I am introducing a proposal to the ArbitrumDAO for financial compensation for a number of winners that participated in “ArbitrumDAO’s Biggest Minigrants Round Ever.”
This was a grant round with 32 winners over a period of 8 weeks, starting in January 2024. I shared a timeline and summary of the experience on the Arbitrum Forum here:
Thrive Protocol’s team was able to collect the wallet addresses and payout dates of those that were a part of the grant series. These are those dates and # of projects:
1 company (Feb 25th) 12 companies (April 16th)
8 companies (May 17th) 2 companies (June 4th) 4 companies (June 7th) 4 companies (June 19th) 1 company (Aug 1st)
There were 19 projects that received their payouts in May and June. The original payout value was 2500 ARB, or during the contest window before Arbitrum's 70% token unlock the equivalent of roughly $4,500-$5,700 USD. Due to the extensive delays and large drop in ARB value, many of us received significantly less. The drop in ARB value was not the only damage incurred. As can be read in the comments and testimonials, teams experienced other forms of damages including stress, loss of teammates, and downturns in team and community morale.
I began to step into this grant round as an unpaid advocate in month 4, and tried to help organize the managing parties to send payouts. In this process I reached out and connected to as many of the 18 projects paid out in May or June that I could reach. Of those, 5 are still interested in executing, weren't able to execute or partially execute, and are still interested and able to move forward now 9 months later from their orginal grant proposals where they were voted on as a winner.
The request is for the losses incurred by the winners that received their payouts in time frames ranging from 3-7 months later after their week's round closed. We have collected the following data below and have adjusted the price differential to a 2-week post-winning time period, which we believe is a fair payout timing for grantees, and embeds a normal currency fluctuation risk period taken on by grantees.
I would also like to add $5,000 USD for myself as a community advocate for the last 6 months on this grant round, performing the following activities over many hours from:
Hopefully this data is helpful learning as Arbitrum is now updating their incentives processes. I had no plan of being paid. I am a diversity and financial inclusion-focused community leader in Web3, which is why for my focus it has been very important for the winners to have someone voicing their issues to the parties managing this grant, and advocating for them, in addition to myself.
The following projects are all winners from the Minigrants round, are reachable, were paid out in May, June, and/or August, and are interested in executing their project as proposed and are ready to begin or continue immediately. This is the most detailed status update we could acheive together:
please note, it is still unclear why some projects were paid twice as this grant round had a 1 time payout of 2500 ARB
PROJECT 1: SI<3> Week 3 winner (Feb 2nd): 2500 ARB. ARB value on Feb 16th (two weeks after the February 2nd winning - an equitable time range): $2.08*2500 = $5,200 USD
Payouts:
Time delay to payout: 4 MONTHS
Project Status Update: We were able to execute the technical aspects of our proposal, which included finishing the development of our Web3 website publishing system. The four month delay negatively affected the other aspect of our grant winnings which included being able to offer scholarship opportunities to women in Web3 in Africa. We shared with a women in web3 community in Africa we had won this contest and would be able to offer 30 scholarships to their members, but due to the delays this was not able to be executed (5 were given instead of 30 through our applications). With the additional $2,597 USD we will be able to offer the remaining 25 scholarships and bring in women into the future of Web3 identity (the grant category we won first place in out of 30 projects).
Commiting to share project status updates on Karma GAP: Yes
PROJECT 2: RadDreams Week 1 winner (January 19th): 2500 ARB. ARB value on Feb 2nd (two weeks after Jan 19th winning date = ($1.76 * 2500 ARB) = $4,400 USD
Payouts: This project's payment was never received as it was sent in August to an old wallet that he asked program managers to update on file as it was so many months later, but they never did so no funds were received. Total funds lost: $4,400
Time delay to payout: 7 MONTHS
Project Status Update: RadDream will be able to execute its project on ARB which includes adding the ability to auto-deploy NFT collections created and curated by these communities using nothing more than a bot.
Commiting to share project status updates on Karma GAP: Yes
PROJECT 3: Everest Mobility Week 8 winner (March 7th): 2500 ARB. ARB value March 21st (two weeks after March 7th winning date): $1.67*2500 = $4,175 USD
Payments:
Time delay to payout: 3 MONTHS
Project Status Update: We were only able to finish initial phase of MVP development with the ride-hailing. It was a major draw back that led to postponement of our deliverables which was suppose to help us meet the timeline partnering with 2 major events to drive initial usability of our product (mvp), by a few thousand people. Not only did this happen, but also lost resourceful engineer whom we were to make initial payment to, via the grant at the time. We also experienced significant emotional/agility/moral down-trend that followed with the grant payment delay. With the additional funds, we will be able to deploy on chain, enable incentivized tokenization and minting rewards, then move on to Digital ID (as SBT) through the drivers KYC onboarding system.
Commiting to share project status updates on Karma GAP: Yes
PROJECT 4: AgroForest DAO Week 6 winner (Feb 23rd): 2500 ARB. ARB value March 8th (two weeks after Feb 23rd winning date): ($2.25 *2500) = $5,600 USD
Payments:
Time delay to payout: 4 MONTHS
Project Status Update: AgroforestDAO is onboarding members in their learning journeys and using the ARB to reward them for participating in the sessions, for creating profiles and sharing a design plan and updates in our charmverse workspace. Our project will be able to continue and onboard more members into the learning journeys using ARB.
Commiting to share project status updates on Karma GAP: Yes
PROJECT 5: PLAY2LEARN Games Week 2 winner (January 29): 2500 ARB. ARB Value on February 12th (two weeks after Jan 29th winning date): $2.06*2,500 = $5,150
Payments were made to us in the following orders:
Time delay to payout: 4 MONTHS
Project Status Update: We were unable to execute any of our plans for the funds as the delay in payment did not reach the amount for the listed activities to be embarked upon. We have held our payout and with the additional funds will be able to execute our gaming experience with ARB in our West Africa region.
Commiting to share project status updates on Karma GAP: Yes
Total funds requested = $14,606 USD (5 grantees) + $5,000 USD (karakrysthal's community management and advocacy fee for 6 months of program follow-on support) = $19,606 USD.
To note, I have kept this proposal process as open for all grantees to be aware of as possible so as to not miss anyone. This included posting numerous times in our group Telegram chat, and DMing those that I saw had payouts in May, June and August. Many projects were unreachable or no longer building on ARB any more. Without having a system to backtrack every winners detailed payout as this needed to be confirmed by them personally in order to do this detailed status update, it can be estimated that on average $2.5k USD was lost by 32 projects due to the delays or roughly $80,000 USD.
We are hopeful to demonstrate through our status updates the losses incurred, both financially and in the delays and disruption in execution. Our contest winners were not required to submit our projects on Karma GAP, but we are all commiting to do so as we are wanting to deliver value as in our grant proposals to both Arbitrum and our projects. We can also share updates here on this forum as we make progress.
Thank you to this forum's commenters that have left constructive feedback. We understand the complexities of managing projects with new tools and processes, as this is what we are also experiencing developing our projects. We align with the commenters here that support our perspective that extreme delays in payouts due to organizational bottlenecks should not burden those that have been selected through their own hard work and dedication to executing their projects as proposed.
The goal of the post and proposal was for financial compensation for grantees, and also for open and shared learning to support the DAO in it's evolution. As with any project, the best results come from alignment of goals and the right tools and processes to support them. For future rounds, an additional point of feedback and what I am seeing with some other grant operators is to partner with ecosystems and communities. This can be from ecosystems with vertical expertise (such as a Gaming DAO), or regional communities. This can support grantors in seeing greater long-term ROI, as the success of the grantees is also important to that vertical/community/region as a whole.
It would also be helpful not to run a grant round in the future right before executing a large token unlock, as this should have been anticipated.
Thank you.
I am introducing a proposal to the ArbitrumDAO for financial compensation for a number of winners that participated in “ArbitrumDAO’s Biggest Minigrants Round Ever.”
This was a grant round with 32 winners over a period of 8 weeks, starting in January 2024. I shared a timeline and summary of the experience on the Arbitrum Forum here:
Thrive Protocol’s team was able to collect the wallet addresses and payout dates of those that were a part of the grant series. These are those dates and # of projects:
1 company (Feb 25th) 12 companies (April 16th)
8 companies (May 17th) 2 companies (June 4th) 4 companies (June 7th) 4 companies (June 19th) 1 company (Aug 1st)
There were 19 projects that received their payouts in May and June. The original payout value was 2500 ARB, or during the contest window before Arbitrum's 70% token unlock the equivalent of roughly $4,500-$5,700 USD. Due to the extensive delays and large drop in ARB value, many of us received significantly less. The drop in ARB value was not the only damage incurred. As can be read in the comments and testimonials, teams experienced other forms of damages including stress, loss of teammates, and downturns in team and community morale.
I began to step into this grant round as an unpaid advocate in month 4, and tried to help organize the managing parties to send payouts. In this process I reached out and connected to as many of the 18 projects paid out in May or June that I could reach. Of those, 5 are still interested in executing, weren't able to execute or partially execute, and are still interested and able to move forward now 9 months later from their orginal grant proposals where they were voted on as a winner.
The request is for the losses incurred by the winners that received their payouts in time frames ranging from 3-7 months later after their week's round closed. We have collected the following data below and have adjusted the price differential to a 2-week post-winning time period, which we believe is a fair payout timing for grantees, and embeds a normal currency fluctuation risk period taken on by grantees.
I would also like to add $5,000 USD for myself as a community advocate for the last 6 months on this grant round, performing the following activities over many hours from:
Hopefully this data is helpful learning as Arbitrum is now updating their incentives processes. I had no plan of being paid. I am a diversity and financial inclusion-focused community leader in Web3, which is why for my focus it has been very important for the winners to have someone voicing their issues to the parties managing this grant, and advocating for them, in addition to myself.
The following projects are all winners from the Minigrants round, are reachable, were paid out in May, June, and/or August, and are interested in executing their project as proposed and are ready to begin or continue immediately. This is the most detailed status update we could acheive together:
please note, it is still unclear why some projects were paid twice as this grant round had a 1 time payout of 2500 ARB
PROJECT 1: SI<3> Week 3 winner (Feb 2nd): 2500 ARB. ARB value on Feb 16th (two weeks after the February 2nd winning - an equitable time range): $2.08*2500 = $5,200 USD
Payouts:
Time delay to payout: 4 MONTHS
Project Status Update: We were able to execute the technical aspects of our proposal, which included finishing the development of our Web3 website publishing system. The four month delay negatively affected the other aspect of our grant winnings which included being able to offer scholarship opportunities to women in Web3 in Africa. We shared with a women in web3 community in Africa we had won this contest and would be able to offer 30 scholarships to their members, but due to the delays this was not able to be executed (5 were given instead of 30 through our applications). With the additional $2,597 USD we will be able to offer the remaining 25 scholarships and bring in women into the future of Web3 identity (the grant category we won first place in out of 30 projects).
Commiting to share project status updates on Karma GAP: Yes
PROJECT 2: RadDreams Week 1 winner (January 19th): 2500 ARB. ARB value on Feb 2nd (two weeks after Jan 19th winning date = ($1.76 * 2500 ARB) = $4,400 USD
Payouts: This project's payment was never received as it was sent in August to an old wallet that he asked program managers to update on file as it was so many months later, but they never did so no funds were received. Total funds lost: $4,400
Time delay to payout: 7 MONTHS
Project Status Update: RadDream will be able to execute its project on ARB which includes adding the ability to auto-deploy NFT collections created and curated by these communities using nothing more than a bot.
Commiting to share project status updates on Karma GAP: Yes
PROJECT 3: Everest Mobility Week 8 winner (March 7th): 2500 ARB. ARB value March 21st (two weeks after March 7th winning date): $1.67*2500 = $4,175 USD
Payments:
Time delay to payout: 3 MONTHS
Project Status Update: We were only able to finish initial phase of MVP development with the ride-hailing. It was a major draw back that led to postponement of our deliverables which was suppose to help us meet the timeline partnering with 2 major events to drive initial usability of our product (mvp), by a few thousand people. Not only did this happen, but also lost resourceful engineer whom we were to make initial payment to, via the grant at the time. We also experienced significant emotional/agility/moral down-trend that followed with the grant payment delay. With the additional funds, we will be able to deploy on chain, enable incentivized tokenization and minting rewards, then move on to Digital ID (as SBT) through the drivers KYC onboarding system.
Commiting to share project status updates on Karma GAP: Yes
PROJECT 4: AgroForest DAO Week 6 winner (Feb 23rd): 2500 ARB. ARB value March 8th (two weeks after Feb 23rd winning date): ($2.25 *2500) = $5,600 USD
Payments:
Time delay to payout: 4 MONTHS
Project Status Update: AgroforestDAO is onboarding members in their learning journeys and using the ARB to reward them for participating in the sessions, for creating profiles and sharing a design plan and updates in our charmverse workspace. Our project will be able to continue and onboard more members into the learning journeys using ARB.
Commiting to share project status updates on Karma GAP: Yes
PROJECT 5: PLAY2LEARN Games Week 2 winner (January 29): 2500 ARB. ARB Value on February 12th (two weeks after Jan 29th winning date): $2.06*2,500 = $5,150
Payments were made to us in the following orders:
Time delay to payout: 4 MONTHS
Project Status Update: We were unable to execute any of our plans for the funds as the delay in payment did not reach the amount for the listed activities to be embarked upon. We have held our payout and with the additional funds will be able to execute our gaming experience with ARB in our West Africa region.
Commiting to share project status updates on Karma GAP: Yes
Total funds requested = $14,606 USD (5 grantees) + $5,000 USD (karakrysthal's community management and advocacy fee for 6 months of program follow-on support) = $19,606 USD.
To note, I have kept this proposal process as open for all grantees to be aware of as possible so as to not miss anyone. This included posting numerous times in our group Telegram chat, and DMing those that I saw had payouts in May, June and August. Many projects were unreachable or no longer building on ARB any more. Without having a system to backtrack every winners detailed payout as this needed to be confirmed by them personally in order to do this detailed status update, it can be estimated that on average $2.5k USD was lost by 32 projects due to the delays or roughly $80,000 USD.
We are hopeful to demonstrate through our status updates the losses incurred, both financially and in the delays and disruption in execution. Our contest winners were not required to submit our projects on Karma GAP, but we are all commiting to do so as we are wanting to deliver value as in our grant proposals to both Arbitrum and our projects. We can also share updates here on this forum as we make progress.
Thank you to this forum's commenters that have left constructive feedback. We understand the complexities of managing projects with new tools and processes, as this is what we are also experiencing developing our projects. We align with the commenters here that support our perspective that extreme delays in payouts due to organizational bottlenecks should not burden those that have been selected through their own hard work and dedication to executing their projects as proposed.
The goal of the post and proposal was for financial compensation for grantees, and also for open and shared learning to support the DAO in it's evolution. As with any project, the best results come from alignment of goals and the right tools and processes to support them. For future rounds, an additional point of feedback and what I am seeing with some other grant operators is to partner with ecosystems and communities. This can be from ecosystems with vertical expertise (such as a Gaming DAO), or regional communities. This can support grantors in seeing greater long-term ROI, as the success of the grantees is also important to that vertical/community/region as a whole.
It would also be helpful not to run a grant round in the future right before executing a large token unlock, as this should have been anticipated.
Thank you.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/102?u=bruce
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/101?u=ocandocrypto
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/100?u=maxlomu
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/102?u=bruce
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/101?u=ocandocrypto
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/100?u=maxlomu
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/98?u=blockworksresearch
Democratising lobbyism, on-chain. Check out lobbyfi.xyz
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/97
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/96?u=tane
I vote against. Grant delays happen in many organizations, and compensating for every delay sets a bad example.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/92
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/94
The Event Horizon Community Voted to Support this Proposal ehARB-55: EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-55
The Event Horizon Community Voted to Support this Proposal ehARB-55: EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-55
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/91?u=blueweb
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/89?u=tempetechie
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/88?u=tekr0x.eth
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/87?u=gabriel
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/86?u=0x_ultra
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/29?u=ezr3al
You should bear all your own expenses and should not be paid or supported by the DAO. Hope you have a better proposal.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/80?u=0xdonpepe
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/juanrah-delegate-communication-thread/27395/8?u=juanrah
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/75
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/68?u=pedrob
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/67?u=mcfly
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/65?u=todayindefi
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/54?u=kuiclub
Community first. The money required is not a lot. And it's a lesson to do timely payments. In crypto, we can't wait for months for grants
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/64?u=0xalex
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/63?u=0xtalvo.eth_mty
Arbitrum is family, Arbitrum is home, Arbitrum is freedom, Arbitrum is you, and we should all take care of each other and support those that have been short changed. https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/61?u=paulofonseca
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/60?u=duokongcrypto
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/larva-delegate-communication-thread/24476/89?u=larva
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/98?u=blockworksresearch
Democratising lobbyism, on-chain. Check out lobbyfi.xyz
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/97
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/96?u=tane
I vote against. Grant delays happen in many organizations, and compensating for every delay sets a bad example.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/92
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/94
The Event Horizon Community Voted to Support this Proposal ehARB-55: EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-55
The Event Horizon Community Voted to Support this Proposal ehARB-55: EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-55
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/91?u=blueweb
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/89?u=tempetechie
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/88?u=tekr0x.eth
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/87?u=gabriel
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/86?u=0x_ultra
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/29?u=ezr3al
You should bear all your own expenses and should not be paid or supported by the DAO. Hope you have a better proposal.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/80?u=0xdonpepe
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/juanrah-delegate-communication-thread/27395/8?u=juanrah
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/75
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/68?u=pedrob
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/67?u=mcfly
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/65?u=todayindefi
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/54?u=kuiclub
Community first. The money required is not a lot. And it's a lesson to do timely payments. In crypto, we can't wait for months for grants
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/64?u=0xalex
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/63?u=0xtalvo.eth_mty
Arbitrum is family, Arbitrum is home, Arbitrum is freedom, Arbitrum is you, and we should all take care of each other and support those that have been short changed. https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/61?u=paulofonseca
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/60?u=duokongcrypto
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/larva-delegate-communication-thread/24476/89?u=larva
Hi, could you clarify what you wanted to say here? Thanks.
Approving this proposal could lead to similar requests from paid delegates and MS signers, who received only one-third of the promised compensation in the Delegate Incentive Program v1.
Great to know, thank you!
Hi, could you clarify what you wanted to say here? Thanks.
Approving this proposal could lead to similar requests from paid delegates and MS signers, who received only one-third of the promised compensation in the Delegate Incentive Program v1.
Great to know, thank you!
I'm sorry to hear that ... I wanted to vote "FOR", but, although I asked how to vote, I didn't get a reply :disappointed_relieved: @karakrysthal
Here's the answer to vote delegation @karakrysthal Thank you again, @paulofonseca :star_struck:
I'm sorry to hear that ... I wanted to vote "FOR", but, although I asked how to vote, I didn't get a reply :disappointed_relieved: @karakrysthal
Here's the answer to vote delegation @karakrysthal Thank you again, @paulofonseca :star_struck:
It says I have no voting power, but I do have $ARB What do I need? I've also joined three communities on Snapshot :eyes: I'm definitely FOR it :slight_smile:
While empathizing with you with regards to the delays and the loss of grant value, gTrade is voting no for this proposal, echoing many others' sentiments. The grant proposal was denominated in ARB, not USD, so grantees should expect price fluctuations. Passing this proposal sets a precedent for other grant receivers this past year who also have had to absorb losses due to ARB price depreciation. This serves as a good lesson for future proposals to consider: what grants should be denominated in and taking possible delays into account.
It says I have no voting power, but I do have $ARB What do I need? I've also joined three communities on Snapshot :eyes: I'm definitely FOR it :slight_smile:
While empathizing with you with regards to the delays and the loss of grant value, gTrade is voting no for this proposal, echoing many others' sentiments. The grant proposal was denominated in ARB, not USD, so grantees should expect price fluctuations. Passing this proposal sets a precedent for other grant receivers this past year who also have had to absorb losses due to ARB price depreciation. This serves as a good lesson for future proposals to consider: what grants should be denominated in and taking possible delays into account.
This is very helpful, Kara, and I really hope it works out :slight_smile:
This is very helpful, Kara, and I really hope it works out :slight_smile:
Let me suggest a 5 year old's approach-
Let me suggest a 5 year old's approach-
And voila - we don't need another telegram group to learn for ourselves.
Sunlight is often the best disinfectant.
What does everyone think about grantors of a grant program (grant council members) participating as grantees and voting for each other's projects ?
Does anyone know
What does everyone think about grantors of a grant program (grant council members) participating as grantees and voting for each other's projects ?
Does anyone know
And if a treasury diversification program tumbled price action volatility of ARB token, should founders delivering food on the side to pay for their team mates be penalized for trusting the "only DAO L2" to pay out the approximate promise ??
just want to put out there that after months of not communicating, the prize we won was sent to the wrong wallet address (after I asked organizers to confirm the address they had on file with no reply). So our prize was totally wasted
You can edit the proposal. It will still be discussed here to see if delegates are in favor or have any questions in general. If the proposal makes it to snapshot, it must obtain the minimum number of votes in favor. It is only after that that it goes to Tally for the official vote
Let me suggest a 5 year old's approach-
Let me suggest a 5 year old's approach-
And voila - we don't need another telegram group to learn for ourselves.
Sunlight is often the best disinfectant.
What does everyone think about grantors of a grant program (grant council members) participating as grantees and voting for each other's projects ?
Does anyone know
What does everyone think about grantors of a grant program (grant council members) participating as grantees and voting for each other's projects ?
Does anyone know
And if a treasury diversification program tumbled price action volatility of ARB token, should founders delivering food on the side to pay for their team mates be penalized for trusting the "only DAO L2" to pay out the approximate promise ??
just want to put out there that after months of not communicating, the prize we won was sent to the wrong wallet address (after I asked organizers to confirm the address they had on file with no reply). So our prize was totally wasted
You can edit the proposal. It will still be discussed here to see if delegates are in favor or have any questions in general. If the proposal makes it to snapshot, it must obtain the minimum number of votes in favor. It is only after that that it goes to Tally for the official vote
The following reflects the views of the Lampros Labs DAO governance team, composed of @Blueweb, @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We empathize with you regarding the delays, costs, and the milestones that remain unachieved. We also appreciate the effort you’ve put into presenting the data, feedback, and this proposal to the DAO.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros Labs DAO governance team, composed of @Blueweb, @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We empathize with you regarding the delays, costs, and the milestones that remain unachieved. We also appreciate the effort you’ve put into presenting the data, feedback, and this proposal to the DAO.
However, when it comes to financial restitution, we share @thedevanshmehta’s perspective. As grantees, receiving ARB tokens carries an inherent risk of price fluctuation, which all projects must account for. Price volatility is a natural part of grant programs, and if the price had increased, it’s unlikely you would have accepted a reduced amount of ARB tokens.
@DisruptionJoe and the Thrive team have thoroughly analyzed the process and highlighted the bottlenecks they encountered. While we all agree that there were inefficiencies, it’s important to recognize that this is a learning experience for everyone. It’s better to refine our processes through smaller grants than to repeat these mistakes with larger ones.
hi I think you meant to comment in a different proposal thread
The following reflects the views of the Lampros Labs DAO governance team, composed of @Blueweb, @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We empathize with you regarding the delays, costs, and the milestones that remain unachieved. We also appreciate the effort you’ve put into presenting the data, feedback, and this proposal to the DAO.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros Labs DAO governance team, composed of @Blueweb, @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We empathize with you regarding the delays, costs, and the milestones that remain unachieved. We also appreciate the effort you’ve put into presenting the data, feedback, and this proposal to the DAO.
However, when it comes to financial restitution, we share @thedevanshmehta’s perspective. As grantees, receiving ARB tokens carries an inherent risk of price fluctuation, which all projects must account for. Price volatility is a natural part of grant programs, and if the price had increased, it’s unlikely you would have accepted a reduced amount of ARB tokens.
@DisruptionJoe and the Thrive team have thoroughly analyzed the process and highlighted the bottlenecks they encountered. While we all agree that there were inefficiencies, it’s important to recognize that this is a learning experience for everyone. It’s better to refine our processes through smaller grants than to repeat these mistakes with larger ones.
hi I think you meant to comment in a different proposal thread
Appreciate this comment @paulofonseca as the focus of this restitution proposal is on the extreme delays, stress and pain points in team morale and planning inflicted on the grant winners as a result, significant effort on my part as a grantee advocate in organizing and providing this feedback to the DAO, and potential for the grantees to execute their projects as intended.
We understand inherent price volatility in every crypto and grant project, yet that is not the basis for this proposal.
Appreciate this comment @paulofonseca as the focus of this restitution proposal is on the extreme delays, stress and pain points in team morale and planning inflicted on the grant winners as a result, significant effort on my part as a grantee advocate in organizing and providing this feedback to the DAO, and potential for the grantees to execute their projects as intended.
We understand inherent price volatility in every crypto and grant project, yet that is not the basis for this proposal.
If we had been paid out in a normal time range (2 weeks, maybe 1 month), not 3,4,5 and 7 months later we wouldnt have asked for compensation.
Currency fluctuations are to be assumed within these normal time ranges, but this again was an extreme delay.
If we had been paid out in a normal time range (2 weeks, maybe 1 month), not 3,4,5 and 7 months later we wouldnt have asked for compensation.
Currency fluctuations are to be assumed within these normal time ranges, but this again was an extreme delay.
Thank you. I am not a part of the ArbitrumDAO so am not able to put in on Snapshot, but will ask @DisruptionJoe if he can.
Or if someone else may be able to @Bob-Rossi or @karpatkey or ... that would be great thanks. I have had this proposal up for two weeks while making further clarifications and my initial forum post 3 weeks ago. If we might be able to move this along that would be great so the grantees can get building if this passes, as I believe there will be a couple more weeks of voting to go through if we are moving through the steps.
Thank you. I am not a part of the ArbitrumDAO so am not able to put in on Snapshot, but will ask @DisruptionJoe if he can.
Or if someone else may be able to @Bob-Rossi or @karpatkey or ... that would be great thanks. I have had this proposal up for two weeks while making further clarifications and my initial forum post 3 weeks ago. If we might be able to move this along that would be great so the grantees can get building if this passes, as I believe there will be a couple more weeks of voting to go through if we are moving through the steps.
Thanks
Hello @CastleCapital thank you for your feedback here, and understanding our situation went beyond one of normal price fluctations that can occur.
Regarding my request for compensation for myself as I am a grant winner and should be in line with the compensation of the others, I agree with that in connection to what I should have received, along with the other grant winners.
Hello @CastleCapital thank you for your feedback here, and understanding our situation went beyond one of normal price fluctations that can occur.
Regarding my request for compensation for myself as I am a grant winner and should be in line with the compensation of the others, I agree with that in connection to what I should have received, along with the other grant winners.
However, I would like to share again with additional context, details of how my unplanned community advocacy role and efforts drove this proposal and shared learning experience forward. Please review this first summary post, including one winners commentary:
"As the founder of daospace, I want to express my gratitude to @karakrysthal for her tireless efforts in addressing the issues faced by many grant recipients. Her persistence in pushing for resolution was instrumental in getting things moving with the Arbitrum team."
My efforts were driven beyond being just a grant winner, but one that deeply cares about financial inclusion and is also in strong support of the potential for grant funding to be a meaningful channel for early stage projects to get off the ground. My work with my organization centers on DE&I for women in emerging tech and Web3. Right now, the data shows that 6% of VC funding goes to women in Web3, yet these alarming stats are greater than that in general tech (1-2%). While there isn't data yet being collected on the % of grant funding going to women, from our rough estimation it is less than 10%. My organization is launching a 6 month working group for blockchains and protocols with grant programs, where we are facilitating DE&I education, and fostering collaboration and shared learning on grant program best practices.
I hope this provides more context for the work we are doing, with the hopes that grant program operators do work out their challenges and processes, and Arbitrum, for example, can be one that can lead by example from its learning and ability to adapt, even at its size and complexity.
I am going to push back on your request that I remove my personal compensation for my work and edit that out of the proposal. I have estimated at least 50 hours of my own unpaid effort over the last 6 months has gone into what you are seeing now on these forum posts, from behind-the-scenes work that includes:
I am happy that you have found the information presented invaluable, which has happened due to the persistent focus of these efforts.
This provides as much context I am aware of that I can provide to my energy spent and intentions behind my efforts. Again while my financial compensation was not an initial goal in my advocacy work, as I was presenting it to this forum I then understood it was fair to be valued financially for this. I am also an early stage founder and work 80-90 hours/week on our project to get it off the ground, and this has been a significant addition to that workload.
Thank you.
Hello delegates! We are looking for a delegate voting power to post our proposal to Snapshot so it can go up for voting. We have had a month of comments coming in and it looks like theres close to an equal amount of people in support of our proposal to those that are not.
We can take it into a vote to see the results.
Thank you.
Hi @karpatkey and @Bob-Rossi I am checking in if our proposal can be moved onto Snapshot for a vote? Thanks.
Hi @Vertex_Protocol thank you for your comments.
I have reached out to confirm with the projects listed here that they submitted their KYC in a timely manner, and they all said yes that they did right after their week one. One winner from Africa said his country was on the grey list so he had to submit additional documentation which he wasnt aware of but collected and then passed.
Hi @Vertex_Protocol thank you for your comments.
I have reached out to confirm with the projects listed here that they submitted their KYC in a timely manner, and they all said yes that they did right after their week one. One winner from Africa said his country was on the grey list so he had to submit additional documentation which he wasnt aware of but collected and then passed.
It would definitely be helpful to have countries on grey lists and KYC terms amd steps listed in advance for people to be aware of.
Thank you.
We see that some details about each project have been added, and if our understanding is correct that the projects all fulfilled KYC obligations to the best of their ability and on time we would support making up the difference in this particular circumstance. We want to make clear that this isn't because the token price changed, but rather the time it took to pay out. While this wasn't a grant and there were no promised timelines on delivery, @disruptionjoe has noted in the other thread about this issue that this program faced significant delays unlike others and because of that we believe that it warrants some compensation.
We also agree that we need to figure out better processes around KYC and management with multiple entities if issues are common enough that they're becoming part of the DAO's brand and even high context delegates like @Bob-Rossi are having problems. Making it well understood which countries may not be able to get paid out seems like an easy start, but we'd also suggest an open survey to understand what other issues there have been from the side of delegates and the wider community. Once we have a set of answers, we can sort through and figure out what's solvable through operational changes or better communication and what's just an unfortunate reality of having to deal with legal systems.
Hi Bob,
I have collected the data and status updates on the 5 projects that I was able to reach and want to move forward in continuing or starting their projects as proposed, and were a part of the group that received their payouts in the extremely late category. This has been edited in my proposal above.
Please let me know if you have any thoughts or questions...thanks!
Hi EzR3al,
Thank you for your comments and questions.
I have been in as close as contact as possible with our grant round winners, and have updated my proposal with the details of those that are reachable, and are still interested in continuing or starting to build with ARB as in our proposals, where we were voted as winners.
Hi EzR3al,
Thank you for your comments and questions.
I have been in as close as contact as possible with our grant round winners, and have updated my proposal with the details of those that are reachable, and are still interested in continuing or starting to build with ARB as in our proposals, where we were voted as winners.
We have backtracked our losses abd payout timings ranging from 3-7 months later. PLease note as it might be confusing, you will see some projects were paid out in two separate instances months apart even though it was suppose to be a one time payout. It is unclear why this happened.
A total loss in financial value due to the delays and and drop ARB value for all 32 projects could be estimated around $80,000 USD from the ARB value at the time of our grant. But based on the requests from commenters here we have narrowed this just to those that again are responsive (I messaged the TG group with all of us winners multiple times and sent DMs). We have also added an additional layer of accountability which wasnt required in our JokeRace contest, which is to provide our grant status updates on Karma GAP. We want to be able to contribute and demonstrate value to Arbitrum, and move forward.
Please let me know if you have any additional thoughts or questions!
Hi there, I am sharing that I received feedback from a commenter that Arbitrum is on a grants incentives detox period, so we will not be able to submit a new grant proposal. I am therefore keeping my proposal as shared above.
Thank you. I am not a part of the ArbitrumDAO so am not able to put in on Snapshot, but will ask @DisruptionJoe if he can.
Or if someone else may be able to @Bob-Rossi or @karpatkey or ... that would be great thanks. I have had this proposal up for two weeks while making further clarifications and my initial forum post 3 weeks ago. If we might be able to move this along that would be great so the grantees can get building if this passes, as I believe there will be a couple more weeks of voting to go through if we are moving through the steps.
Thank you. I am not a part of the ArbitrumDAO so am not able to put in on Snapshot, but will ask @DisruptionJoe if he can.
Or if someone else may be able to @Bob-Rossi or @karpatkey or ... that would be great thanks. I have had this proposal up for two weeks while making further clarifications and my initial forum post 3 weeks ago. If we might be able to move this along that would be great so the grantees can get building if this passes, as I believe there will be a couple more weeks of voting to go through if we are moving through the steps.
Thanks
Hello @CastleCapital thank you for your feedback here, and understanding our situation went beyond one of normal price fluctations that can occur.
Regarding my request for compensation for myself as I am a grant winner and should be in line with the compensation of the others, I agree with that in connection to what I should have received, along with the other grant winners.
Hello @CastleCapital thank you for your feedback here, and understanding our situation went beyond one of normal price fluctations that can occur.
Regarding my request for compensation for myself as I am a grant winner and should be in line with the compensation of the others, I agree with that in connection to what I should have received, along with the other grant winners.
However, I would like to share again with additional context, details of how my unplanned community advocacy role and efforts drove this proposal and shared learning experience forward. Please review this first summary post, including one winners commentary:
"As the founder of daospace, I want to express my gratitude to @karakrysthal for her tireless efforts in addressing the issues faced by many grant recipients. Her persistence in pushing for resolution was instrumental in getting things moving with the Arbitrum team."
My efforts were driven beyond being just a grant winner, but one that deeply cares about financial inclusion and is also in strong support of the potential for grant funding to be a meaningful channel for early stage projects to get off the ground. My work with my organization centers on DE&I for women in emerging tech and Web3. Right now, the data shows that 6% of VC funding goes to women in Web3, yet these alarming stats are greater than that in general tech (1-2%). While there isn't data yet being collected on the % of grant funding going to women, from our rough estimation it is less than 10%. My organization is launching a 6 month working group for blockchains and protocols with grant programs, where we are facilitating DE&I education, and fostering collaboration and shared learning on grant program best practices.
I hope this provides more context for the work we are doing, with the hopes that grant program operators do work out their challenges and processes, and Arbitrum, for example, can be one that can lead by example from its learning and ability to adapt, even at its size and complexity.
I am going to push back on your request that I remove my personal compensation for my work and edit that out of the proposal. I have estimated at least 50 hours of my own unpaid effort over the last 6 months has gone into what you are seeing now on these forum posts, from behind-the-scenes work that includes:
I am happy that you have found the information presented invaluable, which has happened due to the persistent focus of these efforts.
This provides as much context I am aware of that I can provide to my energy spent and intentions behind my efforts. Again while my financial compensation was not an initial goal in my advocacy work, as I was presenting it to this forum I then understood it was fair to be valued financially for this. I am also an early stage founder and work 80-90 hours/week on our project to get it off the ground, and this has been a significant addition to that workload.
Thank you.
Hello delegates! We are looking for a delegate voting power to post our proposal to Snapshot so it can go up for voting. We have had a month of comments coming in and it looks like theres close to an equal amount of people in support of our proposal to those that are not.
We can take it into a vote to see the results.
Thank you.
Hi @karpatkey and @Bob-Rossi I am checking in if our proposal can be moved onto Snapshot for a vote? Thanks.
Hi @Vertex_Protocol thank you for your comments.
I have reached out to confirm with the projects listed here that they submitted their KYC in a timely manner, and they all said yes that they did right after their week one. One winner from Africa said his country was on the grey list so he had to submit additional documentation which he wasnt aware of but collected and then passed.
Hi @Vertex_Protocol thank you for your comments.
I have reached out to confirm with the projects listed here that they submitted their KYC in a timely manner, and they all said yes that they did right after their week one. One winner from Africa said his country was on the grey list so he had to submit additional documentation which he wasnt aware of but collected and then passed.
It would definitely be helpful to have countries on grey lists and KYC terms amd steps listed in advance for people to be aware of.
Thank you.
We see that some details about each project have been added, and if our understanding is correct that the projects all fulfilled KYC obligations to the best of their ability and on time we would support making up the difference in this particular circumstance. We want to make clear that this isn't because the token price changed, but rather the time it took to pay out. While this wasn't a grant and there were no promised timelines on delivery, @disruptionjoe has noted in the other thread about this issue that this program faced significant delays unlike others and because of that we believe that it warrants some compensation.
We also agree that we need to figure out better processes around KYC and management with multiple entities if issues are common enough that they're becoming part of the DAO's brand and even high context delegates like @Bob-Rossi are having problems. Making it well understood which countries may not be able to get paid out seems like an easy start, but we'd also suggest an open survey to understand what other issues there have been from the side of delegates and the wider community. Once we have a set of answers, we can sort through and figure out what's solvable through operational changes or better communication and what's just an unfortunate reality of having to deal with legal systems.
Hi Bob,
I have collected the data and status updates on the 5 projects that I was able to reach and want to move forward in continuing or starting their projects as proposed, and were a part of the group that received their payouts in the extremely late category. This has been edited in my proposal above.
Please let me know if you have any thoughts or questions...thanks!
Hi EzR3al,
Thank you for your comments and questions.
I have been in as close as contact as possible with our grant round winners, and have updated my proposal with the details of those that are reachable, and are still interested in continuing or starting to build with ARB as in our proposals, where we were voted as winners.
Hi EzR3al,
Thank you for your comments and questions.
I have been in as close as contact as possible with our grant round winners, and have updated my proposal with the details of those that are reachable, and are still interested in continuing or starting to build with ARB as in our proposals, where we were voted as winners.
We have backtracked our losses abd payout timings ranging from 3-7 months later. PLease note as it might be confusing, you will see some projects were paid out in two separate instances months apart even though it was suppose to be a one time payout. It is unclear why this happened.
A total loss in financial value due to the delays and and drop ARB value for all 32 projects could be estimated around $80,000 USD from the ARB value at the time of our grant. But based on the requests from commenters here we have narrowed this just to those that again are responsive (I messaged the TG group with all of us winners multiple times and sent DMs). We have also added an additional layer of accountability which wasnt required in our JokeRace contest, which is to provide our grant status updates on Karma GAP. We want to be able to contribute and demonstrate value to Arbitrum, and move forward.
Please let me know if you have any additional thoughts or questions!
Hi there, I am sharing that I received feedback from a commenter that Arbitrum is on a grants incentives detox period, so we will not be able to submit a new grant proposal. I am therefore keeping my proposal as shared above.
Hi there, I am sharing that I received feedback from a commenter that Arbitrum is on a grants incentives detox period, so we will not be able to submit a new grant proposal. I am therefore keeping my proposal as shared above.
Thanks
Hi James, thank you for letting me know as I wasn't aware (I don't believe the other commenters here were either as it wasn't mentioned). That 3 month detox looks like it has a lot of valuable strategic plans. I hope the insights I have shared in our grant process will be useful data for the DAO's analysis.
Questbook has grants running with a community education and hackathon focus, so our projects don't fit within this category.
Hi James, thank you for letting me know as I wasn't aware (I don't believe the other commenters here were either as it wasn't mentioned). That 3 month detox looks like it has a lot of valuable strategic plans. I hope the insights I have shared in our grant process will be useful data for the DAO's analysis.
Questbook has grants running with a community education and hackathon focus, so our projects don't fit within this category.
The collective sentiments I have gleaned here seem to fall into two camps:
Our grantee experience is part of the standard grants experience where currency devaluations can occur, and timing and mistakes for our payouts aren't something that can be resolved by the DAO. Even if the grant winnings were received much later than a standard payout timing and disruption to teams and projects incurred as a result.
Grantees shouldn't bear the losses for the devaluation of currency, particularly to those that waited an extensive timeframe, due to the DAO's bottlenecks (which it has been shared are working to be resolved now).
As we aren't able to propose a new grant as proposed by some that weren't aware it's not possible, I think it makes sense to keep our current proposal as one for restitution, unless you have other suggestions. I am gathering the data from the projects still wanting to build with ARB, received payouts in May and June, and are wishing to receive their payouts so they can continue.
Thanks!
I'm not able to follow these steps you outlined as I am not familiar with who is on the council. I'm also not pursuing this particular sub-topic within this round as I am focused on the grantees payouts.
If you want to follow your own steps and provide that factual data here with your opinion on it to open the conversation, I think that would be more valuable than asking others to collect that data and what their opinions are.
Hi @Bob-Rossi I can help provide more context as I know it can be difficult to understand and track all the steps in this grant round, so hopefully this will provide more clarity on the grant round timing.
It was an 8 week contest that started in January and ended in March.
Hi @Bob-Rossi I can help provide more context as I know it can be difficult to understand and track all the steps in this grant round, so hopefully this will provide more clarity on the grant round timing.
It was an 8 week contest that started in January and ended in March.
The grant round was operated through the JokeRace platform, where we all applied and voting happened. Here you can search 'arbitrumdao' in the search box and see that activity each week:
https://www.jokerace.io/contests
Each week, there were 4 winners that were to be paid a one-time payout of 2500 ARB. The JokeRace founder told us the payouts could have been made immediately to the winners each week right after their week's round via the JokeRace platform, but that Arbitrum wanted to KYC check everyone. Arbitrum hired Thrive Protocol to manage the grant program marketing, distribution and KYC checks, and all winners were added to a group Telegram chat with their Program Manager. We were then told to submit KYC, and that we would be paid out after each week had submitted their KYC checks.
It was shortly after (and months after) that we realized that wasnt happening, and you can read more of the details in my summary post of that:
This is what Thrive Protocol's team shared as a comment to my summary in their third point:
"We empathize with this. Five different parties were needed to facilitate a payment. It was the first time ever that something like this had been coordinated, and it was hard to get info from some of those parties. Still, we could have been better. The impact of the slowness, for us, was that we built a bunch of internal systems and capabilities to take in-house every part of the payment capability. As an example, Milestone 1b grantee recipients have generally experienced much faster, smoother payment times because of the learning."
Milestone 1b is another ThankARB grant that Thrive Protocol ran and experienced much faster, smoother payout timings due to the learnings that came from our round.
From what we as grantees could glean, there were very long wait times from Arbitrum's side in responding to the payout times and actually delivering the payouts (Thrive collected those payout dates for us which I added into the summary forum post). As they shared, there were 5 parties needed to facilitate the payment, and the major bottlenecks from what we can see were from Arbitrum's side (but also because there were so many different parties involved).
We actually anchored the payout timing and valuations to 2 weeks after each weekly round, not all in February. We feel 2 weeks is an equitable range for payout timing, and didnt anchor it to an immediate payout timing as we want to give that cushion timing for KYC checks and currency valuation fluctuations to be fair. I have bolded those dates in the proposal for each grantee so its more clear for you all...thanks for bringing that up.
Please let me know if you have any further thoughts or questions.
It would be great to see KYC education becomes a standard.
I responded to a comment before yours and shared I am collecting detailed payout info amd status updates from the projects that are still able to continue executing on ARB and are responsive in the group. As its been 9 months quite a few of the 32 have dropped off. As I mentioned in a previous comment, I am working on collecting these detailed updates within 72 hours and will be editing the proposal with this info.
This was another topic that was brought into question by a number of grantees. The other issues as mentioned superceded and clouded this one, so thank you for bringing it up.
I am not sure who could verify this holistically but there were overlaps with grant winners and council members.
This was another topic that was brought into question by a number of grantees. The other issues as mentioned superceded and clouded this one, so thank you for bringing it up.
I am not sure who could verify this holistically but there were overlaps with grant winners and council members.
Also we still have an active Telegram group going with the grantees and organizers. If anyone wants to be added to that for learning and analysis I can add you (my TG is kara_si3).
I am not a KYC expert but am understanding that some organizations at the size of Arbitrum have to adhere to KYC checks.
Ideas here that could mitigate future challenges are to share KYC criteria in advance to grant applicants. A number of winners in our grant round are from emerging markets and countries that were on a black or grey list and weren't able to pass Arbitrum's KYC. As this list is known in advance by a grant operator, it would be very helpful that this is shared with grant applicants also in advance so they can either not apply or explore alternatives.
I am not a KYC expert but am understanding that some organizations at the size of Arbitrum have to adhere to KYC checks.
Ideas here that could mitigate future challenges are to share KYC criteria in advance to grant applicants. A number of winners in our grant round are from emerging markets and countries that were on a black or grey list and weren't able to pass Arbitrum's KYC. As this list is known in advance by a grant operator, it would be very helpful that this is shared with grant applicants also in advance so they can either not apply or explore alternatives.
For some grant applicants, this is their first time going through KYC, so education on what the process entails would be very helpful so they can start preparing for this as they enter a grant experience. If we set standards for all parties to aim for a 2 week payout timing, for example, we can look at this as an all hands on deck sprint payout period which all parties are prepared for. I believe we should see grantees as extensions of teams if we want to create real value from these programs. Teammates submit documentation, milestones, and their funder commits and adheres to payout timing standards.
Clearly a cross-chain ID pass is something that would be very useful for all organizations so KYC checks arent repeately needed. I'm aware some organizations are exploring and working within this realm. If Arbitrum could be a part of supporting and leading on this (if it's not in process already) this would create a lot of shared value and turn challenging learning experiences into positive ones.
Thank you for this feedback. I am editing the proposal now based on the collective feedback that this isnt a restitution request, but a new grant proposal paying the winners the difference in their grant losses. I am collecting this specific data from the parties that are still responsive in our group chat, and are actively able to continue with their project with ARB.
Ok thanks for letting me know, the proposal has been edited.
Thank you for your useful insights and experience with the pathway that you took where value has been created in the end.
I am not a community, ecosystem or program manager for any of the winners other than my own project, as I have mentioned in an earlier thread. The hired program and grant managers for this responsibilities tapered off as people received payment. I started to step in as an unpaid advocate four months in as the program and payments were chaotic and not moving, so I tried to get things moving with the different parties involved. I've now been advocating since May, or 6 months.
Thank you for your useful insights and experience with the pathway that you took where value has been created in the end.
I am not a community, ecosystem or program manager for any of the winners other than my own project, as I have mentioned in an earlier thread. The hired program and grant managers for this responsibilities tapered off as people received payment. I started to step in as an unpaid advocate four months in as the program and payments were chaotic and not moving, so I tried to get things moving with the different parties involved. I've now been advocating since May, or 6 months.
In this time Ive been connecting with winners and now whats left is a total of 5 that I have been able to reach, werent able to execute at all, and are still interested and able to execute with ARB are ready to go. We have been waiting for 9 months at this point, so if this needs to go through a whole other new round with reviewers, KYC checks, etc etc etc I think this should just be dropped as we need to move forward.
I am new to this process with Arbitrum so am not very clear on the steps, and would appreciate your feedback. I am thinking to edit this proposal and then we would need to find a delegate to put this up on Tally?
Thank you.
Thank you for your review and response. I am happy the DAO has discovered the bottlenecks and changes will be made so this doesn't happen to other grantees in the future.
Offering grants in stablecoins would also likely make more sense so projects can execute. Someone mentioned that ARB is meant to be a governance token, not for things like grant distributions. I am not familiar but if anyone could comment on that here, I would like to learn.
Thank you James, your points are clear to me and I am working on gathering the full data from projects on their payout dates and status updates and then I think we will have a final, up-to-date and scoped proposal. I will update the proposal with this data in 72 hours.
*there were 8 weeks of 4 grant winners per week, so 32 total. This started the last week in January and ran through March. This was suppose to be a 1 time 2500 ARB payment to each winner, assumed to be paid after they won (but no terms on this). For some reason many of us were paid 1-3 times different ARB amounts but it wasnt clear why.
Thank you James, your points are clear to me and I am working on gathering the full data from projects on their payout dates and status updates and then I think we will have a final, up-to-date and scoped proposal. I will update the proposal with this data in 72 hours.
*there were 8 weeks of 4 grant winners per week, so 32 total. This started the last week in January and ran through March. This was suppose to be a 1 time 2500 ARB payment to each winner, assumed to be paid after they won (but no terms on this). For some reason many of us were paid 1-3 times different ARB amounts but it wasnt clear why.
I will report back with the full data of those projects still engaging in 72 hours.
Hi there, I am sharing that I received feedback from a commenter that Arbitrum is on a grants incentives detox period, so we will not be able to submit a new grant proposal. I am therefore keeping my proposal as shared above.
Thanks
Hi James, thank you for letting me know as I wasn't aware (I don't believe the other commenters here were either as it wasn't mentioned). That 3 month detox looks like it has a lot of valuable strategic plans. I hope the insights I have shared in our grant process will be useful data for the DAO's analysis.
Questbook has grants running with a community education and hackathon focus, so our projects don't fit within this category.
Hi James, thank you for letting me know as I wasn't aware (I don't believe the other commenters here were either as it wasn't mentioned). That 3 month detox looks like it has a lot of valuable strategic plans. I hope the insights I have shared in our grant process will be useful data for the DAO's analysis.
Questbook has grants running with a community education and hackathon focus, so our projects don't fit within this category.
The collective sentiments I have gleaned here seem to fall into two camps:
Our grantee experience is part of the standard grants experience where currency devaluations can occur, and timing and mistakes for our payouts aren't something that can be resolved by the DAO. Even if the grant winnings were received much later than a standard payout timing and disruption to teams and projects incurred as a result.
Grantees shouldn't bear the losses for the devaluation of currency, particularly to those that waited an extensive timeframe, due to the DAO's bottlenecks (which it has been shared are working to be resolved now).
As we aren't able to propose a new grant as proposed by some that weren't aware it's not possible, I think it makes sense to keep our current proposal as one for restitution, unless you have other suggestions. I am gathering the data from the projects still wanting to build with ARB, received payouts in May and June, and are wishing to receive their payouts so they can continue.
Thanks!
I'm not able to follow these steps you outlined as I am not familiar with who is on the council. I'm also not pursuing this particular sub-topic within this round as I am focused on the grantees payouts.
If you want to follow your own steps and provide that factual data here with your opinion on it to open the conversation, I think that would be more valuable than asking others to collect that data and what their opinions are.
Hi @Bob-Rossi I can help provide more context as I know it can be difficult to understand and track all the steps in this grant round, so hopefully this will provide more clarity on the grant round timing.
It was an 8 week contest that started in January and ended in March.
Hi @Bob-Rossi I can help provide more context as I know it can be difficult to understand and track all the steps in this grant round, so hopefully this will provide more clarity on the grant round timing.
It was an 8 week contest that started in January and ended in March.
The grant round was operated through the JokeRace platform, where we all applied and voting happened. Here you can search 'arbitrumdao' in the search box and see that activity each week:
https://www.jokerace.io/contests
Each week, there were 4 winners that were to be paid a one-time payout of 2500 ARB. The JokeRace founder told us the payouts could have been made immediately to the winners each week right after their week's round via the JokeRace platform, but that Arbitrum wanted to KYC check everyone. Arbitrum hired Thrive Protocol to manage the grant program marketing, distribution and KYC checks, and all winners were added to a group Telegram chat with their Program Manager. We were then told to submit KYC, and that we would be paid out after each week had submitted their KYC checks.
It was shortly after (and months after) that we realized that wasnt happening, and you can read more of the details in my summary post of that:
This is what Thrive Protocol's team shared as a comment to my summary in their third point:
"We empathize with this. Five different parties were needed to facilitate a payment. It was the first time ever that something like this had been coordinated, and it was hard to get info from some of those parties. Still, we could have been better. The impact of the slowness, for us, was that we built a bunch of internal systems and capabilities to take in-house every part of the payment capability. As an example, Milestone 1b grantee recipients have generally experienced much faster, smoother payment times because of the learning."
Milestone 1b is another ThankARB grant that Thrive Protocol ran and experienced much faster, smoother payout timings due to the learnings that came from our round.
From what we as grantees could glean, there were very long wait times from Arbitrum's side in responding to the payout times and actually delivering the payouts (Thrive collected those payout dates for us which I added into the summary forum post). As they shared, there were 5 parties needed to facilitate the payment, and the major bottlenecks from what we can see were from Arbitrum's side (but also because there were so many different parties involved).
We actually anchored the payout timing and valuations to 2 weeks after each weekly round, not all in February. We feel 2 weeks is an equitable range for payout timing, and didnt anchor it to an immediate payout timing as we want to give that cushion timing for KYC checks and currency valuation fluctuations to be fair. I have bolded those dates in the proposal for each grantee so its more clear for you all...thanks for bringing that up.
Please let me know if you have any further thoughts or questions.
It would be great to see KYC education becomes a standard.
I responded to a comment before yours and shared I am collecting detailed payout info amd status updates from the projects that are still able to continue executing on ARB and are responsive in the group. As its been 9 months quite a few of the 32 have dropped off. As I mentioned in a previous comment, I am working on collecting these detailed updates within 72 hours and will be editing the proposal with this info.
This was another topic that was brought into question by a number of grantees. The other issues as mentioned superceded and clouded this one, so thank you for bringing it up.
I am not sure who could verify this holistically but there were overlaps with grant winners and council members.
This was another topic that was brought into question by a number of grantees. The other issues as mentioned superceded and clouded this one, so thank you for bringing it up.
I am not sure who could verify this holistically but there were overlaps with grant winners and council members.
Also we still have an active Telegram group going with the grantees and organizers. If anyone wants to be added to that for learning and analysis I can add you (my TG is kara_si3).
I am not a KYC expert but am understanding that some organizations at the size of Arbitrum have to adhere to KYC checks.
Ideas here that could mitigate future challenges are to share KYC criteria in advance to grant applicants. A number of winners in our grant round are from emerging markets and countries that were on a black or grey list and weren't able to pass Arbitrum's KYC. As this list is known in advance by a grant operator, it would be very helpful that this is shared with grant applicants also in advance so they can either not apply or explore alternatives.
I am not a KYC expert but am understanding that some organizations at the size of Arbitrum have to adhere to KYC checks.
Ideas here that could mitigate future challenges are to share KYC criteria in advance to grant applicants. A number of winners in our grant round are from emerging markets and countries that were on a black or grey list and weren't able to pass Arbitrum's KYC. As this list is known in advance by a grant operator, it would be very helpful that this is shared with grant applicants also in advance so they can either not apply or explore alternatives.
For some grant applicants, this is their first time going through KYC, so education on what the process entails would be very helpful so they can start preparing for this as they enter a grant experience. If we set standards for all parties to aim for a 2 week payout timing, for example, we can look at this as an all hands on deck sprint payout period which all parties are prepared for. I believe we should see grantees as extensions of teams if we want to create real value from these programs. Teammates submit documentation, milestones, and their funder commits and adheres to payout timing standards.
Clearly a cross-chain ID pass is something that would be very useful for all organizations so KYC checks arent repeately needed. I'm aware some organizations are exploring and working within this realm. If Arbitrum could be a part of supporting and leading on this (if it's not in process already) this would create a lot of shared value and turn challenging learning experiences into positive ones.
Thank you for this feedback. I am editing the proposal now based on the collective feedback that this isnt a restitution request, but a new grant proposal paying the winners the difference in their grant losses. I am collecting this specific data from the parties that are still responsive in our group chat, and are actively able to continue with their project with ARB.
Ok thanks for letting me know, the proposal has been edited.
Thank you for your useful insights and experience with the pathway that you took where value has been created in the end.
I am not a community, ecosystem or program manager for any of the winners other than my own project, as I have mentioned in an earlier thread. The hired program and grant managers for this responsibilities tapered off as people received payment. I started to step in as an unpaid advocate four months in as the program and payments were chaotic and not moving, so I tried to get things moving with the different parties involved. I've now been advocating since May, or 6 months.
Thank you for your useful insights and experience with the pathway that you took where value has been created in the end.
I am not a community, ecosystem or program manager for any of the winners other than my own project, as I have mentioned in an earlier thread. The hired program and grant managers for this responsibilities tapered off as people received payment. I started to step in as an unpaid advocate four months in as the program and payments were chaotic and not moving, so I tried to get things moving with the different parties involved. I've now been advocating since May, or 6 months.
In this time Ive been connecting with winners and now whats left is a total of 5 that I have been able to reach, werent able to execute at all, and are still interested and able to execute with ARB are ready to go. We have been waiting for 9 months at this point, so if this needs to go through a whole other new round with reviewers, KYC checks, etc etc etc I think this should just be dropped as we need to move forward.
I am new to this process with Arbitrum so am not very clear on the steps, and would appreciate your feedback. I am thinking to edit this proposal and then we would need to find a delegate to put this up on Tally?
Thank you.
Thank you for your review and response. I am happy the DAO has discovered the bottlenecks and changes will be made so this doesn't happen to other grantees in the future.
Offering grants in stablecoins would also likely make more sense so projects can execute. Someone mentioned that ARB is meant to be a governance token, not for things like grant distributions. I am not familiar but if anyone could comment on that here, I would like to learn.
Thank you James, your points are clear to me and I am working on gathering the full data from projects on their payout dates and status updates and then I think we will have a final, up-to-date and scoped proposal. I will update the proposal with this data in 72 hours.
*there were 8 weeks of 4 grant winners per week, so 32 total. This started the last week in January and ran through March. This was suppose to be a 1 time 2500 ARB payment to each winner, assumed to be paid after they won (but no terms on this). For some reason many of us were paid 1-3 times different ARB amounts but it wasnt clear why.
Thank you James, your points are clear to me and I am working on gathering the full data from projects on their payout dates and status updates and then I think we will have a final, up-to-date and scoped proposal. I will update the proposal with this data in 72 hours.
*there were 8 weeks of 4 grant winners per week, so 32 total. This started the last week in January and ran through March. This was suppose to be a 1 time 2500 ARB payment to each winner, assumed to be paid after they won (but no terms on this). For some reason many of us were paid 1-3 times different ARB amounts but it wasnt clear why.
I will report back with the full data of those projects still engaging in 72 hours.
Thank you, I mixed up the words so have changed it.
Much value creation potential lost here for all parties with 130 grant applicants, 32 winners and a handful executed...but it is true there is no guarantee or rules for payout timing for grantees with Arbitrum, as you shared. There are payout timing standards at a number of chains and protocols...what is part & parcel for grant delays with some orgs is not normalized at others.
Thank you, I mixed up the words so have changed it.
Much value creation potential lost here for all parties with 130 grant applicants, 32 winners and a handful executed...but it is true there is no guarantee or rules for payout timing for grantees with Arbitrum, as you shared. There are payout timing standards at a number of chains and protocols...what is part & parcel for grant delays with some orgs is not normalized at others.
I agree, it seems unlikely this will pass with Arbitrum but I wanted to share in the aim for feedback and shared learning.
Regarding the status updates of all 18 projects that received their payouts in May or June, I dont have all that data but if necessary, can put in the effort of trying to track them all down for updates. Im not a part of any team or DAO that has been hired to help facilitate this grant, but there has been much effort behind the scenes to push this process along. And I realized if this needed to be shared with the DAO, otherwise it could continue to happen in other grant programs (in addition to no retribution for this program's grantees).
In the previous post linked, I shared updates from three projects (all three werent able to take any action or move forward due to the delays and major ARB value drop). My project was able to execute our technical development as in our proposal, and offer 5 out of the 30 scholarships to women in Web3 in Africa to our membership program (we won 1st place out of 30 submissions in the Future of Web3 Identity category of the contest). So 25 women missed out on the scholarship opportunity as we didnt have the funds to cover that.
Regarding the status updates of all 18 projects that received their payouts in May or June, I dont have all that data but if necessary, can put in the effort of trying to track them all down for updates. Im not a part of any team or DAO that has been hired to help facilitate this grant, but there has been much effort behind the scenes to push this process along. And I realized if this needed to be shared with the DAO, otherwise it could continue to happen in other grant programs (in addition to no retribution for this program's grantees).
In the previous post linked, I shared updates from three projects (all three werent able to take any action or move forward due to the delays and major ARB value drop). My project was able to execute our technical development as in our proposal, and offer 5 out of the 30 scholarships to women in Web3 in Africa to our membership program (we won 1st place out of 30 submissions in the Future of Web3 Identity category of the contest). So 25 women missed out on the scholarship opportunity as we didnt have the funds to cover that.
Another project, one from Africa, shared in our Telegram group with program organizers he wasnt able to execute his gaming experience due to not enough funds. Another project shared with me in a private TG message this week he had to close his project and couldnt execute.
From the 6 projects out of the 18 I connected with, 5 havent been able to execute and mine has been able to partially execute. I can work on collecting the data from the additional 12 projects and share their updates here, as I am able to reach them (noting this will continue the delays but will work as fast as possible on this).
It is a major bummer the Arb value drop to its original value. However, I think its important we also see the purpose of distributing grants - projects creating value for the chain or protocol offering financial support. If the majority of 18 projects havent even been able to execute or partial execute, that is a loss of 18 potential contributors to ARBs value. So the long term losses here could be greater than the present financial value of this request.
Im adding another point of feedback and consideration for the ArbitrumDAO for future grants. In our experience as winners, in the 5 months of activity in the Telegram group, we were all checking regulary the status updates from the Program Manager who was in communication with the ArbitrumDAO. There were often weeks of gaps of time where the Program Manager was waiting to hear back from Arbitrum on KYC checks and payouts. And then as shared in my timeline summary, there were payouts given of 168 ARB, 625 or 1875 ARB to different projects, instead of the 2500 ARB.
It appears ArbitrumDAO didnt have the bandwith and/or processes organized to distribute the funds in a clear or timely way. As Arbitrum has been very active in a variety of grant rounds, I think it is important that your DAO has the bandwith to manage these properly before partnering with third parties and executing them directly. Im not sure what that entails other than the obvious of more resources being put towards this and slowing down on the grant programs.
Whilst i expressed my support on the original thread, and whilst it should not be a thing necessarily related to the outcome of this proposal, it would be nice to have the full picture about the current status of the grant winners, given your previous comment
Due to major delays on payout timings and resulting ARB value drop, multiple projects were not able to be executed and many half-executed
Whilst i expressed my support on the original thread, and whilst it should not be a thing necessarily related to the outcome of this proposal, it would be nice to have the full picture about the current status of the grant winners, given your previous comment
Due to major delays on payout timings and resulting ARB value drop, multiple projects were not able to be executed and many half-executed
Most protocols have received the grant between May and June, around 4 months ago. What's the latest update?
On the side, i would like to stress again how this execution has been miopic, even ignoring the ethos and quality standards argument and adopting a merely practical standpoint, a timely payout would have costed 2500 $ARB, meanwhile now we are discussing a compensation of the same $ value... but costing almost four times as much in $ARB. The things that could be avoided by being efficient and timely ...
I am posting status updates here from projects as requested as they come in (in addition to the ones already mentioned):
"When I received it, it was a few hundred bucks. I was not able to do anything. Also not building on arb anymore. Too much bureaucracy."
Thank you, I mixed up the words so have changed it.
Much value creation potential lost here for all parties with 130 grant applicants, 32 winners and a handful executed...but it is true there is no guarantee or rules for payout timing for grantees with Arbitrum, as you shared. There are payout timing standards at a number of chains and protocols...what is part & parcel for grant delays with some orgs is not normalized at others.
Thank you, I mixed up the words so have changed it.
Much value creation potential lost here for all parties with 130 grant applicants, 32 winners and a handful executed...but it is true there is no guarantee or rules for payout timing for grantees with Arbitrum, as you shared. There are payout timing standards at a number of chains and protocols...what is part & parcel for grant delays with some orgs is not normalized at others.
I agree, it seems unlikely this will pass with Arbitrum but I wanted to share in the aim for feedback and shared learning.
Regarding the status updates of all 18 projects that received their payouts in May or June, I dont have all that data but if necessary, can put in the effort of trying to track them all down for updates. Im not a part of any team or DAO that has been hired to help facilitate this grant, but there has been much effort behind the scenes to push this process along. And I realized if this needed to be shared with the DAO, otherwise it could continue to happen in other grant programs (in addition to no retribution for this program's grantees).
In the previous post linked, I shared updates from three projects (all three werent able to take any action or move forward due to the delays and major ARB value drop). My project was able to execute our technical development as in our proposal, and offer 5 out of the 30 scholarships to women in Web3 in Africa to our membership program (we won 1st place out of 30 submissions in the Future of Web3 Identity category of the contest). So 25 women missed out on the scholarship opportunity as we didnt have the funds to cover that.
Regarding the status updates of all 18 projects that received their payouts in May or June, I dont have all that data but if necessary, can put in the effort of trying to track them all down for updates. Im not a part of any team or DAO that has been hired to help facilitate this grant, but there has been much effort behind the scenes to push this process along. And I realized if this needed to be shared with the DAO, otherwise it could continue to happen in other grant programs (in addition to no retribution for this program's grantees).
In the previous post linked, I shared updates from three projects (all three werent able to take any action or move forward due to the delays and major ARB value drop). My project was able to execute our technical development as in our proposal, and offer 5 out of the 30 scholarships to women in Web3 in Africa to our membership program (we won 1st place out of 30 submissions in the Future of Web3 Identity category of the contest). So 25 women missed out on the scholarship opportunity as we didnt have the funds to cover that.
Another project, one from Africa, shared in our Telegram group with program organizers he wasnt able to execute his gaming experience due to not enough funds. Another project shared with me in a private TG message this week he had to close his project and couldnt execute.
From the 6 projects out of the 18 I connected with, 5 havent been able to execute and mine has been able to partially execute. I can work on collecting the data from the additional 12 projects and share their updates here, as I am able to reach them (noting this will continue the delays but will work as fast as possible on this).
It is a major bummer the Arb value drop to its original value. However, I think its important we also see the purpose of distributing grants - projects creating value for the chain or protocol offering financial support. If the majority of 18 projects havent even been able to execute or partial execute, that is a loss of 18 potential contributors to ARBs value. So the long term losses here could be greater than the present financial value of this request.
Im adding another point of feedback and consideration for the ArbitrumDAO for future grants. In our experience as winners, in the 5 months of activity in the Telegram group, we were all checking regulary the status updates from the Program Manager who was in communication with the ArbitrumDAO. There were often weeks of gaps of time where the Program Manager was waiting to hear back from Arbitrum on KYC checks and payouts. And then as shared in my timeline summary, there were payouts given of 168 ARB, 625 or 1875 ARB to different projects, instead of the 2500 ARB.
It appears ArbitrumDAO didnt have the bandwith and/or processes organized to distribute the funds in a clear or timely way. As Arbitrum has been very active in a variety of grant rounds, I think it is important that your DAO has the bandwith to manage these properly before partnering with third parties and executing them directly. Im not sure what that entails other than the obvious of more resources being put towards this and slowing down on the grant programs.
Whilst i expressed my support on the original thread, and whilst it should not be a thing necessarily related to the outcome of this proposal, it would be nice to have the full picture about the current status of the grant winners, given your previous comment
Due to major delays on payout timings and resulting ARB value drop, multiple projects were not able to be executed and many half-executed
Whilst i expressed my support on the original thread, and whilst it should not be a thing necessarily related to the outcome of this proposal, it would be nice to have the full picture about the current status of the grant winners, given your previous comment
Due to major delays on payout timings and resulting ARB value drop, multiple projects were not able to be executed and many half-executed
Most protocols have received the grant between May and June, around 4 months ago. What's the latest update?
On the side, i would like to stress again how this execution has been miopic, even ignoring the ethos and quality standards argument and adopting a merely practical standpoint, a timely payout would have costed 2500 $ARB, meanwhile now we are discussing a compensation of the same $ value... but costing almost four times as much in $ARB. The things that could be avoided by being efficient and timely ...
I am posting status updates here from projects as requested as they come in (in addition to the ones already mentioned):
"When I received it, it was a few hundred bucks. I was not able to do anything. Also not building on arb anymore. Too much bureaucracy."
Hey @danielo, looking at this hackathon continuation proposal, we’re voting FOR with no on-chain mechanism. We got some real talent there that could seriously help build out Arbitrum. The 2-phase funding is smart (validate first, then scale), plus RnDAO is matching 50%. Seems like a no-brainer to keep this momentum going, especially if we can connect these builders with existing Arb projects, and existing well funded ventures dedicated to specific industries.
Hey @danielo, looking at this hackathon continuation proposal, we’re voting FOR with no on-chain mechanism. We got some real talent there that could seriously help build out Arbitrum. The 2-phase funding is smart (validate first, then scale), plus RnDAO is matching 50%. Seems like a no-brainer to keep this momentum going, especially if we can connect these builders with existing Arb projects, and existing well funded ventures dedicated to specific industries.
Thank you. I'll fix it.
Hey @danielo, looking at this hackathon continuation proposal, we’re voting FOR with no on-chain mechanism. We got some real talent there that could seriously help build out Arbitrum. The 2-phase funding is smart (validate first, then scale), plus RnDAO is matching 50%. Seems like a no-brainer to keep this momentum going, especially if we can connect these builders with existing Arb projects, and existing well funded ventures dedicated to specific industries.
Hey @danielo, looking at this hackathon continuation proposal, we’re voting FOR with no on-chain mechanism. We got some real talent there that could seriously help build out Arbitrum. The 2-phase funding is smart (validate first, then scale), plus RnDAO is matching 50%. Seems like a no-brainer to keep this momentum going, especially if we can connect these builders with existing Arb projects, and existing well funded ventures dedicated to specific industries.
Thank you. I'll fix it.
Hey @danielo, looking at this hackathon continuation proposal, we're voting FOR with no on-chain mechanism. We got some real talent there that could seriously help build out Arbitrum. The 2-phase funding is smart (validate first, then scale), plus RnDAO is matching 50%. Seems like a no-brainer to keep this momentum going, especially if we can connect these builders with existing Arb projects, and existing well funded ventures dedicated to specific industries.
The proposal highlights the challenges caused by the use of highly volatile Tokens/funds for expenditures and project execution. The amount requested for compensation is not particularly large, and the issues have been thoroughly explained. I vote for this proposal, as it also provides reflections on the use of such funds. I hope similar issues can be addressed and improvements implemented in the future.
Hey @danielo, looking at this hackathon continuation proposal, we're voting FOR with no on-chain mechanism. We got some real talent there that could seriously help build out Arbitrum. The 2-phase funding is smart (validate first, then scale), plus RnDAO is matching 50%. Seems like a no-brainer to keep this momentum going, especially if we can connect these builders with existing Arb projects, and existing well funded ventures dedicated to specific industries.
The proposal highlights the challenges caused by the use of highly volatile Tokens/funds for expenditures and project execution. The amount requested for compensation is not particularly large, and the issues have been thoroughly explained. I vote for this proposal, as it also provides reflections on the use of such funds. I hope similar issues can be addressed and improvements implemented in the future.
After discussing the proposal and the situation with various stakeholders, Gauntlet agrees that the delay in funding the ThankARB program is, under normal circumstances, unacceptable for a grant program. That said, it’s clear that the grant was denominated in ARB and not a USDC value of ARB. As such, there is no cause for restitution from the DAO. Further, this was not a DAO-run program but rather an initiative funded by the DAO that was operated by the Thrive team. We would prefer to see the Thrive team take responsibility for these disagreements in the future rather than having each delegate litigate such small cases.
Lastly, it would set an incorrect precedent that ARB-denominated grants are valued at ARB’s USDC conversion rate at grant distribution. Programs convert ARB to stablecoins when their liabilities are denominated in stablecoins; in this case, the rewards were clearly denominated in ARB.
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to vote “AGAINST” on this proposal at the Snapshot Vote.
We align with the comments made by other delegates. While we empathize with the builders affected by this situation, we understand that the grants were awarded in ARB. We do not find it feasible for the DAO to bear the burden of token volatility in such agreements.
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to vote “AGAINST” on this proposal at the Snapshot Vote.
We align with the comments made by other delegates. While we empathize with the builders affected by this situation, we understand that the grants were awarded in ARB. We do not find it feasible for the DAO to bear the burden of token volatility in such agreements.
It's concerning that in some cases, winners have waited up to seven months to receive their funds. Beyond any delays caused by the KYC process (which we understand from personal experience can sometimes be challenging), we do not believe this is a valid justification for such significant delays. Based on the available forum information, we observed that many of these issues could have been avoided with a more proactive approach.
For these reasons, we do not find the DAO responsible in a way that justifies any disbursement of funds. Once again, we regret the situation experienced by the grantees and hope that, in the future, any individual/entity managing grant programs will take this poor precedent as a learning opportunity.
Voted against this proposal, mostly for precedent. Although I am sympathetic and understand the problem of the delay, ARB volatility risk should not be paid for by the DAO. This is implicit when dealing when ARB denominated grants and/or payments unless explicitly stated.
DAOplomats voted AGAINST this proposal on Snapshot.
There were some reasons we were against this proposal which several delegates already mentioned. Our major reason, however, is process integrity. We don't want to open that can of worms where approving retrospective payments might signal to participants that initial funding decisions can be revisited.
As in @web3citizenxyz representation, voting AGAISNT in this proposal and below is our rationale.
I agree with Bob and believe the issue was framed incorrectly (also in the original proposal).
The core problem isn’t ARB’s price fluctuations but the DAO’s failure to ensure prompt operational execution. These were relatively small payments, and delays of months should not be acceptable.
I agree with Bob and believe the issue was framed incorrectly (also in the original proposal).
The core problem isn’t ARB’s price fluctuations but the DAO’s failure to ensure prompt operational execution. These were relatively small payments, and delays of months should not be acceptable.
We want builders join the Arbitrum ecosystem knowing that we appropriately respond to meritocracy. Let's send a signal.
Voting FOR.
Blockworks Advisory will be voting against this proposal.
It's understandable that these folks are upset with their compensation; however, the standard has been set and we should not establish a new precedent unless it is absolutely necessary. If an amount is committed to in ARB then it should remain that way, in future iterations applicants and proposal drafters should make it explicitly clear that the denomination will be in USD.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting AGAINST the proposal.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting AGAINST the proposal.
While we understand the position that the winning teams found themselves in, the grants were supposed to be delivered in ARB, which they were. The price depreciation affected not only the grantees but probably also the grant program itself and the broader DAO initiatives. One such example was the ARDC, where members got paid less in dollar terms, even though the fee they quoted was denominated in USD.
We do not want to set a precedent where the price fluctuations are retroactively addressed by going to the DAO and asking for additional funds. It would also be crazy to expect grantees who received, say, 10,000 ARB to give back half of it if the price appreciated by 100% by the time they were to receive it.
It is also worth mentioning that the payments in question were just prizes, not compensation for some work delivered for the DAO. Those prizes were denominated in ARB and delivered in ARB.
If anything, the takeaway from this is that we should, as a DAO, do a better job at managing payments denominated in ARB and do a better job with logistics and communication involved with payment delivery.
We vote AGAINST this proposal.
We believe the price fluctuation is an inherent nature of the crypto tokens, and this shouldn't be the reason for the retroactive restitution, otherwise codified in the original proposal, like the STEP program service provider case. We sincerely feel the pain from the affected developers, but they had ways to hedge this situation like others mentioned. For the delayed payouts, the DAO should address the issue separately, not in this manner. Signaling support on developers is important, but we don't believe approving this proposal is an appropriate way to do so.
We are voting against this proposal because it sets a precedent of compensating projects for delays and market fluctuations, which are common risks in grants and funding rounds. While the delays were unfortunate, funds were eventually delivered, and additional compensation may not be fair to other grantees who managed despite challenges. Grant rounds should prioritize improving processes for the future rather than retroactive restitution.
I'm voting "For", if for anything to signal support that this is an issue the DAO should be focusing on in the future. I'm hoping if anything this can kick-start discussion on how to fix this going forward, because even though this case was fairly egregious, this issue has become fairly common across all projects in the DAO.
Reasoning: Pretty much what I've mentioned in posts above. I really do agree with a lot of other delegates here that ARB price fluctuations should be expected, and had this been something like a 1 week delay or whatever I would have voted against this... but at the core of this issue is more-so an operational failure. One that resulted in payout delays up to 7 Months for one of the groups. Precedent can go both ways, and I think if we keep having things like this happen we risk growing a reputation.
Is quite unfortunate that this resulted in delay and a blocker for most projects; but this doesn’t necessarily entile the project to further compensantion because nobody would be here if arb would have gone from 2$ to 4$. And this is something i can say first hand because not only i have been in several grant programs, i also have been in programs with payments denominated in arb, in which grantee never complained when price was going up, but had some reservation when it was going down.
After much internal deliberation, we have voted against this proposal.
It wasn't an easy decision and one that we didn't take lightly. The balance between our desire to ensure fairness for those within the Arbitrum community and setting a bad precedent made this an even harder decision. In the end, we voted against setting a negative precedent where compensation is made based on a dollar value when an ARB amount was committed. https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/39?u=castlecapital
Too long delay in ARB payouts is very unfortunate and understandably painful for recipients. But the grant rules were clear about the payment being in ARB tokens. As @chamadao said, the proposed restitution would create a dangerous precedent. For that reason, I vote against the proposal.
Voted Against: It is unfortunate that this situation occurred, and I really feel for the builders. The biggest issue with this situation is not the price swing but keeping the builders in the dark for so long. We should do better with communication. However, paying out financial restitution is not the way to go here. We, as a DAO, cannot vote on such small cases. I think this is a waste of time. Overall, I believe this situation has hurt Arbitrum's reputation. Let’s learn from it and move on.
I voted against this proposal.
I can empathize with the teams and the drop in token price, but Arbitrum DAO cannot be held accountable for that. The fund deployment may have an area of improvement, but the payment method was clearly in ARB.
After discussing the proposal and the situation with various stakeholders, Gauntlet agrees that the delay in funding the ThankARB program is, under normal circumstances, unacceptable for a grant program. That said, it’s clear that the grant was denominated in ARB and not a USDC value of ARB. As such, there is no cause for restitution from the DAO. Further, this was not a DAO-run program but rather an initiative funded by the DAO that was operated by the Thrive team. We would prefer to see the Thrive team take responsibility for these disagreements in the future rather than having each delegate litigate such small cases.
Lastly, it would set an incorrect precedent that ARB-denominated grants are valued at ARB’s USDC conversion rate at grant distribution. Programs convert ARB to stablecoins when their liabilities are denominated in stablecoins; in this case, the rewards were clearly denominated in ARB.
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to vote “AGAINST” on this proposal at the Snapshot Vote.
We align with the comments made by other delegates. While we empathize with the builders affected by this situation, we understand that the grants were awarded in ARB. We do not find it feasible for the DAO to bear the burden of token volatility in such agreements.
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to vote “AGAINST” on this proposal at the Snapshot Vote.
We align with the comments made by other delegates. While we empathize with the builders affected by this situation, we understand that the grants were awarded in ARB. We do not find it feasible for the DAO to bear the burden of token volatility in such agreements.
It's concerning that in some cases, winners have waited up to seven months to receive their funds. Beyond any delays caused by the KYC process (which we understand from personal experience can sometimes be challenging), we do not believe this is a valid justification for such significant delays. Based on the available forum information, we observed that many of these issues could have been avoided with a more proactive approach.
For these reasons, we do not find the DAO responsible in a way that justifies any disbursement of funds. Once again, we regret the situation experienced by the grantees and hope that, in the future, any individual/entity managing grant programs will take this poor precedent as a learning opportunity.
Voted against this proposal, mostly for precedent. Although I am sympathetic and understand the problem of the delay, ARB volatility risk should not be paid for by the DAO. This is implicit when dealing when ARB denominated grants and/or payments unless explicitly stated.
DAOplomats voted AGAINST this proposal on Snapshot.
There were some reasons we were against this proposal which several delegates already mentioned. Our major reason, however, is process integrity. We don't want to open that can of worms where approving retrospective payments might signal to participants that initial funding decisions can be revisited.
As in @web3citizenxyz representation, voting AGAISNT in this proposal and below is our rationale.
I agree with Bob and believe the issue was framed incorrectly (also in the original proposal).
The core problem isn’t ARB’s price fluctuations but the DAO’s failure to ensure prompt operational execution. These were relatively small payments, and delays of months should not be acceptable.
I agree with Bob and believe the issue was framed incorrectly (also in the original proposal).
The core problem isn’t ARB’s price fluctuations but the DAO’s failure to ensure prompt operational execution. These were relatively small payments, and delays of months should not be acceptable.
We want builders join the Arbitrum ecosystem knowing that we appropriately respond to meritocracy. Let's send a signal.
Voting FOR.
Blockworks Advisory will be voting against this proposal.
It's understandable that these folks are upset with their compensation; however, the standard has been set and we should not establish a new precedent unless it is absolutely necessary. If an amount is committed to in ARB then it should remain that way, in future iterations applicants and proposal drafters should make it explicitly clear that the denomination will be in USD.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting AGAINST the proposal.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting AGAINST the proposal.
While we understand the position that the winning teams found themselves in, the grants were supposed to be delivered in ARB, which they were. The price depreciation affected not only the grantees but probably also the grant program itself and the broader DAO initiatives. One such example was the ARDC, where members got paid less in dollar terms, even though the fee they quoted was denominated in USD.
We do not want to set a precedent where the price fluctuations are retroactively addressed by going to the DAO and asking for additional funds. It would also be crazy to expect grantees who received, say, 10,000 ARB to give back half of it if the price appreciated by 100% by the time they were to receive it.
It is also worth mentioning that the payments in question were just prizes, not compensation for some work delivered for the DAO. Those prizes were denominated in ARB and delivered in ARB.
If anything, the takeaway from this is that we should, as a DAO, do a better job at managing payments denominated in ARB and do a better job with logistics and communication involved with payment delivery.
We vote AGAINST this proposal.
We believe the price fluctuation is an inherent nature of the crypto tokens, and this shouldn't be the reason for the retroactive restitution, otherwise codified in the original proposal, like the STEP program service provider case. We sincerely feel the pain from the affected developers, but they had ways to hedge this situation like others mentioned. For the delayed payouts, the DAO should address the issue separately, not in this manner. Signaling support on developers is important, but we don't believe approving this proposal is an appropriate way to do so.
We are voting against this proposal because it sets a precedent of compensating projects for delays and market fluctuations, which are common risks in grants and funding rounds. While the delays were unfortunate, funds were eventually delivered, and additional compensation may not be fair to other grantees who managed despite challenges. Grant rounds should prioritize improving processes for the future rather than retroactive restitution.
I'm voting "For", if for anything to signal support that this is an issue the DAO should be focusing on in the future. I'm hoping if anything this can kick-start discussion on how to fix this going forward, because even though this case was fairly egregious, this issue has become fairly common across all projects in the DAO.
Reasoning: Pretty much what I've mentioned in posts above. I really do agree with a lot of other delegates here that ARB price fluctuations should be expected, and had this been something like a 1 week delay or whatever I would have voted against this... but at the core of this issue is more-so an operational failure. One that resulted in payout delays up to 7 Months for one of the groups. Precedent can go both ways, and I think if we keep having things like this happen we risk growing a reputation.
Is quite unfortunate that this resulted in delay and a blocker for most projects; but this doesn’t necessarily entile the project to further compensantion because nobody would be here if arb would have gone from 2$ to 4$. And this is something i can say first hand because not only i have been in several grant programs, i also have been in programs with payments denominated in arb, in which grantee never complained when price was going up, but had some reservation when it was going down.
After much internal deliberation, we have voted against this proposal.
It wasn't an easy decision and one that we didn't take lightly. The balance between our desire to ensure fairness for those within the Arbitrum community and setting a bad precedent made this an even harder decision. In the end, we voted against setting a negative precedent where compensation is made based on a dollar value when an ARB amount was committed. https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/proposal-for-financial-restitution-for-arbitrumdao-grant-winners/27020/39?u=castlecapital
Too long delay in ARB payouts is very unfortunate and understandably painful for recipients. But the grant rules were clear about the payment being in ARB tokens. As @chamadao said, the proposed restitution would create a dangerous precedent. For that reason, I vote against the proposal.
Voted Against: It is unfortunate that this situation occurred, and I really feel for the builders. The biggest issue with this situation is not the price swing but keeping the builders in the dark for so long. We should do better with communication. However, paying out financial restitution is not the way to go here. We, as a DAO, cannot vote on such small cases. I think this is a waste of time. Overall, I believe this situation has hurt Arbitrum's reputation. Let’s learn from it and move on.
I voted against this proposal.
I can empathize with the teams and the drop in token price, but Arbitrum DAO cannot be held accountable for that. The fund deployment may have an area of improvement, but the payment method was clearly in ARB.
Blockworks Advisory will be voting against this proposal.
It's understandable that these folks are upset with their compensation; however, the standard has been set and we should not establish a new precedent unless it is absolutely necessary. If an amount is committed to in ARB then it should remain that way, in future iterations applicants and proposal drafters should make it explicitly clear that the denomination will be in USD.
It is important to say that this is not problem with what occurred. The other component to this were the late payments made to grantees. Moving forward, it may be ideal that there should be an expected late payment clause added to DAO grants or a restitution power given to some oversight committee of some sort.
Is quite unfortunate that this resulted in delay and a blocker for most projects; but this doesn’t necessarily entile the project to further compensantion because nobody would be here if arb would have gone from 2$ to 4$. And this is something i can say first hand because not only i have been in several grant programs, i also have been in programs with payments denominated in arb, in which grantee never complained when price was going up, but had some reservation when it was going down.
This to be clear is not to flip responsability on you. I simpathize with your situation, and having served a lot of small team with grants I know how important these milestones can be just for the survivability of a team, or to effectively ship the product. There was a problem in the program, a lot of delays, that had bad consequences on the operation of project. This will mean that the dao, next time, either won’t vote for the same people to run the program, or for the program itself.
But it doesn’t necessarily mean that the dao should compensate people who requested the grant and saw the dollar value going down. We could, at scale, apply this to the LTIPP program, in which 60M of arbs got distributed, with proposal coming in when arb was way above 1$, and projects receiving the stream for users up to the point in which it was worth 0.4$. While different (we are talking about opex in your case, incentive to users in this case), should there be an argument for it as well? The answer is obviously no.
Consistently with this, I have voted against this proposal.
I really sympathise with both the proposer and the team affected, I really do, and I can understand the frustration. But the grant program has always been denominated in arb. To give an example, in LTIPP, proposers created specific kpi on economic value based on arb at the time of their proposal (around 1.7$). They effectively received arb at a value that was below 0.8$ or less, and we are talking about 30, 40M arbs. This extreme example is to show that for non denominated arb grants there will always be this problem; it's unfortunately more prominent in grants that are for smaller team, because it can really make the difference for the survivability of a project. But again the dao can't take the burden of how volatile the asset is; the dao can for sure take in consideration how there was a big problem with the service provider involved, and try to find ways to correct this behaviour in future. It's really quite unfortunate, I don't think it would be fair to set this precedent.
I’m voting against this proposal for several reasons.
As a judge who participated in the program, I believe I have a unique perspective on this matter. During the process, it became evident that a significant portion of applicants were likely fraudulent or created projects solely to exploit the funding. This was essentially an attempt to seize funds without delivering genuine value.
I’m voting against this proposal for several reasons.
As a judge who participated in the program, I believe I have a unique perspective on this matter. During the process, it became evident that a significant portion of applicants were likely fraudulent or created projects solely to exploit the funding. This was essentially an attempt to seize funds without delivering genuine value.
Anyone who applied to be a judge, regardless of the number of votes they received (even zero), was eligible to become a judge. There were even instances of sybil attacks on the judge board that were uncovered during the program.
I understand that some applicants who are requesting financial restitution may have had legitimate projects. However, this doesn’t negate the fact that the overall system was flawed. After almost a year, we can no longer thoroughly investigate all winners and determine which ones are legitimate and which ones are not. Given the choice between allocating more funds to all winners or none, I believe none is the appropriate option. We must implement stricter rules to prevent individuals from attempting to exploit the DAO.
Even if they are requesting a relatively small amount, I believe this is a matter of principle. It’s crucial to uphold integrity in the process to safeguard the DAO’s funds and reputation. This is why I chose to vote against this proposal on Snapshot.
If we intend to replicate a similar program in the future, it’s essential to approach it with greater caution and establish clearer guidelines to avoid these kinds of issues. The entire program, as it existed, was problematic.
As ChamaDAO, we empathize with the affected grantees and recognize the challenges caused by delayed payments; however, we are voting against this proposal. Compensating for ARB value fluctuations retroactively creates a precedent that makes the DAO responsible for market volatility—a factor beyond its control. While the delays highlight a need for process improvements, allocating additional funds to address token value changes diverts resources from sustainable treasury management. We believe the focus should remain on fixing systemic issues to ensure future grant rounds run smoothly and efficiently, rather than on reactive spending.
We understand the challenges caused by delayed payouts and the fluctuations of the ARB token. However, since the grants were denominated in ARB from the start, the risk of token price fluctuations was an inherent aspect of the program that grantees accepted upon participation.so we decided to vote "Against"
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO (formerly ‘Lampros Labs DAO’) governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting AGAINST this proposal in Snapshot voting.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO (formerly ‘Lampros Labs DAO’) governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting AGAINST this proposal in Snapshot voting.
We maintain our stance from the proposal discussion phase. While we deeply empathize with the challenges faced by these grantees, we cannot support a retrospective financial compensation mechanism that fundamentally contradicts the basic principles of token grant programs.
We empathize with you regarding the delays, costs, and the milestones that remain unachieved. We also appreciate the effort you’ve put into presenting the data, feedback, and this proposal to the DAO.
However, when it comes to financial restitution, we share @thedevanshmehta’s perspective. As grantees, receiving ARB tokens carries an inherent risk of price fluctuation, which all projects must account for. Price volatility is a natural part of grant programs, and if the price had increased, it’s unlikely you would have accepted a reduced amount of ARB tokens.
@DisruptionJoe and the Thrive team have thoroughly analyzed the process and highlighted the bottlenecks they encountered. While we all agree that there were inefficiencies, it’s important to recognize that this is a learning experience for everyone. It’s better to refine our processes through smaller grants than to repeat these mistakes with larger ones.
Hello @Paloma_Etienne you need to have ARB tokens in your wallet, AND to delegate them to yourself (or have someone else that has ARB tokens in their wallet to delegate them to your wallet) and you have to do that before the proposal vote starts.
Since you asked after the proposal vote had started, there was nothing you could do, to get voting power to be able to vote on this proposal.
Hello @Paloma_Etienne you need to have ARB tokens in your wallet, AND to delegate them to yourself (or have someone else that has ARB tokens in their wallet to delegate them to your wallet) and you have to do that before the proposal vote starts.
Since you asked after the proposal vote had started, there was nothing you could do, to get voting power to be able to vote on this proposal.
To delegate voting power to yourself, you can go to https://arbitrum.karmahq.xyz/ connect your wallet, then go back to the list, search for your wallet address, and click on the blue [Delegate] button, to delegate your ARB tokens to yourself, so you can vote on the following proposals.
The way to do it if it’s only delays is calculate interest on the ARB (say 1% per month delayed) and give that for the delayed months
The way to do it if it’s only delays is calculate interest on the ARB (say 1% per month delayed) and give that for the delayed months
yeah I agree with this rationale... but in crypto, with the volatility it inherently has, I feel that the interest amount for a delay like this should not be 1% per month... I feel it should be more like 10% a month =) which would probably put the restitution amounts even higher to be honest.
I also agree that passing this proposal would send a positive message of "Arbitrum actually supports builders, even when things go wrong for some reason outside of it's control" and that is worth way more than the ~$28k ARB this proposal is asking for.
After consideration, I believe that the DAO should focus on improving its future processes rather than providing retroactive compensation for past administrative delays. I'm echoing this argument:
I understand that the delays caused frustration and challenges for the grantees but compensating them with additional funds is not the appropriate solution. The amount requested to counterbalance the inconvenience is subjective and as @404DAO commented, it sets a problematic precedent. Deploying extra funds in response to delays is neither sustainable nor in the best interest of the DAO.
After consideration, I believe that the DAO should focus on improving its future processes rather than providing retroactive compensation for past administrative delays. I'm echoing this argument:
I understand that the delays caused frustration and challenges for the grantees but compensating them with additional funds is not the appropriate solution. The amount requested to counterbalance the inconvenience is subjective and as @404DAO commented, it sets a problematic precedent. Deploying extra funds in response to delays is neither sustainable nor in the best interest of the DAO.
Instead, we should offer continuous support to these builders through future grants and resources based on their commitment and progress. This approach aligns with our mission, focused in innovation and growth within the ecosystem.
I understand and respect @paulofonseca's view that "the restitution is for the lateness mostly," but in my opinion, lateness alone does not warrant additional funding.
The argument that the requested amount is relatively small and the DAO has substantial funds does not justify compensation. We should focus on rectifying the underlying administrative issues so that grant processes are delivered in time and efficiently moving forward.
Therefore, I am voting AGAINST the proposal for additional compensation and advocate for strategic improvements to prevent such delays in the future.
If that is the case, why are they citing the dollar value of ARB at different points of time?
The way to do it if it's only delays is calculate interest on the ARB (say 1% per month delayed) and give that for the delayed months
The justification I see is that the price was higher earlier and so they deserve restitution on dollar basis, which is untenable
This proposal feels problematic to me. It sets an unworkable precedent for the DAO to be held responsible for market fluctuations outside its control.
Equally, the proposal is based on a market price for Arb tokens which is now outdated.
This proposal feels problematic to me. It sets an unworkable precedent for the DAO to be held responsible for market fluctuations outside its control.
Equally, the proposal is based on a market price for Arb tokens which is now outdated.
I'm ultimately voting in favour as I believe supporting builders is important (we need more projects building on Arbitrum and here we have a few that need support) and there were serious payment delays. However, I believe this should NOT be used as a precedent for future proposals as it's not on the basis of damages nor restitution that I'm voting for, it's simply on the basis of supporting builders.
The DIP v1 issue is not the same however. This issue would be more akin to the DIP v1 promising to pay delegates on the 13th-14th of each following month, but for logistical reasons just deciding to not pay us until the end of the 6 month period.
I'm seeing a lot of rationales that I don't think understand the point isn't that the ARB price went down, but that the payments got delayed. I completely get some of the counterpoints, but IMO it's important that no votes are understanding this point.
Voting against for the reasons above.
but in crypto, with the volatility it inherently has, I feel that the interest amount for a delay like this should not be 1% per month
volatility cuts both ways, so we can't use that as justification for a higher interest rate
I voted "For" this proposal. I believe we should prioritize the community. The amount requested isn't much, and the DAO can afford it. In crypto, waiting months for grants can be risky because market fluctuations can seriously affect projects. By the way, DAO should learn from this to move fast as well as prioritize the community initiatives.
I voted "FOR" this proposal.
While I understand the reasoning behind remembering that the grant was defined in ARB, it's important to note that the grantees experienced an unreasonably long delay in receiving it. The lesson to be learned is that we need to review the DAO's processes to ensure timely disbursement of funds in the future.
I am voting against this proposal on Snapshot.
I understand the effort that went into making the case and empathize with the issue faced by the grantees due to the loss of nominal value of ARB, as I have personally experienced this myself when receiving compensation in ARB for providing services to the DAO during the LTIPP.
I am voting against this proposal on Snapshot.
I understand the effort that went into making the case and empathize with the issue faced by the grantees due to the loss of nominal value of ARB, as I have personally experienced this myself when receiving compensation in ARB for providing services to the DAO during the LTIPP.
That said, the agreed-upon arrangement was to receive ARB, and if the price of ARB had increased, there would not have been a proposal to return the excess based on that USD expectation.
I am also concerned about the precedent this sets. During 2024, the DAO distributed a significant amount of ARB through incentive programs, and all grantees had the expectation of receiving more (in USD terms) than what they ultimately received.
Lastly, the unlocks of vested ARB that occurred during 2024 were neither hidden nor undisclosed. These were openly discussed, and I believe it is the responsibility of anyone with expectations of receiving a nominal USD value to be aware of the factors that could affect that expectation.
This case provides valuable lessons on how incentive programs should be structured, as well as on the service providers managing them. For that, I truly appreciate your efforts in pushing this forward.
We oppose this proposal as it could set a precedent for compensation requests based on market performance. While we recognize the KYC and payment delays, these concerns might not have surfaced during an upward price trend. Approving this proposal could lead to similar requests from paid delegates and MS signers, who received only one-third of the promised compensation in the Delegate Incentive Program v1.
Vote: Yes The amount is small, the compensation can be exemplary, and the rules will be clarified subsequently.
the problem is not the denomination of the grant in ARB and it's price going down. the problem was that it took way way way longer than it should for the grantees to get paid. the restitution is for the lateness mostly, not so much for the fact that the value of ARB went down.
We will be voting against this proposal. While we understand and sympathize with the delays experienced by ArbitrumDAO minigrants winners, compensating grant recipients sets a problematic precedent for the DAO as the described issues stem from problems with the ThankARB program and the volatility of ARB, neither of which are in the DAO’s control. Applying and receiving grants denominated in ARB carry inherent risk and many DAO contributors have faced this burden over the last twelve months. This has led to foundational changes in how the DAO structures grant budgets and payout, which has shown the DAO's adaptive approach to deal with these problems.
I'm voting against this proposal on Snapshot.
This is a tough situation and a hard choice for me. I empathize with the affected teams and appreciate the effort karakrysthal has put into advancing this proposal. However, as others have mentioned in this thread, approving it could set a problematic precedent for future proposals. While the requested amount is small, I don’t want to take that risk. I hope we can learn from this experience to prevent similar issues in the future.
Blockworks Advisory will be voting against this proposal.
It's understandable that these folks are upset with their compensation; however, the standard has been set and we should not establish a new precedent unless it is absolutely necessary. If an amount is committed to in ARB then it should remain that way, in future iterations applicants and proposal drafters should make it explicitly clear that the denomination will be in USD.
It is important to say that this is not problem with what occurred. The other component to this were the late payments made to grantees. Moving forward, it may be ideal that there should be an expected late payment clause added to DAO grants or a restitution power given to some oversight committee of some sort.
Is quite unfortunate that this resulted in delay and a blocker for most projects; but this doesn’t necessarily entile the project to further compensantion because nobody would be here if arb would have gone from 2$ to 4$. And this is something i can say first hand because not only i have been in several grant programs, i also have been in programs with payments denominated in arb, in which grantee never complained when price was going up, but had some reservation when it was going down.
This to be clear is not to flip responsability on you. I simpathize with your situation, and having served a lot of small team with grants I know how important these milestones can be just for the survivability of a team, or to effectively ship the product. There was a problem in the program, a lot of delays, that had bad consequences on the operation of project. This will mean that the dao, next time, either won’t vote for the same people to run the program, or for the program itself.
But it doesn’t necessarily mean that the dao should compensate people who requested the grant and saw the dollar value going down. We could, at scale, apply this to the LTIPP program, in which 60M of arbs got distributed, with proposal coming in when arb was way above 1$, and projects receiving the stream for users up to the point in which it was worth 0.4$. While different (we are talking about opex in your case, incentive to users in this case), should there be an argument for it as well? The answer is obviously no.
Consistently with this, I have voted against this proposal.
I really sympathise with both the proposer and the team affected, I really do, and I can understand the frustration. But the grant program has always been denominated in arb. To give an example, in LTIPP, proposers created specific kpi on economic value based on arb at the time of their proposal (around 1.7$). They effectively received arb at a value that was below 0.8$ or less, and we are talking about 30, 40M arbs. This extreme example is to show that for non denominated arb grants there will always be this problem; it's unfortunately more prominent in grants that are for smaller team, because it can really make the difference for the survivability of a project. But again the dao can't take the burden of how volatile the asset is; the dao can for sure take in consideration how there was a big problem with the service provider involved, and try to find ways to correct this behaviour in future. It's really quite unfortunate, I don't think it would be fair to set this precedent.
I’m voting against this proposal for several reasons.
As a judge who participated in the program, I believe I have a unique perspective on this matter. During the process, it became evident that a significant portion of applicants were likely fraudulent or created projects solely to exploit the funding. This was essentially an attempt to seize funds without delivering genuine value.
I’m voting against this proposal for several reasons.
As a judge who participated in the program, I believe I have a unique perspective on this matter. During the process, it became evident that a significant portion of applicants were likely fraudulent or created projects solely to exploit the funding. This was essentially an attempt to seize funds without delivering genuine value.
Anyone who applied to be a judge, regardless of the number of votes they received (even zero), was eligible to become a judge. There were even instances of sybil attacks on the judge board that were uncovered during the program.
I understand that some applicants who are requesting financial restitution may have had legitimate projects. However, this doesn’t negate the fact that the overall system was flawed. After almost a year, we can no longer thoroughly investigate all winners and determine which ones are legitimate and which ones are not. Given the choice between allocating more funds to all winners or none, I believe none is the appropriate option. We must implement stricter rules to prevent individuals from attempting to exploit the DAO.
Even if they are requesting a relatively small amount, I believe this is a matter of principle. It’s crucial to uphold integrity in the process to safeguard the DAO’s funds and reputation. This is why I chose to vote against this proposal on Snapshot.
If we intend to replicate a similar program in the future, it’s essential to approach it with greater caution and establish clearer guidelines to avoid these kinds of issues. The entire program, as it existed, was problematic.
As ChamaDAO, we empathize with the affected grantees and recognize the challenges caused by delayed payments; however, we are voting against this proposal. Compensating for ARB value fluctuations retroactively creates a precedent that makes the DAO responsible for market volatility—a factor beyond its control. While the delays highlight a need for process improvements, allocating additional funds to address token value changes diverts resources from sustainable treasury management. We believe the focus should remain on fixing systemic issues to ensure future grant rounds run smoothly and efficiently, rather than on reactive spending.
We understand the challenges caused by delayed payouts and the fluctuations of the ARB token. However, since the grants were denominated in ARB from the start, the risk of token price fluctuations was an inherent aspect of the program that grantees accepted upon participation.so we decided to vote "Against"
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO (formerly ‘Lampros Labs DAO’) governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting AGAINST this proposal in Snapshot voting.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO (formerly ‘Lampros Labs DAO’) governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting AGAINST this proposal in Snapshot voting.
We maintain our stance from the proposal discussion phase. While we deeply empathize with the challenges faced by these grantees, we cannot support a retrospective financial compensation mechanism that fundamentally contradicts the basic principles of token grant programs.
We empathize with you regarding the delays, costs, and the milestones that remain unachieved. We also appreciate the effort you’ve put into presenting the data, feedback, and this proposal to the DAO.
However, when it comes to financial restitution, we share @thedevanshmehta’s perspective. As grantees, receiving ARB tokens carries an inherent risk of price fluctuation, which all projects must account for. Price volatility is a natural part of grant programs, and if the price had increased, it’s unlikely you would have accepted a reduced amount of ARB tokens.
@DisruptionJoe and the Thrive team have thoroughly analyzed the process and highlighted the bottlenecks they encountered. While we all agree that there were inefficiencies, it’s important to recognize that this is a learning experience for everyone. It’s better to refine our processes through smaller grants than to repeat these mistakes with larger ones.
Hello @Paloma_Etienne you need to have ARB tokens in your wallet, AND to delegate them to yourself (or have someone else that has ARB tokens in their wallet to delegate them to your wallet) and you have to do that before the proposal vote starts.
Since you asked after the proposal vote had started, there was nothing you could do, to get voting power to be able to vote on this proposal.
Hello @Paloma_Etienne you need to have ARB tokens in your wallet, AND to delegate them to yourself (or have someone else that has ARB tokens in their wallet to delegate them to your wallet) and you have to do that before the proposal vote starts.
Since you asked after the proposal vote had started, there was nothing you could do, to get voting power to be able to vote on this proposal.
To delegate voting power to yourself, you can go to https://arbitrum.karmahq.xyz/ connect your wallet, then go back to the list, search for your wallet address, and click on the blue [Delegate] button, to delegate your ARB tokens to yourself, so you can vote on the following proposals.
The way to do it if it’s only delays is calculate interest on the ARB (say 1% per month delayed) and give that for the delayed months
The way to do it if it’s only delays is calculate interest on the ARB (say 1% per month delayed) and give that for the delayed months
yeah I agree with this rationale... but in crypto, with the volatility it inherently has, I feel that the interest amount for a delay like this should not be 1% per month... I feel it should be more like 10% a month =) which would probably put the restitution amounts even higher to be honest.
I also agree that passing this proposal would send a positive message of "Arbitrum actually supports builders, even when things go wrong for some reason outside of it's control" and that is worth way more than the ~$28k ARB this proposal is asking for.
After consideration, I believe that the DAO should focus on improving its future processes rather than providing retroactive compensation for past administrative delays. I'm echoing this argument:
I understand that the delays caused frustration and challenges for the grantees but compensating them with additional funds is not the appropriate solution. The amount requested to counterbalance the inconvenience is subjective and as @404DAO commented, it sets a problematic precedent. Deploying extra funds in response to delays is neither sustainable nor in the best interest of the DAO.
After consideration, I believe that the DAO should focus on improving its future processes rather than providing retroactive compensation for past administrative delays. I'm echoing this argument:
I understand that the delays caused frustration and challenges for the grantees but compensating them with additional funds is not the appropriate solution. The amount requested to counterbalance the inconvenience is subjective and as @404DAO commented, it sets a problematic precedent. Deploying extra funds in response to delays is neither sustainable nor in the best interest of the DAO.
Instead, we should offer continuous support to these builders through future grants and resources based on their commitment and progress. This approach aligns with our mission, focused in innovation and growth within the ecosystem.
I understand and respect @paulofonseca's view that "the restitution is for the lateness mostly," but in my opinion, lateness alone does not warrant additional funding.
The argument that the requested amount is relatively small and the DAO has substantial funds does not justify compensation. We should focus on rectifying the underlying administrative issues so that grant processes are delivered in time and efficiently moving forward.
Therefore, I am voting AGAINST the proposal for additional compensation and advocate for strategic improvements to prevent such delays in the future.
If that is the case, why are they citing the dollar value of ARB at different points of time?
The way to do it if it's only delays is calculate interest on the ARB (say 1% per month delayed) and give that for the delayed months
The justification I see is that the price was higher earlier and so they deserve restitution on dollar basis, which is untenable
This proposal feels problematic to me. It sets an unworkable precedent for the DAO to be held responsible for market fluctuations outside its control.
Equally, the proposal is based on a market price for Arb tokens which is now outdated.
This proposal feels problematic to me. It sets an unworkable precedent for the DAO to be held responsible for market fluctuations outside its control.
Equally, the proposal is based on a market price for Arb tokens which is now outdated.
I'm ultimately voting in favour as I believe supporting builders is important (we need more projects building on Arbitrum and here we have a few that need support) and there were serious payment delays. However, I believe this should NOT be used as a precedent for future proposals as it's not on the basis of damages nor restitution that I'm voting for, it's simply on the basis of supporting builders.
The DIP v1 issue is not the same however. This issue would be more akin to the DIP v1 promising to pay delegates on the 13th-14th of each following month, but for logistical reasons just deciding to not pay us until the end of the 6 month period.
I'm seeing a lot of rationales that I don't think understand the point isn't that the ARB price went down, but that the payments got delayed. I completely get some of the counterpoints, but IMO it's important that no votes are understanding this point.
Voting against for the reasons above.
but in crypto, with the volatility it inherently has, I feel that the interest amount for a delay like this should not be 1% per month
volatility cuts both ways, so we can't use that as justification for a higher interest rate
I voted "For" this proposal. I believe we should prioritize the community. The amount requested isn't much, and the DAO can afford it. In crypto, waiting months for grants can be risky because market fluctuations can seriously affect projects. By the way, DAO should learn from this to move fast as well as prioritize the community initiatives.
I voted "FOR" this proposal.
While I understand the reasoning behind remembering that the grant was defined in ARB, it's important to note that the grantees experienced an unreasonably long delay in receiving it. The lesson to be learned is that we need to review the DAO's processes to ensure timely disbursement of funds in the future.
I am voting against this proposal on Snapshot.
I understand the effort that went into making the case and empathize with the issue faced by the grantees due to the loss of nominal value of ARB, as I have personally experienced this myself when receiving compensation in ARB for providing services to the DAO during the LTIPP.
I am voting against this proposal on Snapshot.
I understand the effort that went into making the case and empathize with the issue faced by the grantees due to the loss of nominal value of ARB, as I have personally experienced this myself when receiving compensation in ARB for providing services to the DAO during the LTIPP.
That said, the agreed-upon arrangement was to receive ARB, and if the price of ARB had increased, there would not have been a proposal to return the excess based on that USD expectation.
I am also concerned about the precedent this sets. During 2024, the DAO distributed a significant amount of ARB through incentive programs, and all grantees had the expectation of receiving more (in USD terms) than what they ultimately received.
Lastly, the unlocks of vested ARB that occurred during 2024 were neither hidden nor undisclosed. These were openly discussed, and I believe it is the responsibility of anyone with expectations of receiving a nominal USD value to be aware of the factors that could affect that expectation.
This case provides valuable lessons on how incentive programs should be structured, as well as on the service providers managing them. For that, I truly appreciate your efforts in pushing this forward.
We oppose this proposal as it could set a precedent for compensation requests based on market performance. While we recognize the KYC and payment delays, these concerns might not have surfaced during an upward price trend. Approving this proposal could lead to similar requests from paid delegates and MS signers, who received only one-third of the promised compensation in the Delegate Incentive Program v1.
Vote: Yes The amount is small, the compensation can be exemplary, and the rules will be clarified subsequently.
the problem is not the denomination of the grant in ARB and it's price going down. the problem was that it took way way way longer than it should for the grantees to get paid. the restitution is for the lateness mostly, not so much for the fact that the value of ARB went down.
We will be voting against this proposal. While we understand and sympathize with the delays experienced by ArbitrumDAO minigrants winners, compensating grant recipients sets a problematic precedent for the DAO as the described issues stem from problems with the ThankARB program and the volatility of ARB, neither of which are in the DAO’s control. Applying and receiving grants denominated in ARB carry inherent risk and many DAO contributors have faced this burden over the last twelve months. This has led to foundational changes in how the DAO structures grant budgets and payout, which has shown the DAO's adaptive approach to deal with these problems.
I'm voting against this proposal on Snapshot.
This is a tough situation and a hard choice for me. I empathize with the affected teams and appreciate the effort karakrysthal has put into advancing this proposal. However, as others have mentioned in this thread, approving it could set a problematic precedent for future proposals. While the requested amount is small, I don’t want to take that risk. I hope we can learn from this experience to prevent similar issues in the future.
but in crypto, with the volatility it inherently has, I feel that the interest amount for a delay like this should not be 1% per month
volatility cuts both ways, so we can't use that as justification for a higher interest rate
in business if customers delay paying tax they need to pay an interest on that amount. The same principle can apply here but i don't see that as the justification. Instead, they are proposing to be compensated based on a past dollar value that ARB had.
I just cast my vote in favor on Snapshot for the following reason: I empathize with the challenges caused by the market correction... it’s a situation I can relate to. I believe we need new procedures in place to prevent similar issues from arising in the future, as setbacks like this can discourage participants. While I don’t know the specifics of why payments were delayed, I support finding a solution that benefits everyone involved.
I empathize with their situation, but if the ARB price had increased in value i dont think they would have come to the forum for returning the amount. Whereas in STEP we had to return the excess in the implementation budget after fulfilling obligations made in dollar denomination.
I empathize with their situation, but if the ARB price had increased in value i dont think they would have come to the forum for returning the amount. Whereas in STEP we had to return the excess in the implementation budget after fulfilling obligations made in dollar denomination.
Voting AGAINST for the reasons listed earlier. When we make a committment in ARB terms, we stick to that. When we make one in dollars, we stick to that. No point muddling the 2
voting For on this offchain proposal because Arbitrum is family, Arbitrum is home, Arbitrum is freedom, Arbitrum is you, and we should all take care of each other and support those that have been short changed.
I voted in favor of this proposal based on its soundness, demonstration of value, and transparency, while suggesting that DAO improve its future incentive payout mechanisms to avoid a repeat of similar issues. Reasons for supporting the proposal: 1. the proposal is transparent, citing specific losses and project status. 2. the compensation can help the project team to restore morale and accomplish the outstanding deliverables. 3. it helps DAO to build better trust mechanism and prove that the governance system is willing to take responsibility. Recommendations: 1. it is recommended that DAO improve the payment process to avoid similar delays from happening again. 2. Teams receiving compensation are required to submit regular project progress reports to the DAO to ensure that funds are used for the originally planned objectives.
We're voting Abstain, as the proposal has both positive and negative aspects and its difficult for us to make a strong decision on it.
We're voting Abstain, as the proposal has both positive and negative aspects and its difficult for us to make a strong decision on it.
Summary -there's arguments both for and against this proposal. I have to say as delegates, we ourselves are assuming price risk, and the original grant also was in ARB, so grantees should have understood that.
Nevertheless, its not a super clear cut case in our opinion so we vote to abstain.
I vote FOR this proposal. While I understand the delegate's point that a grant denominated in token amounts should not be altered, the DAO must also uphold its responsibilities. It is unacceptable for projects to face payment delays of up to seven months.
Although there is concern about setting a bad precedent, the Arbitrum DAO does not operate on a system of jurisprudence, meaning different circumstances might lead to different decisions. Covering the gap is a minor expense for the DAO, and it demonstrates a commitment to supporting its community and builders
Never chimed in the discussion so far, but let me reiterate what others already posted: in a grant program that is denominated in non stable currencies, the change of value in payment is expected.
Is quite unfortunate that this resulted in delay and a blocker for most projects; but this doesn't necessarily entile the project to further compensantion because nobody would be here if arb would have gone from 2$ to 4$. And this is something i can say first hand because not only i have been in several grant programs, i also have been in programs with payments denominated in arb, in which grantee never complained when price was going up, but had some reservation when it was going down.
Never chimed in the discussion so far, but let me reiterate what others already posted: in a grant program that is denominated in non stable currencies, the change of value in payment is expected.
Is quite unfortunate that this resulted in delay and a blocker for most projects; but this doesn't necessarily entile the project to further compensantion because nobody would be here if arb would have gone from 2$ to 4$. And this is something i can say first hand because not only i have been in several grant programs, i also have been in programs with payments denominated in arb, in which grantee never complained when price was going up, but had some reservation when it was going down.
This to be clear is not to flip responsability on you. I simpathize with your situation, and having served a lot of small team with grants I know how important these milestones can be just for the survivability of a team, or to effectively ship the product. There was a problem in the program, a lot of delays, that had bad consequences on the operation of project. This will mean that the dao, next time, either won't vote for the same people to run the program, or for the program itself.
But it doesn't necessarily mean that the dao should compensate people who requested the grant and saw the dollar value going down. We could, at scale, apply this to the LTIPP program, in which 60M of arbs got distributed, with proposal coming in when arb was way above 1$, and projects receiving the stream for users up to the point in which it was worth 0.4$. While different (we are talking about opex in your case, incentive to users in this case), should there be an argument for it as well? The answer is obviously no.
Thank you for presenting this proposal. I am sorry that the market correction is causing great difficulty — I can totally relate. We should have new procedures to stop this from happening again. Participants can be discouraged by these setbacks. Even though I don't know why payments were delayed, I do think a solution that benefits everyone can be applied. I hope you can find the delegate to have the enough voting power.
Thank you for this proposal, and apologies for the delayed response. In fact, similar issues are widespread across Arbitrum DAO since ARB has dropped 70% over the past six months. I think they asked for providing reasonable compensation is understandable, but it may seem unfair to other teams facing similar situations. If the original reward was set in ARB, then I don’t think compensation is necessary, as the high volatility of early-stage tokens should be a common understanding among all Crypto practitioners.
It may be worth a lot of thought and discussion to see this proposal. The blow to projects from gold delays and token value fluctuations cannot be ignored, which not only affects the progress of the recipient's project, but also the team's morale and confidence. This proposal reminds us that DAOs need to pay more attention to the timing of fund disbursement when funding. With the need for transparent reporting and progress tracking raised in the proposal, DAOs should establish a better grant management system in the future to ensure that the execution and payment process of each funded project is clear and transparent, so as to avoid similar situations from happening again.
The impact caused by the above is not just a single point case study, it is already like this, it is more necessary for everyone to focus on doing their own thing, how can we do better with the existing resources, the past is very difficult to define in.
This proposal is reasonable. Due to payment delays and the drop in ARB value, winning projects have lost funds, and project progress has been impacted. Compensating for these losses is not only a recognition of the winners’ efforts but also enhances community trust.
I suggest clarifying the funding process in the future, such as setting a clear payment schedule to avoid similar issues. I support this proposal as it addresses real issues and provides valuable feedback for future funding improvements.
Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. We genuinely empathize with the challenges you and the other grantees have faced due to the delays and their subsequent impact on your projects.
We understand that the prolonged disbursement of the ARB tokens resulted in a lower USD value than initially anticipated. While we are not for fully compensating based on the initial estimated dollar amount, we would however be in favour of supporting this proposal based on leveling any variance between the value at the time it was received by a project compared to the first distribution on 25th February.
Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. We genuinely empathize with the challenges you and the other grantees have faced due to the delays and their subsequent impact on your projects.
We understand that the prolonged disbursement of the ARB tokens resulted in a lower USD value than initially anticipated. While we are not for fully compensating based on the initial estimated dollar amount, we would however be in favour of supporting this proposal based on leveling any variance between the value at the time it was received by a project compared to the first distribution on 25th February.
With regards to your personal ask, we would not be in favour of it as you are a part of one of the winning teams.
If the proposal is updated to reflect this, we would be in favour of leveling the rewards received by each, as the distribution is not done fairly, in our opinion. Your feedback has been invaluable, and this will definitely lead to improved processes in the future.
Thanks for the feedback as this is a pretty tough proposal to make. At the end of the day, we think situation is pretty straight forward, but not a happy decision to make.
The original grant was issued as 2,500 ARB per winner, not a specific USD equivalent. As tough as it is, there should be inherent expectations around price movement. This could be both good or bad. I thing that some recipients we've seen do is short a perp in equal value to be delta neutral to price movement when approved for the grant. Additionally, this one vote would set a somewhat dangerous precedent for the DAO. Overall, this is not very scalable or sustainable for the DAO. The nature of crypto is volatile, and accepting grants in tokens comes with that risk.
I should have added "may" on that sentence, you are right.
I don't have enough delegation to post snapshots. I'm happy to vote for this because of the effort you put into it. I don't believe that precedent is everything and this individual case can be resolved separate from other cases.
Even after leaving the Thrive team, I still do feel that they had to deal with the same timing based issues which were out of their control and probably lost over $300k.
We view this proposal as comparable to the issue of the Terms of Tenure for the STEP Program Manager
The biggest difference between the cases is the DAO voted to approve a $ contract in the snapshot election for the STEP program.
The detox period is for liquidity incentive programs (like STIP, LTIPP, etc), but it doesn't mean that the DAO can't fund other proposals like this one.
While we appreciate that receiving grants in ARB holds the inherent risk of price fluctuations, we believe this is independent of delays in distributing the grants. Should the grantees have received the funds as planned and sought reimbursement for the ARB depreciation, it would have been a different situation. However, since the DAO delayed the distribution, the DAO should take responsibility and compensate these grantees with the appropriate amounts.
The DAO requests that proposals are given at least 1 week minimum of discussion before voting, which was done here. So from a procedural standpoint you are good to go.
First of all, we want to express our regret that the Biggest Minigrants Program did not turn out as expected. We understand the frustration and harm caused when the token loses value, as has happened. However, from what we’ve read, there was no fixed time frame for delivering the compensations, which diminishes the relevance of the proposal.
We don't think it's appropriate to compensate all the entities that received ARB during that period. Everyone in the crypto industry knows that token prices are volatile and should have taken measures to hedge against price drops, such as shorting the same amount of tokens. We don't believe participants would have returned part of the grant if the token's price had increased, so it doesn't make sense for the DAO to hedge for all participants receiving ARB as payment.
but in crypto, with the volatility it inherently has, I feel that the interest amount for a delay like this should not be 1% per month
volatility cuts both ways, so we can't use that as justification for a higher interest rate
in business if customers delay paying tax they need to pay an interest on that amount. The same principle can apply here but i don't see that as the justification. Instead, they are proposing to be compensated based on a past dollar value that ARB had.
I just cast my vote in favor on Snapshot for the following reason: I empathize with the challenges caused by the market correction... it’s a situation I can relate to. I believe we need new procedures in place to prevent similar issues from arising in the future, as setbacks like this can discourage participants. While I don’t know the specifics of why payments were delayed, I support finding a solution that benefits everyone involved.
I empathize with their situation, but if the ARB price had increased in value i dont think they would have come to the forum for returning the amount. Whereas in STEP we had to return the excess in the implementation budget after fulfilling obligations made in dollar denomination.
I empathize with their situation, but if the ARB price had increased in value i dont think they would have come to the forum for returning the amount. Whereas in STEP we had to return the excess in the implementation budget after fulfilling obligations made in dollar denomination.
Voting AGAINST for the reasons listed earlier. When we make a committment in ARB terms, we stick to that. When we make one in dollars, we stick to that. No point muddling the 2
voting For on this offchain proposal because Arbitrum is family, Arbitrum is home, Arbitrum is freedom, Arbitrum is you, and we should all take care of each other and support those that have been short changed.
I voted in favor of this proposal based on its soundness, demonstration of value, and transparency, while suggesting that DAO improve its future incentive payout mechanisms to avoid a repeat of similar issues. Reasons for supporting the proposal: 1. the proposal is transparent, citing specific losses and project status. 2. the compensation can help the project team to restore morale and accomplish the outstanding deliverables. 3. it helps DAO to build better trust mechanism and prove that the governance system is willing to take responsibility. Recommendations: 1. it is recommended that DAO improve the payment process to avoid similar delays from happening again. 2. Teams receiving compensation are required to submit regular project progress reports to the DAO to ensure that funds are used for the originally planned objectives.
We're voting Abstain, as the proposal has both positive and negative aspects and its difficult for us to make a strong decision on it.
We're voting Abstain, as the proposal has both positive and negative aspects and its difficult for us to make a strong decision on it.
Summary -there's arguments both for and against this proposal. I have to say as delegates, we ourselves are assuming price risk, and the original grant also was in ARB, so grantees should have understood that.
Nevertheless, its not a super clear cut case in our opinion so we vote to abstain.
I vote FOR this proposal. While I understand the delegate's point that a grant denominated in token amounts should not be altered, the DAO must also uphold its responsibilities. It is unacceptable for projects to face payment delays of up to seven months.
Although there is concern about setting a bad precedent, the Arbitrum DAO does not operate on a system of jurisprudence, meaning different circumstances might lead to different decisions. Covering the gap is a minor expense for the DAO, and it demonstrates a commitment to supporting its community and builders
Never chimed in the discussion so far, but let me reiterate what others already posted: in a grant program that is denominated in non stable currencies, the change of value in payment is expected.
Is quite unfortunate that this resulted in delay and a blocker for most projects; but this doesn't necessarily entile the project to further compensantion because nobody would be here if arb would have gone from 2$ to 4$. And this is something i can say first hand because not only i have been in several grant programs, i also have been in programs with payments denominated in arb, in which grantee never complained when price was going up, but had some reservation when it was going down.
Never chimed in the discussion so far, but let me reiterate what others already posted: in a grant program that is denominated in non stable currencies, the change of value in payment is expected.
Is quite unfortunate that this resulted in delay and a blocker for most projects; but this doesn't necessarily entile the project to further compensantion because nobody would be here if arb would have gone from 2$ to 4$. And this is something i can say first hand because not only i have been in several grant programs, i also have been in programs with payments denominated in arb, in which grantee never complained when price was going up, but had some reservation when it was going down.
This to be clear is not to flip responsability on you. I simpathize with your situation, and having served a lot of small team with grants I know how important these milestones can be just for the survivability of a team, or to effectively ship the product. There was a problem in the program, a lot of delays, that had bad consequences on the operation of project. This will mean that the dao, next time, either won't vote for the same people to run the program, or for the program itself.
But it doesn't necessarily mean that the dao should compensate people who requested the grant and saw the dollar value going down. We could, at scale, apply this to the LTIPP program, in which 60M of arbs got distributed, with proposal coming in when arb was way above 1$, and projects receiving the stream for users up to the point in which it was worth 0.4$. While different (we are talking about opex in your case, incentive to users in this case), should there be an argument for it as well? The answer is obviously no.
Thank you for presenting this proposal. I am sorry that the market correction is causing great difficulty — I can totally relate. We should have new procedures to stop this from happening again. Participants can be discouraged by these setbacks. Even though I don't know why payments were delayed, I do think a solution that benefits everyone can be applied. I hope you can find the delegate to have the enough voting power.
Thank you for this proposal, and apologies for the delayed response. In fact, similar issues are widespread across Arbitrum DAO since ARB has dropped 70% over the past six months. I think they asked for providing reasonable compensation is understandable, but it may seem unfair to other teams facing similar situations. If the original reward was set in ARB, then I don’t think compensation is necessary, as the high volatility of early-stage tokens should be a common understanding among all Crypto practitioners.
It may be worth a lot of thought and discussion to see this proposal. The blow to projects from gold delays and token value fluctuations cannot be ignored, which not only affects the progress of the recipient's project, but also the team's morale and confidence. This proposal reminds us that DAOs need to pay more attention to the timing of fund disbursement when funding. With the need for transparent reporting and progress tracking raised in the proposal, DAOs should establish a better grant management system in the future to ensure that the execution and payment process of each funded project is clear and transparent, so as to avoid similar situations from happening again.
The impact caused by the above is not just a single point case study, it is already like this, it is more necessary for everyone to focus on doing their own thing, how can we do better with the existing resources, the past is very difficult to define in.
This proposal is reasonable. Due to payment delays and the drop in ARB value, winning projects have lost funds, and project progress has been impacted. Compensating for these losses is not only a recognition of the winners’ efforts but also enhances community trust.
I suggest clarifying the funding process in the future, such as setting a clear payment schedule to avoid similar issues. I support this proposal as it addresses real issues and provides valuable feedback for future funding improvements.
Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. We genuinely empathize with the challenges you and the other grantees have faced due to the delays and their subsequent impact on your projects.
We understand that the prolonged disbursement of the ARB tokens resulted in a lower USD value than initially anticipated. While we are not for fully compensating based on the initial estimated dollar amount, we would however be in favour of supporting this proposal based on leveling any variance between the value at the time it was received by a project compared to the first distribution on 25th February.
Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. We genuinely empathize with the challenges you and the other grantees have faced due to the delays and their subsequent impact on your projects.
We understand that the prolonged disbursement of the ARB tokens resulted in a lower USD value than initially anticipated. While we are not for fully compensating based on the initial estimated dollar amount, we would however be in favour of supporting this proposal based on leveling any variance between the value at the time it was received by a project compared to the first distribution on 25th February.
With regards to your personal ask, we would not be in favour of it as you are a part of one of the winning teams.
If the proposal is updated to reflect this, we would be in favour of leveling the rewards received by each, as the distribution is not done fairly, in our opinion. Your feedback has been invaluable, and this will definitely lead to improved processes in the future.
Thanks for the feedback as this is a pretty tough proposal to make. At the end of the day, we think situation is pretty straight forward, but not a happy decision to make.
The original grant was issued as 2,500 ARB per winner, not a specific USD equivalent. As tough as it is, there should be inherent expectations around price movement. This could be both good or bad. I thing that some recipients we've seen do is short a perp in equal value to be delta neutral to price movement when approved for the grant. Additionally, this one vote would set a somewhat dangerous precedent for the DAO. Overall, this is not very scalable or sustainable for the DAO. The nature of crypto is volatile, and accepting grants in tokens comes with that risk.
I should have added "may" on that sentence, you are right.
I don't have enough delegation to post snapshots. I'm happy to vote for this because of the effort you put into it. I don't believe that precedent is everything and this individual case can be resolved separate from other cases.
Even after leaving the Thrive team, I still do feel that they had to deal with the same timing based issues which were out of their control and probably lost over $300k.
We view this proposal as comparable to the issue of the Terms of Tenure for the STEP Program Manager
The biggest difference between the cases is the DAO voted to approve a $ contract in the snapshot election for the STEP program.
The detox period is for liquidity incentive programs (like STIP, LTIPP, etc), but it doesn't mean that the DAO can't fund other proposals like this one.
While we appreciate that receiving grants in ARB holds the inherent risk of price fluctuations, we believe this is independent of delays in distributing the grants. Should the grantees have received the funds as planned and sought reimbursement for the ARB depreciation, it would have been a different situation. However, since the DAO delayed the distribution, the DAO should take responsibility and compensate these grantees with the appropriate amounts.
The DAO requests that proposals are given at least 1 week minimum of discussion before voting, which was done here. So from a procedural standpoint you are good to go.
First of all, we want to express our regret that the Biggest Minigrants Program did not turn out as expected. We understand the frustration and harm caused when the token loses value, as has happened. However, from what we’ve read, there was no fixed time frame for delivering the compensations, which diminishes the relevance of the proposal.
We don't think it's appropriate to compensate all the entities that received ARB during that period. Everyone in the crypto industry knows that token prices are volatile and should have taken measures to hedge against price drops, such as shorting the same amount of tokens. We don't believe participants would have returned part of the grant if the token's price had increased, so it doesn't make sense for the DAO to hedge for all participants receiving ARB as payment.
Thanks for the feedback as this is a pretty tough proposal to make. At the end of the day, we think situation is pretty straight forward, but not a happy decision to make.
The original grant was issued as 2,500 ARB per winner, not a specific USD equivalent. As tough as it is, there should be inherent expectations around price movement. This could be both good or bad. I thing that some recipients we've seen do is short a perp in equal value to be delta neutral to price movement when approved for the grant. Additionally, this one vote would set a somewhat dangerous precedent for the DAO. Overall, this is not very scalable or sustainable for the DAO. The nature of crypto is volatile, and accepting grants in tokens comes with that risk.
That said, the delays and operational inefficiencies highlighted here are important learning for the DAO. Streamlining KYC processes, setting clear payout timelines, and possibly considering $ based grants for future rounds could mitigate similar issues going forward.
I don't have enough delegation to post snapshots. I'm happy to vote for this because of the effort you put into it. I don't believe that precedent is everything and this individual case can be resolved separate from other cases.
Even after leaving the Thrive team, I still do feel that they had to deal with the same timing based issues which were out of their control and probably lost over $300k.
M1A service fee was paid out over the course of the engagement. This was in their control as it was drafted in the proposal, however, it was a very early proposal to the DAO.
M1B required them to wait for the negotiations with the foundation to be finished before the service fee was sent. This moved the date of receiving from early April to mid July.
I doubt they would speak up about this issue because they want to be a great partner, but I do think if this proposal passes, then it may be a sign that they should be able to recoup some uncontrolled loss due to processing time. (They have not expressed any desire for me to make this statement. It is 100% my suggestion.)
We view this proposal as comparable to the issue of the Terms of Tenure for the STEP Program Manager
The biggest difference between the cases is the DAO voted to approve a $ contract in the snapshot election for the STEP program.
Whereas in this case grantees were provided guarantees in ARB only.
I empathize with their situation, but if the ARB price had increased in value i dont think they would have come to the forum for returning the amount. Whereas in STEP we had to return the excess in the implementation budget after fulfilling obligations made in dollar denomination.
Thank you for all that additional context, that makes things clearer for me and I'm sure everyone else who is reading.
We view this proposal as comparable to the issue of the Terms of Tenure for the STEP Program Manager. From the discussion here, we felt that whether there is a guarantee against ARB price fluctuations depends on the contract for the grants. In this case, it’s about whether grantees were supposed to return the extra amount when they received more than the amount they were scheduled to receive in the program due to ARB price fluctuations.
If not, we believe that compensating for ARB price fluctuations would require the DAO to review the whole reward structure of ongoing and future projects, which would increase the overall cost to the DAO and become problematic.
We view this proposal as comparable to the issue of the Terms of Tenure for the STEP Program Manager. From the discussion here, we felt that whether there is a guarantee against ARB price fluctuations depends on the contract for the grants. In this case, it’s about whether grantees were supposed to return the extra amount when they received more than the amount they were scheduled to receive in the program due to ARB price fluctuations.
If not, we believe that compensating for ARB price fluctuations would require the DAO to review the whole reward structure of ongoing and future projects, which would increase the overall cost to the DAO and become problematic.
However, we think that grants to projects that are currently active are good for the Arbitrum ecosystem. As proposed above, we consider it might be good to reopen the grants on a smaller scale, allowing projects to receive the amounts they should have received while maintaining fairness.
This is one of the problems I see with grant programs being made in the native token. We are seeing the ARB tokens price is declining and more and more proposals coming up to fill the gap between their original proposal date and the current date. If we will fill these gaps all the time, the DAOs runway will be destroyed within a short timeframe. I have already advocated to take out loans against the ARB token in a safe manner and pay out in stablecoins. Its better for the DAO, better for grantees and helps the ARB token in terms of price movements.
The important questions out of this proposal are imo:
This is one of the problems I see with grant programs being made in the native token. We are seeing the ARB tokens price is declining and more and more proposals coming up to fill the gap between their original proposal date and the current date. If we will fill these gaps all the time, the DAOs runway will be destroyed within a short timeframe. I have already advocated to take out loans against the ARB token in a safe manner and pay out in stablecoins. Its better for the DAO, better for grantees and helps the ARB token in terms of price movements.
The important questions out of this proposal are imo:
Hello! Just FYI the Arbitrum is currently in an incentives detox period, meaning that no new grants will be grantes. If you frame your proposal this way it is not going to pass.
Now if those peojects are willing to pursue a new grant, maybe there is budget left on Questbook (but I have no clarity on that)
Hi @karakrysthal. I'm looking at the update - it still seems the prices of ARB are being anchored to February values due to that being the period when the contest work was performed / awarded. Is there any documentation from the people running the program when payment was originally expected to be received? I don't want to dismiss the extra context as it's very helpful, but I'm still failing to see why if other projects were paid in April / May / June why these 5 specific projects should get compensated for prices in February.
Ahh, sorry I missed it. But once the new data is out I'll take a look. Thanks!
From my experience, the Foundation runs the KYC and as such the process isn't fully understood by those running the programs. I like the idea of having KYC criteria shared in advance. Since it should be fairly similar project to project I think having a reference sheet which shows what to expect for KYC applicants somewhere on this forum would be a good idea.
My other question seems to have gone unanswered - can you show your work on the $5,000 number? From what I can tell it's based on the token price in January / February, which IMO wouldn't be the best timeframe to use because 1) as stated before when paid in ARB you should have some expectation that price will fluctuate from date of services performed to date of payment and 2) if the other groups were paid in May/June that would be a better price to base this off of. I'm not going to explicitly speak for other voters, but truthfully if it's $5,000 I'm not going to vote for it and I don't see this having much chance of success for that reason. I think you would get more support if your lost value calculations were anchored in the May / June prices, which was the time the bulk of the other projects got paid.
This is one of the cases where the learning process brings not only valuable lessons, but have unwanted consequences that could/should be addressed. The winners can't be penalized by the issues in our processes.
Despite what was mentioned in the previous thread (that there was not a set date for the prize to be paid) it is common sense that when delays are acknowledged, the situation was not "business as usual" (nothing against the author of that post, btw).
This is one of the cases where the learning process brings not only valuable lessons, but have unwanted consequences that could/should be addressed. The winners can't be penalized by the issues in our processes.
Despite what was mentioned in the previous thread (that there was not a set date for the prize to be paid) it is common sense that when delays are acknowledged, the situation was not "business as usual" (nothing against the author of that post, btw).
That being said, I don't completely agree with the amount requested (the FULL expected amount) as, as a matter of fact, the payments were done. One possible path that I would like to suggest is:
*it is not clear for me how the payment process was supposed to happen. It seems that it was a weekly payment (4 per week). As we are talking about a 8-week process, the ideal would be getting the average ARB value of the week the project won and multiply per the amount. And check that with what was paid.
I agree that the DAO may not benefit from this proposal passing, but I see enough justification for the request.
From @Areta’s perspective, we believe that providing “compensation” for ARB token value drops due to market fluctuations is not a good precedent for the DAO to set, simply because when taken to its logical conclusion (i.e., other projects asking for similar compensation), it is not scalable or sustainable for the DAO.
The ask is: “can the DAO continue to compensate future grantees or recipients of ARB allocations for price fluctuations?”. We don’t think the answer to that is yes. To re-echo @Nyx and @thedevanshmehta, the price of crypto tokens are naturally volatile and dealing with this is one of the standard (though unfortunate) experiences for parties that operate within this ecosystem.
From @Areta’s perspective, we believe that providing “compensation” for ARB token value drops due to market fluctuations is not a good precedent for the DAO to set, simply because when taken to its logical conclusion (i.e., other projects asking for similar compensation), it is not scalable or sustainable for the DAO.
The ask is: “can the DAO continue to compensate future grantees or recipients of ARB allocations for price fluctuations?”. We don’t think the answer to that is yes. To re-echo @Nyx and @thedevanshmehta, the price of crypto tokens are naturally volatile and dealing with this is one of the standard (though unfortunate) experiences for parties that operate within this ecosystem.
The original payout value was 2500 ARB, or the equivalent of $5,000 USD
Also, if restitution is the goal here, why request for $5,000 in ARB rather than an amount equivalent to what was specifically lost due to the operational delays?
The drop in ARB value was not the only damage incurred. As can be read in the comments and testimonials, teams experienced other forms of damages including stress, loss of teammates, and downturns in team and community morale.
We express our sympathies for the sour experiences, but it doesn’t feel like the right approach to request the DAO to compensate for these. If at all, it seems more reasonable to request for what the grantees would have been entitled to but lost due to program inefficiency?
Overall, we recognise the uniqueness of the situation at hand here and why it seems like this proposal is the only path forward. As a recommendation, you may want to consider reframing this as a grant request directly from the DAO, explaining your peculiar situation, referencing your already successful grant application, and seeking funds directly from the DAO to complete what you were unable to finish due to the run down of events.
There were 19 projects that received their payouts in May and June. The original payout value was 2500 ARB, or the equivalent of $5,000 USD. At the payout timing of May and June, we received around $1,000 USD, instead of $5,000, due to significant delays and large drop in ARB value. The drop in ARB value was not the only damage incurred. As can be read in the comments and testimonials, teams experienced other forms of damages including stress, loss of teammates, and downturns in team and community morale.
There were 19 projects that received their payouts in May and June. The original payout value was 2500 ARB, or the equivalent of $5,000 USD. At the payout timing of May and June, we received around $1,000 USD, instead of $5,000, due to significant delays and large drop in ARB value. The drop in ARB value was not the only damage incurred. As can be read in the comments and testimonials, teams experienced other forms of damages including stress, loss of teammates, and downturns in team and community morale.
Can you speak to the $5,000 number? I may be misunderstanding, as in May / June the price of ARB was around $1. So I'm a little confused on:
I'm sympathetic to the situation, but I do partly agree (more on that below) with the notion that getting paid in ARB tokens, not USD, comes with some risk of price appreciation / deprecation. As in, if you did the work in January / February but were not getting paid (in ARB) until post program there should be an acceptance that the price will be different then the actual January / February price. So I would say this --- if the value is based on the project's completion in say February, I'd disagree with using $2 cost basis. This is also doubly unfair to those projects who got paid out in May / June, as they would have been paid out at $1 but these 5 are getting it at $2.
However... I am open to the idea that if most projects were paid at the $1 an ARB price its unfair to punish other projects getting paid out at $0.50. That is assuming (and hopefully someone can answer) these 5 projects delays in payments were due to issues with KYC that were beyond their control. I understand there is a balance between trying to pay everyone out at once and having a few KYC holdouts delaying everyone else, but in those cases I'd contend those failing to KYC should be 'punished'. Not the people who complied. Basically - set a KYC deadline and if 9/10 are there then 9/10 get paid. the other 1 is then at their own risk. That does not seem to be the case here, and I'm still confused why all these projects were getting paid at random times with random amounts. and why some KYC took so much longer then others (again, assuming full cooperation by the KYC'd entities giving data timely)
Regardless, as a broader DAO discussion something needs to be figured out with how KYC is handled and how payments are made. I've now personally (and I say this as I'd imagine this is affecting a lot of people if it's affected myself 3 times already...) experienced 3 instances where some combination of the KYC process / project manager process has delayed getting me funds at the promised time. To the point I'd argue it's at a detriment to Arbitrum / the DAO's reputation. So as someone being paid in tokens I'm fully aware of the price fluctuation risks, but I do have to push back on the notion expressed by others that these entities should have accepted that there was currency risk here. The currency risk is acceptable IMO when it's a situation of doing the work in January, but knowing you won't be paid until February. However, the currency risk is NOT acceptable IMO if it's a situation of where you do the work in January, are promised to be paid in February, but don't get paid until March.
As an active delegate, I understand your problem perfectly, because the same thing happened with our program and we began to receive 4 times less rewards for our work.
However, instead of asking for additional rewards, the community focused on continuing the program with changes in the amount of ARB and some others.
As an active delegate, I understand your problem perfectly, because the same thing happened with our program and we began to receive 4 times less rewards for our work.
However, instead of asking for additional rewards, the community focused on continuing the program with changes in the amount of ARB and some others.
Therefore, instead of trying to get additional ARB for what has already been done and paid for, I suggest focusing on what can be done with these same projects and trying to get grants for them on new terms. This will be constructive and useful for all parties - win win.
You should change the title of the thread, financial retribution means that the arbitrumdao grant winners should be penalized. Financial restitution might be the word you were originally going for.
Delays are part & parcel of the grants game and i don't think ARB DAO should be in the business of compensating for it, especially since amounts were listed in ARB and not dollars. If we had committed a dollar value to the projects i would be more sympathetic, but given this was not the case i see no benefit to the DAO in passing this proposal.
Thanks for the feedback as this is a pretty tough proposal to make. At the end of the day, we think situation is pretty straight forward, but not a happy decision to make.
The original grant was issued as 2,500 ARB per winner, not a specific USD equivalent. As tough as it is, there should be inherent expectations around price movement. This could be both good or bad. I thing that some recipients we've seen do is short a perp in equal value to be delta neutral to price movement when approved for the grant. Additionally, this one vote would set a somewhat dangerous precedent for the DAO. Overall, this is not very scalable or sustainable for the DAO. The nature of crypto is volatile, and accepting grants in tokens comes with that risk.
That said, the delays and operational inefficiencies highlighted here are important learning for the DAO. Streamlining KYC processes, setting clear payout timelines, and possibly considering $ based grants for future rounds could mitigate similar issues going forward.
I don't have enough delegation to post snapshots. I'm happy to vote for this because of the effort you put into it. I don't believe that precedent is everything and this individual case can be resolved separate from other cases.
Even after leaving the Thrive team, I still do feel that they had to deal with the same timing based issues which were out of their control and probably lost over $300k.
M1A service fee was paid out over the course of the engagement. This was in their control as it was drafted in the proposal, however, it was a very early proposal to the DAO.
M1B required them to wait for the negotiations with the foundation to be finished before the service fee was sent. This moved the date of receiving from early April to mid July.
I doubt they would speak up about this issue because they want to be a great partner, but I do think if this proposal passes, then it may be a sign that they should be able to recoup some uncontrolled loss due to processing time. (They have not expressed any desire for me to make this statement. It is 100% my suggestion.)
We view this proposal as comparable to the issue of the Terms of Tenure for the STEP Program Manager
The biggest difference between the cases is the DAO voted to approve a $ contract in the snapshot election for the STEP program.
Whereas in this case grantees were provided guarantees in ARB only.
I empathize with their situation, but if the ARB price had increased in value i dont think they would have come to the forum for returning the amount. Whereas in STEP we had to return the excess in the implementation budget after fulfilling obligations made in dollar denomination.
Thank you for all that additional context, that makes things clearer for me and I'm sure everyone else who is reading.
We view this proposal as comparable to the issue of the Terms of Tenure for the STEP Program Manager. From the discussion here, we felt that whether there is a guarantee against ARB price fluctuations depends on the contract for the grants. In this case, it’s about whether grantees were supposed to return the extra amount when they received more than the amount they were scheduled to receive in the program due to ARB price fluctuations.
If not, we believe that compensating for ARB price fluctuations would require the DAO to review the whole reward structure of ongoing and future projects, which would increase the overall cost to the DAO and become problematic.
We view this proposal as comparable to the issue of the Terms of Tenure for the STEP Program Manager. From the discussion here, we felt that whether there is a guarantee against ARB price fluctuations depends on the contract for the grants. In this case, it’s about whether grantees were supposed to return the extra amount when they received more than the amount they were scheduled to receive in the program due to ARB price fluctuations.
If not, we believe that compensating for ARB price fluctuations would require the DAO to review the whole reward structure of ongoing and future projects, which would increase the overall cost to the DAO and become problematic.
However, we think that grants to projects that are currently active are good for the Arbitrum ecosystem. As proposed above, we consider it might be good to reopen the grants on a smaller scale, allowing projects to receive the amounts they should have received while maintaining fairness.
This is one of the problems I see with grant programs being made in the native token. We are seeing the ARB tokens price is declining and more and more proposals coming up to fill the gap between their original proposal date and the current date. If we will fill these gaps all the time, the DAOs runway will be destroyed within a short timeframe. I have already advocated to take out loans against the ARB token in a safe manner and pay out in stablecoins. Its better for the DAO, better for grantees and helps the ARB token in terms of price movements.
The important questions out of this proposal are imo:
This is one of the problems I see with grant programs being made in the native token. We are seeing the ARB tokens price is declining and more and more proposals coming up to fill the gap between their original proposal date and the current date. If we will fill these gaps all the time, the DAOs runway will be destroyed within a short timeframe. I have already advocated to take out loans against the ARB token in a safe manner and pay out in stablecoins. Its better for the DAO, better for grantees and helps the ARB token in terms of price movements.
The important questions out of this proposal are imo:
Hello! Just FYI the Arbitrum is currently in an incentives detox period, meaning that no new grants will be grantes. If you frame your proposal this way it is not going to pass.
Now if those peojects are willing to pursue a new grant, maybe there is budget left on Questbook (but I have no clarity on that)
Hi @karakrysthal. I'm looking at the update - it still seems the prices of ARB are being anchored to February values due to that being the period when the contest work was performed / awarded. Is there any documentation from the people running the program when payment was originally expected to be received? I don't want to dismiss the extra context as it's very helpful, but I'm still failing to see why if other projects were paid in April / May / June why these 5 specific projects should get compensated for prices in February.
Ahh, sorry I missed it. But once the new data is out I'll take a look. Thanks!
From my experience, the Foundation runs the KYC and as such the process isn't fully understood by those running the programs. I like the idea of having KYC criteria shared in advance. Since it should be fairly similar project to project I think having a reference sheet which shows what to expect for KYC applicants somewhere on this forum would be a good idea.
My other question seems to have gone unanswered - can you show your work on the $5,000 number? From what I can tell it's based on the token price in January / February, which IMO wouldn't be the best timeframe to use because 1) as stated before when paid in ARB you should have some expectation that price will fluctuate from date of services performed to date of payment and 2) if the other groups were paid in May/June that would be a better price to base this off of. I'm not going to explicitly speak for other voters, but truthfully if it's $5,000 I'm not going to vote for it and I don't see this having much chance of success for that reason. I think you would get more support if your lost value calculations were anchored in the May / June prices, which was the time the bulk of the other projects got paid.
This is one of the cases where the learning process brings not only valuable lessons, but have unwanted consequences that could/should be addressed. The winners can't be penalized by the issues in our processes.
Despite what was mentioned in the previous thread (that there was not a set date for the prize to be paid) it is common sense that when delays are acknowledged, the situation was not "business as usual" (nothing against the author of that post, btw).
This is one of the cases where the learning process brings not only valuable lessons, but have unwanted consequences that could/should be addressed. The winners can't be penalized by the issues in our processes.
Despite what was mentioned in the previous thread (that there was not a set date for the prize to be paid) it is common sense that when delays are acknowledged, the situation was not "business as usual" (nothing against the author of that post, btw).
That being said, I don't completely agree with the amount requested (the FULL expected amount) as, as a matter of fact, the payments were done. One possible path that I would like to suggest is:
*it is not clear for me how the payment process was supposed to happen. It seems that it was a weekly payment (4 per week). As we are talking about a 8-week process, the ideal would be getting the average ARB value of the week the project won and multiply per the amount. And check that with what was paid.
I agree that the DAO may not benefit from this proposal passing, but I see enough justification for the request.
From @Areta’s perspective, we believe that providing “compensation” for ARB token value drops due to market fluctuations is not a good precedent for the DAO to set, simply because when taken to its logical conclusion (i.e., other projects asking for similar compensation), it is not scalable or sustainable for the DAO.
The ask is: “can the DAO continue to compensate future grantees or recipients of ARB allocations for price fluctuations?”. We don’t think the answer to that is yes. To re-echo @Nyx and @thedevanshmehta, the price of crypto tokens are naturally volatile and dealing with this is one of the standard (though unfortunate) experiences for parties that operate within this ecosystem.
From @Areta’s perspective, we believe that providing “compensation” for ARB token value drops due to market fluctuations is not a good precedent for the DAO to set, simply because when taken to its logical conclusion (i.e., other projects asking for similar compensation), it is not scalable or sustainable for the DAO.
The ask is: “can the DAO continue to compensate future grantees or recipients of ARB allocations for price fluctuations?”. We don’t think the answer to that is yes. To re-echo @Nyx and @thedevanshmehta, the price of crypto tokens are naturally volatile and dealing with this is one of the standard (though unfortunate) experiences for parties that operate within this ecosystem.
The original payout value was 2500 ARB, or the equivalent of $5,000 USD
Also, if restitution is the goal here, why request for $5,000 in ARB rather than an amount equivalent to what was specifically lost due to the operational delays?
The drop in ARB value was not the only damage incurred. As can be read in the comments and testimonials, teams experienced other forms of damages including stress, loss of teammates, and downturns in team and community morale.
We express our sympathies for the sour experiences, but it doesn’t feel like the right approach to request the DAO to compensate for these. If at all, it seems more reasonable to request for what the grantees would have been entitled to but lost due to program inefficiency?
Overall, we recognise the uniqueness of the situation at hand here and why it seems like this proposal is the only path forward. As a recommendation, you may want to consider reframing this as a grant request directly from the DAO, explaining your peculiar situation, referencing your already successful grant application, and seeking funds directly from the DAO to complete what you were unable to finish due to the run down of events.
There were 19 projects that received their payouts in May and June. The original payout value was 2500 ARB, or the equivalent of $5,000 USD. At the payout timing of May and June, we received around $1,000 USD, instead of $5,000, due to significant delays and large drop in ARB value. The drop in ARB value was not the only damage incurred. As can be read in the comments and testimonials, teams experienced other forms of damages including stress, loss of teammates, and downturns in team and community morale.
There were 19 projects that received their payouts in May and June. The original payout value was 2500 ARB, or the equivalent of $5,000 USD. At the payout timing of May and June, we received around $1,000 USD, instead of $5,000, due to significant delays and large drop in ARB value. The drop in ARB value was not the only damage incurred. As can be read in the comments and testimonials, teams experienced other forms of damages including stress, loss of teammates, and downturns in team and community morale.
Can you speak to the $5,000 number? I may be misunderstanding, as in May / June the price of ARB was around $1. So I'm a little confused on:
I'm sympathetic to the situation, but I do partly agree (more on that below) with the notion that getting paid in ARB tokens, not USD, comes with some risk of price appreciation / deprecation. As in, if you did the work in January / February but were not getting paid (in ARB) until post program there should be an acceptance that the price will be different then the actual January / February price. So I would say this --- if the value is based on the project's completion in say February, I'd disagree with using $2 cost basis. This is also doubly unfair to those projects who got paid out in May / June, as they would have been paid out at $1 but these 5 are getting it at $2.
However... I am open to the idea that if most projects were paid at the $1 an ARB price its unfair to punish other projects getting paid out at $0.50. That is assuming (and hopefully someone can answer) these 5 projects delays in payments were due to issues with KYC that were beyond their control. I understand there is a balance between trying to pay everyone out at once and having a few KYC holdouts delaying everyone else, but in those cases I'd contend those failing to KYC should be 'punished'. Not the people who complied. Basically - set a KYC deadline and if 9/10 are there then 9/10 get paid. the other 1 is then at their own risk. That does not seem to be the case here, and I'm still confused why all these projects were getting paid at random times with random amounts. and why some KYC took so much longer then others (again, assuming full cooperation by the KYC'd entities giving data timely)
Regardless, as a broader DAO discussion something needs to be figured out with how KYC is handled and how payments are made. I've now personally (and I say this as I'd imagine this is affecting a lot of people if it's affected myself 3 times already...) experienced 3 instances where some combination of the KYC process / project manager process has delayed getting me funds at the promised time. To the point I'd argue it's at a detriment to Arbitrum / the DAO's reputation. So as someone being paid in tokens I'm fully aware of the price fluctuation risks, but I do have to push back on the notion expressed by others that these entities should have accepted that there was currency risk here. The currency risk is acceptable IMO when it's a situation of doing the work in January, but knowing you won't be paid until February. However, the currency risk is NOT acceptable IMO if it's a situation of where you do the work in January, are promised to be paid in February, but don't get paid until March.
As an active delegate, I understand your problem perfectly, because the same thing happened with our program and we began to receive 4 times less rewards for our work.
However, instead of asking for additional rewards, the community focused on continuing the program with changes in the amount of ARB and some others.
As an active delegate, I understand your problem perfectly, because the same thing happened with our program and we began to receive 4 times less rewards for our work.
However, instead of asking for additional rewards, the community focused on continuing the program with changes in the amount of ARB and some others.
Therefore, instead of trying to get additional ARB for what has already been done and paid for, I suggest focusing on what can be done with these same projects and trying to get grants for them on new terms. This will be constructive and useful for all parties - win win.
You should change the title of the thread, financial retribution means that the arbitrumdao grant winners should be penalized. Financial restitution might be the word you were originally going for.
Delays are part & parcel of the grants game and i don't think ARB DAO should be in the business of compensating for it, especially since amounts were listed in ARB and not dollars. If we had committed a dollar value to the projects i would be more sympathetic, but given this was not the case i see no benefit to the DAO in passing this proposal.
You should change the title of the thread, financial retribution means that the arbitrumdao grant winners should be penalized. Financial restitution might be the word you were originally going for.
Delays are part & parcel of the grants game and i don't think ARB DAO should be in the business of compensating for it, especially since amounts were listed in ARB and not dollars. If we had committed a dollar value to the projects i would be more sympathetic, but given this was not the case i see no benefit to the DAO in passing this proposal.
i don't see this proposal passing but the beauty of decentralization is you're free to put it up for a vote
You should change the title of the thread, financial retribution means that the arbitrumdao grant winners should be penalized. Financial restitution might be the word you were originally going for.
Delays are part & parcel of the grants game and i don't think ARB DAO should be in the business of compensating for it, especially since amounts were listed in ARB and not dollars. If we had committed a dollar value to the projects i would be more sympathetic, but given this was not the case i see no benefit to the DAO in passing this proposal.
i don't see this proposal passing but the beauty of decentralization is you're free to put it up for a vote
