystem page, partners, branding & press, and career page. Implementing a markdown-based system for easy content management and thorough documentation, the five-month phased development resulted in increased user engagement, streamlined processes, improved usability, enhanced transparency, and growth in the Arbitrum ecosystem through better visibility and collaboration. | ARB 33,333.00 |
| Polity GRADE (Grant Review and Decision Enhancement) Programme [Ethelo Decisions] | Polity’s GRADE wizard enhances grant evaluations for Arbitrum DAO managers through a custom upgrade of Ethelo’s Member Area, allowing for easy use of templates, CSV & JSON data uploads, and multi-criteria decision-making tools. Supporting both individual and team use, it enables participatory evaluations for groups from 5 to 10,000+, presenting real-time results and includes a grant evaluation template, a custom evaluation hub, direct data uploads, and comprehensive training and support. Metrics focus on reducing grant evaluation time by 90%, optimizing the value of grants, and enhancing alignment with strategic priorities, with a structured timeline for pilot evaluation, training, and full deployment. | ARB 20,000.00 |
| Total | ARB 217,999.00 |
Closing Thank ARB Season 10
Thank ARB Season 10 (Milestone 1b) was focused on 4 main targets: Supporting Gitcoin’s GG20 round that was facilitated on Arbitrum, RFP applications, Firestarter applications, and engaging the wider Arbitrum ecosystem with educational opportunities such as learning more about the DAO, Orbit chains, and Stylus.
We saw a 163% increase in contributor number from previous season to this season - 713 contributors to 1,876. Not only did we see a large increase in contributors, they engaged with Thank ARB contributions on a more frequent basis - 713 contributions to 4,693 for a 558% increase in engagement with our platform.
We’re continuing to refine our strategy to further engage the community to maximize value creation within Arbitrum with our recently launched Season 11, Thriving Arbitrum Summer.
2. Oversight Board & Milestone Delivery Tracking
Board meetings
In June, we held three 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, we always include the agenda, a recording, and a transcript.
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 May 31, 2024. Feel free to use the link to the live version to follow along during the month.
One highlight from the month included …
3. Finances & grant spending
M1 spending
In May, we paid out a total of 256,138 ARB to get one step closer to closing out all Milestone 1 programs. We made the following payments:
- 11,750 ARB to r3gen Finance Token Flow Reporting, which was funded under the M1 Firestarters Program
- 100,00 ARB to the Pluralistic MEV Research Tooling program
- 25,350 to Gitcoin Citizen Match
- 90,462.91 ARB to the Open Data Community “Permissionless Suggestion Box” program
- 11,700 ARB to Grant Ships
- 16,875 ARB to the JokeRace “Our Biggest Mini Grants Yet” program
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 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.