Back in August, Arbitrum DAO passed our AIP-3 to build a pluralistic grants framework that decentralizes grants decision-making, avoids capture and scales valuable grants allocations, and grows the Arbitrum ecosystem overall.
Our proposal passed on Tally with ~99% of delegate votes. It had overwhelming support, we believe, because you a) trust our motives and capabilities, and b) understand how big and important the problem is:
Nearly every DAO struggles to create sustainable value - largely because DAO decision-making is famously slow, and inefficient, which drives them to compromise their values and centralize. Arbitrum is committed to being better, and you believed in our ability to help.
Across Milestones 1a, we pluralistically deployed funds via 12 different grants programs and different modalities for grants decision-making.
Experimenting with multiple modalities allows us to allocate grants to support quick feedback about what works and can scale now. We can quickly evolve our grants decision making based the below success rubric, which determines where to allocate grants:
In Milestone 1a, we seeded the initial 12 Grants Programs. In Milestone 1b, we will lean on our newly established Plurality Labs board (more later!) as well as community voices who can evaluate our grants via our Thrive Protocol to inform where to cut, coach, and grow.
[Based on our pluralistic grants framework and success criteria, these are the current results of milestone 1 (details here)]
We have a big vision. We’re seeking to build the most robust pluralistic grants ecosystem in DAO history. To do it, we took some big shots on goal in Milestone 1a - funding 12 grant programs using 30 decision making experiments to fund 250+ projects. Some shots scored and others missed.
This is aligned with the expectations of the pluralistic grants approach. The only way to create and scale pluralistic grants is to decentralize bet taking… and to get as comfortable with the shots that embarrassingly fly into the stands as we are with the goals.
We will use data to help us double-down on winners and cut others. With the data we’re collecting, we will create a robust, long-term pluralistic grants framework for Arbitrum DAO. This framework is emerging now, and it will continue to become clearer throughout Milestone 1b(ridge).
In our maiden proposal, the principal outcome we sought to achieve was to demonstrate that we could deliver and scale enormous value creation via a pluralistic grants framework. The general feedback from delegates has been: kind of…
There seems to be wide agreement that we created value but need to scale, document, and showcase.
Thus, after consultation with a number of the top delegates, we created this Milestone 1b(ridge) proposal that asks for the exact same amount of ARB and same timeframe as passed with 99% of delegate vote in August.
In Milestone 1b, we will show:
To ensure we achieve these goals, we are implementing best-practices from the Thrive team that, also, are aligned with feedback we received from delegates:
Here’s more information about our commitments in Milestone 1b(ridge):
Plurality Labs Board: We brought together trusted and known voices in the Arbitrum community. Their role with us is to gather feedback and data from our Arbitrum community, and to make strategic decisions about grants allocators, specific grants / contributions, and validations.
This board is part of this vote. We found people to represent the different stakeholder groups in Arbitrum. Now your votes will ratify this group - which includes two who voted "No" to our temp check for Milestone 2!
Human Validations: Going forward, we will fund our grants at specific milestones of value creation. White-listed Arbitrum community members will - in a pluralistic way - help clarify when value is created, and will also be rewarded for their services (more on this later).
Team revamp: We are fully utilizing our 26-person ThriveCoin team), we have also added some key team members to our roster, including: Ben West (GitCoin grants lead), Kyler Wandler (DAO Research Collective), and Scott Mandel (Complex Labs, Flexa, 2Q Ventures).
As aligned with the feedback we’ve received from delegates and community members, we made this proposal easy: The total cost and timeframe are the same as the first proposal: 3.36M ARB and 6 months, with 336k ARB to Plurality Labs and 224k ARB to program management, as in the first proposal.
2.8M ARB will be funding ecosystem development, including demonstrating that we can create incrementally more value with our emerging pluralistic grants framework. We are also adding a layer of oversight to our work - welcoming an esteemed Plurality Labs board. They will, among other things, help ensure we deliver the value we promise.
The 560k ARB services fee (same ARB and same buckets as first proposal) includes:
As aligned with the feedback we’ve received from delegates and community members, we made this proposal easy: The total cost and timeframe are the same as the first proposal: 3.36M ARB and 6 months, with 336k ARB to Plurality Labs and 224k ARB to program management, as in the first proposal.
2.8M ARB will be funding ecosystem development, including demonstrating that we can create incrementally more value with our emerging pluralistic grants framework. We are also adding a layer of oversight to our work - welcoming an esteemed Plurality Labs board. They will, among other things, help ensure we deliver the value we promise.
The 560k ARB services fee (same ARB and same buckets as first proposal) includes:
Our intention is for this to be one of the most impactful AIPs in the history of Arbitrum. If we do our work right (and we believe we’re on the right track) we should be spurring thriving, net-positive ecosystem activity in Arbitrum for years to come.
Additionally, we’ll be doing it via a pluralistic grants framework that has a consistent bias for value creation, further decentralization, and resistance to capture. We will be building the future of web3 together, and providing a path for all great people and teams to work with Arbitrum.
When the value of Milestone 1b is obvious, we’ll present Milestone 2.