Season 1 Retro: Pop-up Commons
Program Info:
Introducing the Pop-up Commons
TL;DR
- First implementation of conviction voting for seasonal ecosystem growth funding
- 24k $ARB allocated using governance pools on the Gardens platform
- Projects Awarded: ZuGarden, Mars College, Edge Esmerelda, and Zuzulu.City
- What went well: security, stability of voting results, project diversity, adoption of Arbitrum network.
- What needs work: Governance process friction, competitive vs. collaborative community environment, better optimization for funding impact.
Overview
The Pop-up Commons is a community on Gardens dedicated to supporting innovation and healthy growth of Pop-up Cities and Intentional Communities around the world.
The community experimented with using conviction voting for seasonal ecosystem funding, running a funding round that distributed 24,000 $ARB tokens to 5 projects using governance pools set up on the Gardens platform.
Governance Mechanism
Season 1 of the Pop-up Commons used the Gardens platform with these settings:
- Conviction voting with 3-day half-life parameter
- Quadratic weighting in Communities and Infrastructure pools
- Community-enforced sybil resistance through a Citizen’s Registry
- Council Safe of 9 members for Pool admin and dispute arbitration
- Covenant + Proposal Disputability to enforce community purpose & values
Results
Funds were allocated in 2 separate Pools - a Communities Pool dedicated to direct support for Pop-up Cities / Intentional Communities, and an Infrastructure Pool dedicated to their supporting software projects.
Pool Results + Funding Distribution
Communities Pool:
- ZuGarden: 8,000 $ARB - 20.89% conviction
- Mars College: 6,000 $ARB - 6.60% conviction
- Edge Esmeralda: 4,000 $ARB - 5.82% conviction
Infrastructure Pool:
- Zuzalu City: 4,000 $ARB - 22.1% conviction
- Edge Esmeralda: 2,000 $ARB - 15.1% conviction
Data Analysis
The animated results show how governance weight evolved over time, including increases in proposal support and the gradual accumulation of conviction to meet support.
Note that a large addition of support in the Communities Pool for the Xyrden proposal in the last 3 days failed to reach conviction in time to get awarded funding. Members of the Xyrden project felt this hurt their voice in the community, but other members of the community noted that they appreciated this protection kicking in while there might not have been enough time left for people to review and discuss the proposals merits.
Conviction Bug uncovered
During the round the Gardens team received reports of conviction growth not behaving as expected. The team investigated and uncovered a bug in the code affecting conviction values - results were then corrected using calculations from functions available in the read/write proxy contracts, and a bug fix was pushed in the days following the round.
The results animations show the corrected data, which were used to determine the final payouts.
Full governance data from the round - showing both the bugged and the corrected conviction values- are available in this spreadsheet: Pop-up Commons Conviction Tracking - Google Sheets
Participation Metrics
- Total Participants: 63 members, 54 registered citizens (members became registered citizens by creating proposals in the Citizen’s Registry that accumulated conviction).
- Total Proposals:
- Communities Pool: 9 proposals
- Infrastructure Pool: 4 proposals
- Total $ARB Staked: 17k $ARB after snapshot, 22k $ARB at peak
- Total Transactions: 347
Key Patterns Observed
- Time-Weighted Impact
- Support levels fluctuated but conviction remained relatively stable
- Final 3 days showed increased participation but limited impact on outcomes
- Accessibility Challenges
- Non-crypto natives struggled with onboarding
- All users struggled with Gardens UX and the manual process of adding allowList addresses from a multisig
- Time zone differences affected participation equity
- Community Dynamics
- Tension between established vs grassroots projects
- Competition mindset affected collaboration
- Strong network effects in vote consolidation
Community Feedback
The community responded with quantitative and qualitative feedback through a Google Form - here were the average rating results:
| Category |
Rating |
Prompt: |
| Impact |
6.75/10 |
rate the positive impact you feel the Pop-up Commons generated in its first season |
| Governance Process |
6.00/10 |
rate your experience navigating governance of the Pop-up Commons. Did the process inspire confidence in the organization’s ability to make decisions? |
| Gardens UI/UX |
6.00/10 |
rate your experience using the Gardens platform. How intuitive was creating proposals, activating governance, allocating your support, and viewing results on the website? |
| Collective Intelligence |
6.5/10 |
rate your confidence in the collective wisdom of the Pop-up Commons. Do you feel the results accurately answered the prompts: "what are the most promising pop-up cities, intentional communities, and supporting infrastructure?” |
| Solving A Need |
7.25/10 |
rate your perception of how critical the Pop-up Commons is for the health of pop-up cities and intentional communities. Is ongoing seasonal funding in this format needed for them to thrive? |
Top comments from the feedback form:
- “Making it less of a popularity vote and easier for non-crypto natives to partake would be an incredible improvement”
- “I had a hard time with some projects that have VC funding or plenty of sponsors in the past taking the funding spots away from more grassroot communities for whom this would actually make a big difference”
- “It is good to include the time (conviction) element in the voting. But it also generates other considerations on how to win the voting game.”
Lessons Learned
What Worked
- Conviction voting provided stable, manipulation-resistant outcomes
- Quadratic weighting helped balance large vs small stakeholder influence
- Dispute resolution framework provided security, although it wasn’t used in this round
- Participation from a diverse set of people and projects made the Telegram chat an open hub
- Drove adoption of the Arbitrum Network from a highly promising web3 sector.
Areas for Improvement
- Onboarding & Accessibility
- Simplify technical requirements and automate execution of more transactions from Council Safe. Host more onboarding sessions for non-crypto users.
- Funding Distribution
- Structure funding pools for more impact, possibly through tiered funding pools based on project size / total budget.
- Community Building
- Create more cross-project collaboration opportunities, offer workshops or presentations for members to share what they’re working on and get to know each other.
Impact Assessment
Impact on Pop-up Cities and Intentional Communities
The rise of pop-up cities & intentional communities over the last several years is connected in part to the growth of web3, bringing increased demand for culturally-aligned, globally distributed communities to meet in the real world to share ideas, connect, and grow together.
The future growth of these communities will be fueled by the growth of shared resources, infrastructure, collective decision-making, and cross-project collaboration.
It’s too early to assess the impact of this single funding round on these projects, but we’ll look to track the effect of funding rounds on beneficiary communities and the growth and health of the Pop-up Commons in future seasons.
Arbitrum Network Impact
The program fell short of its goal of 100 members, 1,000 transactions, and 30k $ARB staked. However this first season showed promise as seasonal funding framework capable of:
- Onboarding new users to Arbitrum network - both web3 natives and first time crypto users.
- Creating utility for the $ARB token and driving TVL to the network.
- Proving a model for scalable bottom-up ecosystem growth that can be replicated across verticals in the Arbitrum network.
Recommendations for Future Seasons
- Governance Process changes
- Allocate budget to compensate Council Safe members for their work, and create Pool to elect Council Safe members to improve community moderation.
- Consider a governance token specific to the community to strengthen the community’s cohesion, improve collective intelligence, and further decouple wealth from power.
- Gardens UI/UX improvements
- Automate allowList additions from Citizen’s Registry for quadratically weighted Pools.
- Implement scheduled snapshots feature to automate seasonal conviction measurements and show results from past seasons.
- Strategic Adjustments
- Increase funding by diversifying sources
- Create separate pools for different project scales
Conclusion
The Pop-up Commons demonstrated both the potential and challenges of using conviction voting for community funding allocation. While the mechanism provided stable and manipulation-resistant outcomes, the community and mechanism can improve by reducing technical barriers with better UI/UX, and promoting a culture that’s more collaborative instead of competitive.
Metrics from the season suggest the approach is viable for ecosystem growth, but improvements in accessibility, process, and UI/UX could significantly increase impact and participation in future seasons.
Next Steps
- Elect members for the Spring Season Council Safe
- Secure funding for another season of the Pop-up Commons
- Workshop improvements to onboarding, governance process, and community
- Work with Gardens core team on improvements to app UI/UX
- Increase outreach and visibility to more pop-up cities and intentional communities
Resources:
