Thank ARB Weekly Governance Updates

[katharina_thrive]

April 26th Thank ARB Weekly Governance Update

Hi, this is Kat, the Thank ARB Grants Manager With the help of @DisruptionJoe and @BenWest from the Thank ARB Team I will be posting weekly governance updates to give the community some insight into what we’ve been working on and what’s coming up.

On April 23, the Delegate Workshop on Ecosystem Goals took place instead of a board meeting.

The Thank ARB Oversight Board meets weekly with the Thank ARB team. In the last meeting on April 16, we discussed the Request for Programs Launch, gave a status update on M1b deliverables using the scorecard, and addressed general requests for help.

View the agenda

Listen to the recording or read the transcript

Before jumping into the meeting, Rebecca and Katharina, who both joined the team in April as Grants Architect and Grants Manager, respectively, introduced themselves.

We launched the Request for Proposals for Milestone 1b

Here’s the tl;dr:

• Funding: Approximately 3 million ARB available for distribution between 5-10 programs.
• Scalability: Think about how you can demonstrate scalability and “one dollar in, two dollars out” strategy when crafting your proposals.
• Timeline: Applications closed April 30, decisions made in mid-May by a decentralized group of reviewers, programs roll out between June and September.

Read the forum post!

The scorecard is how we keep track of the Thank ARB deliverables. We’re still working on refining the format to suit us best going forward.

View the scorecard for more details.

Our main request for help was to share the link to the RFP launch forum post. Applications have now closed.

Cheers and talk to you next week,

Kat

[sejalrekhan]

Love to see these updates @katharina_thrive thanks for sharing!

[DisruptionJoe]

@DisruptionJoe

Here is a little more clarity on our Timeline

Phase 1 - Open call for applications (4/2 - 4/30)

Creation of the RFP and selection of ecosystem goals programs will support.

Phase 2 - Planning Grant Selections (5/1 - 5/10)

Selection of best program ideas, connecting them with program managers to receive a planning grant.

Phase 3 - Pilot Program Selections (5/11 - 5/23)

Reviewing the programs selected for pilots, ratifying success definitions, and reviewing with board

Phase 4 - Pilot Program Execution (5/24 - 8/9)

Facilitating the execution of grant programs, supporting compliance, coaching and documenting.

Phase 5 - Post Pilot Program Evaluations (7/22 - 8/30)

Self evaluations done by program managers. Community led and expert evaluations.

Dropping this here as a clarification on the timeline.

Phase 6 - PL M1B Reporting (9/1 - 9/30)

A comprehensive review of the results of Milestone M1B.

Additionally, the line stating that we will have a decentralized review of the applications meant to say that we would have a group of people from the ecosystem outside of us reviewing and sharing opinions, but the decisions would ultimately be made by our team. Likely, they would be in line, but there could be cases where the application looks great to surface observation and we find deep flaws or conflicts. As the accountable party, we would like to move towards full decentralization, but we aren’t quite there yet!

[katharina_thrive]

May 3rd Thank ARB Weekly Governance Update

With the help of @DisruptionJoe and @BenWest from the Thank ARB Team I will be posting weekly governance updates to give the community some insight into what we’ve been working on and what’s coming up.

On April 30th, the Thank Arb Oversight Board came together for their weekly meeting. Feel free to view the agenda, listen to the recording and follow along the transcript to stay up to date. Here’s what we discussed:

Feel free to leave any comments or questions below

Cheers,
Kat
Thank ARB Grants Manager

[katharina_thrive]

May 10th Thank ARB Weekly Governance Update

Hi community

Here’s our next weekly update! The Thank Arb Oversight board met on May 7th. Here’s what was discussed:

You can view the agenda including all relevant links to catch up or follow along with the meeting
recording and transcript.

As always, feel free to leave questions, comments, and concerns below

Cheers,
Kat
Thank Arb Grants Manager

[katharina_thrive]

May 17th Thank ARB Weekly Governance Update

Hello everyone

Here’s your weekly update! The Thank ARB Oversight board convened on May 14th to review several important topics:

You can access the agenda complete with all necessary links, to review the details or watch the meeting
recording and transcript .

As always, your questions, comments, and feedback are welcome below

Best regards,
Kat
Thank Arb Grants Manager

[katharina_thrive]

May 24th Thank ARB Weekly Governance Update

Hi community

Here’s our next weekly update! The Thank Arb Oversight board met on May 21st. Here’s what was discussed:

You can view the agenda including all relevant links to catch up or follow along with the meeting
recording or transcript.

Feel free to leave any comments or questions below

Cheers,
Kat
Thank ARB Grants Manager

[katharina_thrive]

May 31st Thank ARB Weekly Governance Update

Hello everyone

Here’s your weekly update! The Thank ARB Oversight board convened on May 28th to review several important topics:

You can access the agenda complete with all necessary links, to review the details or watch the meeting recording and transcript .

As always, your questions, comments, and feedback are welcome below

Best regards,
Kat
Thank Arb Grants Manager

[katharina_thrive]

June 7th Thank ARB Weekly Governance Update

Hi community

Here’s our next weekly update! The Thank Arb Oversight board met on June 4th. Here’s what was discussed:

You can view the agenda including all relevant links to catch up or follow along with the meeting
recording or transcript.

Feel free to leave any comments or questions below

Cheers,
Kat
Thank ARB Grants Manager

[JZhao]

Thank ARB Weekly Forum Update 6.10 - 6.14

Hello everyone! I’m Julian from the Thank ARB team and I’ll be updating everyone on our activities on a weekly basis moving forward.

Highlights of the Week

For this week, we just announced the grant programs selected by our group of high-context, decentralized reviewers. If you haven’t seen it already check out @BenWest ’s “Decentralized Review Process Summary: Thank ARB Milestone 1b” post that highlights the process we oversaw and the selections made.

Thank ARB wrapped up its Season 10 contribution listings that brought in over 120 grant program applications, over 50 Firestarter applications (number growing, still ongoing), Arbitrum ecosystem learning opportunities, and numerous other ways to engage with the Arbitrum community. Through this process, we’ve collected valuable data and are quickly learning the best reward mechanisms to incentivize community engagement for sustainable growth within Arbitrum. We’ll be kicking off Thrive ARB Season 1 very soon, so keep an eye out for that!

Meet our Grant Program Selections

To kick off our Grant-a-Palooza X/Twitter Spaces series, where we are highlighting each grant program that was funded by Thank ARB with their program managers, we are starting off with Cartographer Syndicate (Managed by @Sov ).

https://x.com/i/spaces/1odkr/i/spaces/1OdKrjzXLozKX

Join this space to get a glimpse of their program and participate in thoughtful discourse. Our Grant-a-Palooza will be held on a weekly basis so follow our X/Twitter (@ThankArbitrum) to see who we have lined up for the next space.

Thank ARB Oversight Board Meeting

The Thank ARB Oversight Board convened on June 11th to review several important topics:

You can access the agenda complete with all necessary links, to review the details or watch the meeting recording and transcript. Meeting cadence will change to biweekly going forward, so the next meeting will take place on June 25th.

As always, your questions, comments, and feedback are welcome below!

[JZhao]

Thank ARB Weekly Forum Update 6.17 - 6.21

Highlights of the Week

We’ve been working on preparing for our upcoming season, Thriving Arbitrum Summer, that we plan on kicking off by Tuesday, 6.25. We’ll have many new ways to reward the Arbitrum ecosystem for engaging with the grant programs we funded through Milestone 1b to encourage understanding and participation.

We hosted the first X/Twitter space of our Grant-a-Palooza series with Cartographer Syndicate to discuss their program in detail. You can listen to the recording here.

Meeting our Grant Program Selections

To continue our Grant-a-Palooza X/Twitter Spaces series, where we are highlighting each grant program that was funded by Thank ARB with their program managers, we have a space scheduled this week with ReFi in Arbitrum (managed by CharmVerse).

Set your X/Twitter reminder here.

Join this space to get a glimpse of their program and participate in thoughtful discourse. Our Grant-a-Palooza will be held on a weekly basis so follow our X/Twitter (@ThankArbitrum) to see who we have lined up for the next space.

Thank ARB Oversight Board Meeting

Meeting cadence has changed to biweekly so we did not have a meeting this week. The next meeting of the Thank ARB Oversight Board will take place on Tuesday, June 25th.

As always, your questions, comments, and feedback are welcome below!

[JZhao]

Thank ARB Weekly Forum Update 7.08 - 7.12

Highlights of the Week

In lieu of last week’s weekly update, we posted our comprehensive monthly update. Be sure to check it out to see everything we accomplished in June!

Thriving Arbitrum Summer has been seeing great activity since kicking off with over 1,900 contributions completed already. We are capturing all the talented builders from the M1b funded grant program applications and we’re excited to see and follow the progress of their program. Cartographer Syndicate is currently reviewing their RFP applications and ReFi in Arbitrum announced their selected projects! As for the other programs, they still have ongoing applications or haven’t started yet - more to report on soon.

We had team members @DisruptionJoe and @Katharina_thrive attend ETH CC, where Joe gave talks on How to Set Eligibility Criteria at Gitcoin’s Blank Canvas event along with sitting on a panel discussing “Why Pluralist Grants are Taking Over?” at the Grant Funding Forum before co-hosting a 1-hour workshop there with Kat on the same topic.

Prior to the EthCC fun, four of our team members in Brussels made appearances at Arbitrum’s GovHack and Arbitrum Day. Disruption Joe was both a judge for the GovHack and an “Expert Pitstop Advisor” donating his time coaching proposal creators through the process.

For the digital side of things, we continued our Grant-a-Palooza X/Twitter space series with Oasis Onchain to discuss their program in detail. You can listen to the recording here.

Meeting our Grant Program Selections

For our next Grant-a-Palooza X/Twitter Space, where we are highlighting each grant program that was funded by Thank ARB with their program managers, we have a space scheduled this week with Farcaster Builder Program (managed by JB Rubinovitz).

Set your X/Twitter reminder here.

Thank ARB Oversight Board Meeting

We have changed the board meetings to a monthly interval, with the remaining weekly time slots reserved for 1:1 meetings between each individual board member and the Thank ARB team to maximize each board member’s contribution. Our next meeting with all board members will take place on July 23, 2024, at 2 p.m. UTC.

[BenWest]

Thanks for posting the update @JZhao! I’m so excited for everyone to learn more about all the amazing projects being funded by a plurality of innovative funding mechanism. Stay tuned…

[JZhao]

Thank ARB Weekly Forum Update 7.15 - 7.19

Highlights of the Week

We continue to refine our milestone review mechanisms with the support of our team of decentralized reviewers as we work towards scalable and repeatable processes. Our M1b grant programs, Firestarters program, along with our (Gitcoin) GG20 and GG21 involvement, are all experimenting with various funding mechanisms and our objective is to identify highly effective grant strategies that Arbitrum can further leverage to maximize its value creation in new initiatives.

As our funded grant programs continue to finalize all of their application processes and valuable data from their selections’ progress and milestones continues to accumulate, we’ll be able to share comprehensive impact results from the various experiments we have been facilitating which these grant programs play a role in.

Last week, we hosted our Grant-a-Palooza space series with Farcaster Builder Program (managed by JB Rubinovitz) to discuss their program in detail. You can listen to the recording here.

Leading up to this space, as we ramped up efforts for the Farcaster Builder Program for Arbitrum, we found interesting data that we believe reflects the positive results of programs like this and the progress we’re collectively making.

Meeting our Grant Program Selections

This week for our Grant-a-Palooza X/Twitter Spaces series, we will have a space with the GIV-ARB Ecosystem Accelerator Program (managed by Kieranoday & Giveth).

Set your X/Twitter reminder here.

[JZhao]

Thank ARB Weekly Forum Update 7.22 - 7.26

Highlights of the Week

M1b grant program managers began submitting their milestones and reviews are underway. Reviews are being administered and formalized on the Thrive Protocol application by the decentralized reviewer team.

Based on the results, we will make a decision on whether we cut funding or not as our cut/coach/grow experimentation continues. The objective of this experiment is to mitigate waste of funding on poor performing programs by identifying inefficiencies early on in the process. It’s likely that this stage of reviews result in the coaching of program managers whereas the final program reviews will tell us which programs to cut and grow in the upcoming season.

We’ll provide a detailed report on the reviews, the results, and the outcome once we’ve completed the initial reviews.

Last week, we hosted our Grant-a-Palooza space series with the GIV-ARB Ecosystem Accelerator program (managed by Giveth team) to discuss their program in detail. You can listen to the recording here.

Meeting our Grant Program Selections

This week for our Grant-a-Palooza X/Twitter Spaces series, we will have a space with the Amplifying Impact program (managed by Tarah Stafford / ClimateRace).

Set your X/Twitter reminder here.

Thank ARB Oversight Board Meeting

We held our monthly board meeting on Tuesday, July 23rd. You can watch the recording or read the transcript to get the full picture.

We are excited to share more details of all the impact being created by grantees in these programs already, as well as lessons learned about the variety of mechanisms being used. We’ll be sharing a full tracking dashboard shortly as all the project milestone updates are submitted and reviewed. Stay tuned.

[JZhao]

Thank ARB Weekly Forum Update 8.05 - 8.09

Highlights of the Week

M1b Allocator Program Cut

After reviewing submitted milestones of each allocator program and having our regular follow-up meetings, the program manager opted to not move forward and we have therefore decided to formally cut the Farcaster Builder Program.

Our cut/coach/grow learning model helps unlock these moments of discovery that purposefully aligns our programs with the Arbitrum DAO. We were able to uncover misalignment early enough in the program to come to a collective understanding that the budgeted ARB could be better allocated elsewhere.

Stay tuned for more details on how these funds will be reallocated.

#MizukiArtContest with Azuki

We decided to expand our Firestarter Program to the Azuki community by working directly with the Azuki team to help sponsor their Mizuki art contest and aligning it with the Arbitrum ecosystem as they prepare for further integration into Arbitrum via AnimeChain.

In efforts to continue building more awareness and engagement with Arbitrum, we’ve aligned with the Azuki team to include Arbitrum tags for each submission and will be driving the voting portion of the contest on-chain. You can track submissions by searching #MizukiArtContest on X/Twitter.

Our goal is to bring art and culture to Arbitrum by having the top selections minted on Arbitrum in the form of an NFT - each NFT mint is counted as a vote to the top submission. There will be a prize pool for the NFT art creators based on the number of NFTs minted, which should create tens of thousands of transactions for newly created IP/art on-chain, on Arbitrum.

Gitcoin Grants 21 Round

GG21 has kicked off and Thank ARB is hosting its own ecosystem round with 150,000 ARB in the matching pool. Our goal is to further support builders in the Arbitrum ecosystem during this Gitcoin round and see the results - this is part of the same contiguous process of assessing milestones between rounds (GG20 & GG21) and eligibility decisions were made based on these findings. This is all part of a movement towards greater transparency in the use of onchain data, human validation, and attestations which has broad implications for web3 grant programs overall.

We’ve launched new contributions on Thank ARB to supercharge participation with GG21 in various ways, from content creation to active involvement within the round, which leads to our feedback loops of human validation at the end of the round. This is the same process we’re using for assessing the impact of all funded projects from all of our programs and how our learning engine maximizes efficient allocation and drives impact.

Grant-a-Palooza

Last week, we hosted our last Grant-a-Palooza space of the series with the Oxcart Delegation Program (managed by mel.eth) to discuss their program in detail. You can listen to the recording here.

Oxcart Delegation Engine program incentivizes active participation in Arbitrum governance through a combination of reward-based mechanisms, including a weekly lottery for active delegates, a redelegation registry and API, and tools development via hackathons and workshops to enhance community engagement and information dissemination.

Monthly Update

For our in-depth, monthly update on Thank ARB progress you can see everything that happened in July here.

As always, we’re building in public and very much appreciate all of your feedback and suggestions. Feel free to reach out or leave a comment if you have any questions!

[BenWest]

So excited about all the epic stuff happening in these programs. In the weeks ahead you are about to get a all avalanche of updates and information.

Feedback and ideas always appreciated. Big thanks to @JZhao and everyone involved in pulling these updates together.

[JZhao]

Thank ARB Weekly Forum Update 8.12 - 8.16

Highlights of the Week

Allocator Program / Grantee Payouts

We rolled out payouts to our allocator programs and grantees this week. Here’s a breakdown of the amounts sent, based on milestone completions, along with the amount left that is allocated for them.

Program	Grantee	Amount Sent (ARB)	Remaining Amount (ARB)
ReFi in ARB		20,000 ARB	260,999 ARB
ReFi in ARB	RootedLabs	7,000 ARB	13,000 ARB
ReFi in ARB	SeaBrick	5,000 ARB	15,000 ARB
ReFi in ARB	Coral Connect	7,000 ARB	13,000 ARB
Amplifying Impact		20,000 ARB	276,000 ARB
Firestarters	Polity GRADE	10,000 ARB	5,000 ARB
Firestarters	Grant Ships	8,000 ARB	42,000 ARB

Thank ARB Program Tracking Dashboard

All of our program allocator and grantee details can be tracked here. In this program tracker, you can see details on each program, their allocation method, their Arbitrum impact categories, program milestones, as well as month-to-month updates (videos included!).

Gitcoin Grants 21 Round

GG21 is still underway with 78 Arbitrum projects within the Thank Arbitrum Summer ecosystem round, which ends on 08/21/2024.

Here are the current stats on the round:

• 78 Arbitrum projects
• $28,000+ total USD crowdfunded
• 11,698 donations
• 2,415 unique donors

This Gitcoin round has not been performing as well as previous rounds. Our impression is that Gitcoin not facilitating their own round and focusing purely on ecosystem rounds has hindered overall activity for GG21. Although this round is slower than previous rounds, we’re still excited to see 78 Arbitrum projects participate with over 11,000 donations made to support Arbitrum builders.

We have an ongoing meme contest to help support GG21 culture and for the second part of this contest, we’ve brought it onchain by launching the top selection as Arbitrum NFTs that can be minted on Zora.

#MizukiArtContest with Azuki

The #MizukiArtContest submissions continue to roll in and we’re constantly impressed with the level of artistic talent we have in web3. The beauty of this Firestarter program is that the best submissions will live onchain forever, on Arbitrum.

We hope that this experiment in supporting Azuki as a soft introduction to Arbitrum before AnimeChain launch will lead to additional support and interaction within our ARB ecosystem from a top-tier community of hardcore web3 users.

You can track all the submissions here. Deadline to enter is 08/21 at 6pm PT. Voting period, which will be minting top selections as NFTs, will take place on 08/23 at 10am PT to 08/30 at 5pm PT.

Call for Reviewers

We’re always looking for more high-context reviewers to join the team of decentralized reviewers for Thank ARB - if this is something that interests you, please leave a comment below.

We have three tiers of reviewers based on experience and knowledge to ensure that contributions are reviewed by high-context individuals in the Arbitrum community. Our Grant Impact Index (GII) will be underway soon providing 100k ARB for qualified reviewers. The GII will assign a status to every grant - cut / coach / grow. As we prepare for our next milestone, we will use the cut / coach / grow model to visually show the quality of each grant program. Grantees given a grow evaluation will be given access to our first Level 2 grant programs. Programs which are given a grow rating will be scaled.

We’re here plugging away to make sure that we meet and exceed all of our targets for this program to make Arbitrum the place to be in web3. There’s plenty of more progress to make and we’re excited to continue refining the Thank ARB learning engine.

Feel free to reach out or leave a comment if you have any questions!

[shawn16400]

thanks for the updates @JZhao