Proposer: disruptionjoe.eth
Authors: Plurality Labs
This proposal requests 3,360,000 ARB (0.07% of the total treasury) to fund the first of three milestones in a comprehensive plan to build an Arbitrum DAO Pluralistic Grants Program.
Milestone 1 is the start of this journey with a funding request that breaks down as follows:
Total Funds to be Allocated = 2.8 million ARB
Total Service Fees (20%) = 560k ARB
Successful completion of these Milestone 1 deliverables will be a major value driver for the Arbitrum ecosystem further establishing Arbitrum as the go to scaling solution for Ethereum. Plurality Labs is committing to being held accountable for the following Milestone 1 deliverables.
At the end of Milestone 1 (Est. March 2024), Plurality Labs will have delivered:
We are here because Arbitrum intends to deploy one of the largest DAO treasuries ever to grow its ecosystem. A 10% difference in the allocation efficiency of funds could mean hundreds of millions of waste which would impede Arbitrum’s ability to actualize its full potential. It’s easy to say, “We can solve these problems later”, but we have an opportunity to start on the right track and solve these problems today
The Plurality Labs team has a chip on our shoulder. We have all been in DAOs and have seen how governance can fail, sometimes quickly, sometimes quietly. Our common thread is the shared values of trust, transparency and freedom combined with a passion for helping DAOs solve hard problems.
A Pluralist Grants program provides a perfect middle ground between Decentralized and Centralized Grants programs, unlocking the “best of both worlds".
At its core, the Pluralistic Grants Model will see the Pluralistic Grants Program Allocator onboard 4-6 pluralist grants managers who will be responsible for distributing funds to grant applicants that benefit the Arbitrum Ecosystem. Sourcing and selection of these ideas will use novel combinations of bottoms-up and top-down mechanisms facilitated by Plurality Labs.
The programs will focus on specific needs within the ecosystem and their potential impact, for example, one Pluralist Grants Manager may focus on bringing a novel new technique for fund allocation or deep grants proposal expertise (i.e. Questbook). Another might stand up an Arbitrum gaming-specific grants program. This flexibility allows for experimentation to allow Arbitrum DAO to discover what works best and allows for the specific needs of the Arbitrum ecosystem to be catered to.
Our approach includes a progressive decentralization of the Pluralist Grants Program Allocator. During Milestone 1, Plurality Labs will maintain accountability for sourcing, selecting, reporting on and delivering results of the chosen pluralist grants programs.
Milestones 2 & 3 will see experimentation with decentralized allocation mechanisms in a Proof of Concept stage with the goal of running at least one round of Pluralist Grants Program selection in a fully decentralized way without needing any corrective intervention.
During the discovery phase, we will gather input from delegates and the broader community to define the vision, mission, and values of the Arbitrum DAO, and determine what needs to be funded.
Once this foundation is established, we will evaluate the best domains and mechanisms for allocating resources and capital to grantees. Pluralistic Program managers will play a crucial role in promoting experimentation, decentralization of decisions, and improved resource allocation outcomes.
We have observed that many previous grants programs have struggled with an inability to source great grant opportunities, which we hope to address in the following ways:
The selection of the Pluralist Grants Programs and their managers will involve a facilitated bottoms-up approach, sourcing ideas, people, and processes. Factors considered in the selection may include, but are not limited to:
With this approach we are confident that the Arbitrum DAO Pluralistic Grants Program will be fair, impactful and ultimately support the growth and success of the Arbitrum Ecosystem.
The Pluralistic Grants model also provides 300k ARB to support matching Gitcoin rounds which run on Arbitrum. This is not a payment to Gitcoin the organization, but a payment to match the funding pools of programs willing to run on Arbitrum. Gitcoin core rounds include support for Open Source Software, Ethereum Infrastructure, & Zero Knowledge. This aligns with the stated Arbitrum goal of supporting the Ethereum ecosystem while also attracting users who might otherwise choose another L2. It also allows us to tap into the support of the Gitcoin DevRel team to help source builders, host hackathons.
Funding grants this way will not only benefit the Arbitrum ecosystem but enable the Gitcoin product team to prioritize making their Allo protocol available on Arbitrum. By being able to execute pluralistic programs on their Allo protocol allows us an open data substrate which will enable us to compare programs and projects across the pluralist framework. It also allows program managers to use quadratic funding and quadratic voting (if they choose) which require Sybil defense. This is a crucial enabler for the next section.
Improved Accountability, Transparency, and Reporting are key benefits of the Pluralistic Grants model. Web3 spends 100’s of millions annually on different grants and grants programs and to date, there has been little focus on the efficiency of those grant programs or the efficacy of their spending. We intend to build grant program efficiency metrics as well as specific grantee project efficacy (or results) metrics.
By using a common framework for executing a plurality of grant programs, we have the ability to identify, track and refine metrics for each unique grant program. Something that has not been done to date, and would be more difficult to do in stand-alone grant environments.
By doing this, we can begin to build qualitative data on the efficiency of each distribution method in a way that can identify improvements for that mechanism, but also compare mechanisms across stakeholder groups and use cases. By building these metrics, Arbitrum will be able to parse down the crowded field of grant execution options and deliver the most effective Grants Program web3 has seen to date.
Grant program execution typically stops when the money has been distributed, and we think that is premature. As part of this program we intend to experiment with a series of existing post-project evaluation tools (after action reviews, qualitative/quantitative metrics, case studies) but add in or invent novel web3 project evaluation solutions (hypercerts, on-chain analysis, panel reviews) to rate every project receiving funding in a way that can demonstrate the efficacy of the spending as it relates to building the Arbitrum ecosystem.
We know there are inefficiencies and fraud in the web3 grant mechanisms; this part of the program allows Arbitrum to make the most of its investments. Doing this will lead to a higher return on the Arbitrum investment and more funding for the most worthy projects while leaving room to experiment with the novel web3 mechanism that can help us revolutionize the grant process.
On Tally, the request is to send 3.36 million ARB to the PL-ARB Grants Safety Multisig.
arb1:0xC158b555F0B1ddd7F4D4f97Fd2a9acd144f8e0D4
The 4/6 which includes 4 delegates with over 500k ARB plus 2 Plurality Labs team members.
Delegates
Plurality Labs
There are two layers of community protection against misuse or abuse of funds.
The role of the multisig signer is solely to protect and prevent fraud and abuse such as perceived “self-dealing” by Plurality Labs. They are not expected to actively participate in deciding where funds should be allocated.
This multisig will review, sign and execute all fund disbursement for the Arbitrum DAO Pluralistic Grants program.
During our sessions with the community, we learned that there is not an expectation of any election or term limits for this multisig because it does not actively make any decisions. Instead the requirements should be large delegates (skin in the game), active (will actually sign in timely manner), and has reputation (wants to maintain positive impression).
This vote will enable the DAO at any time to set term limits or request elections and for that request to be executed within 30 days. Governance requests for the Grants Safety Multisig will only require a winning vote on snapshot which meets non-constitutional quorum.
Upon receipt of 3.36 million ARB, the Grants Safety Multisig will send 30% of the Plurality Labs service fee to the Plurality Labs wallet: arb1:0x76Ae3Af25332F5cd01c312E281685Bb35D7d27eA
The remaining 70% will be streamed to the Plurality Labs wallet over a period of 6 months. This means that if the DAO believes Plurality Labs is performing poorly, they can even clawback the payment to Plurality Labs.
We also intend to use the Zodiac module shared by the Tally team allowing the DAO the ability to clawback funds from the grants program at any time.
Ran grants operations for Gitcoin Grants rounds 8-10 growing gross marketplace value from $2 - $10 million. First Gitcoin employee to leave the company and work full-time for the DAO. Started the Fraud Detection & Defense (FDD) workstream. FDD is responsible for stopping over $3 million in fraud while Gitcoin Grants delivered over $50 million in funding.
More reading about the work done in the FDD Review. Joe will be supporting overall project management and grants framework design.
Cofounder of r3gen, a web3 financial service provider working with clients including Squid, Coordinape, Inverse Finance and Treasure DAO. Previously PwC consulting alumni specializing in Org Design, Operational Excellence and Change. Joined web3 full time at Index Coop where he served on the Leadership Council as Head of People and Community.
More information on the r3gen services and team can be found here 2.
People-first strategic design-thinking and organizational development leader. Partners with global business leaders to accelerate business strategies and execute people- and organization-focused solutions. Leadership approach combines possibility and participation while keeping firm foot in practical implementation. Thrives on building, leading and growing inclusive cross-functional teams to challenge the status quo. Experience includes IndexCoop, US Election Assistance Commission, Johnson & Johnson, Human Performance Institute, GE, Amazon, Martha Stewart and Charles Schwab to name a few.
As former CIO, CEO, and non-profit chairman of the board, Shawn spent his corporate career preparing for DAO governance. Introduced to the blockchain in 2015 he went full-time degen in 2019 but moved to DAOs in 2021 when he joined Index Coop leading the governance communications and people operations. In August 2022, he joined Gitcoin where he currently leads governance
The overall plan is to deploy a pluralist grants framework which operates in a politically decentralized & capture resistant way. This will fund grants programs in a continuous way that minimizes bureaucracy and increases action while providing accountability as part of the system.
Prior to releasing funds for milestone 2 to begin, Plurality Labs will offer a review of the previous milestone accomplishments and failures… The same process will occur before Milestone 3.
Milestones 2 & 3 are about scaling the frameworks and models we use while iteratively testing them. By the end of Milestone 3, we hope to have built the needed components for the entire process to run autonomously onchain.
We expect this to take 18 months in total. Each milestone being a 6 month cycle of iterative improvement. At the end of the third milestone we will provide:
Forum Discussion https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-3-non-constitutional-fund-the-arbitrum-grants-framework-proposal-milestone-1/14976
Snapshot Passed 7/18 https://snapshot.org/#/arbitrumfoundation.eth/proposal/0xa0e14b85197d73e825ac30f72b7d895d644ed06159a32a578f4efe47a2739b2f
Proposer: disruptionjoe.eth
Authors: Plurality Labs
This proposal requests 3,360,000 ARB (0.07% of the total treasury) to fund the first of three milestones in a comprehensive plan to build an Arbitrum DAO Pluralistic Grants Program.
Milestone 1 is the start of this journey with a funding request that breaks down as follows:
Total Funds to be Allocated = 2.8 million ARB
Total Service Fees (20%) = 560k ARB
Successful completion of these Milestone 1 deliverables will be a major value driver for the Arbitrum ecosystem further establishing Arbitrum as the go to scaling solution for Ethereum. Plurality Labs is committing to being held accountable for the following Milestone 1 deliverables.
At the end of Milestone 1 (Est. March 2024), Plurality Labs will have delivered:
We are here because Arbitrum intends to deploy one of the largest DAO treasuries ever to grow its ecosystem. A 10% difference in the allocation efficiency of funds could mean hundreds of millions of waste which would impede Arbitrum’s ability to actualize its full potential. It’s easy to say, “We can solve these problems later”, but we have an opportunity to start on the right track and solve these problems today
The Plurality Labs team has a chip on our shoulder. We have all been in DAOs and have seen how governance can fail, sometimes quickly, sometimes quietly. Our common thread is the shared values of trust, transparency and freedom combined with a passion for helping DAOs solve hard problems.
A Pluralist Grants program provides a perfect middle ground between Decentralized and Centralized Grants programs, unlocking the “best of both worlds".
At its core, the Pluralistic Grants Model will see the Pluralistic Grants Program Allocator onboard 4-6 pluralist grants managers who will be responsible for distributing funds to grant applicants that benefit the Arbitrum Ecosystem. Sourcing and selection of these ideas will use novel combinations of bottoms-up and top-down mechanisms facilitated by Plurality Labs.
The programs will focus on specific needs within the ecosystem and their potential impact, for example, one Pluralist Grants Manager may focus on bringing a novel new technique for fund allocation or deep grants proposal expertise (i.e. Questbook). Another might stand up an Arbitrum gaming-specific grants program. This flexibility allows for experimentation to allow Arbitrum DAO to discover what works best and allows for the specific needs of the Arbitrum ecosystem to be catered to.
Our approach includes a progressive decentralization of the Pluralist Grants Program Allocator. During Milestone 1, Plurality Labs will maintain accountability for sourcing, selecting, reporting on and delivering results of the chosen pluralist grants programs.
Milestones 2 & 3 will see experimentation with decentralized allocation mechanisms in a Proof of Concept stage with the goal of running at least one round of Pluralist Grants Program selection in a fully decentralized way without needing any corrective intervention.
During the discovery phase, we will gather input from delegates and the broader community to define the vision, mission, and values of the Arbitrum DAO, and determine what needs to be funded.
Once this foundation is established, we will evaluate the best domains and mechanisms for allocating resources and capital to grantees. Pluralistic Program managers will play a crucial role in promoting experimentation, decentralization of decisions, and improved resource allocation outcomes.
We have observed that many previous grants programs have struggled with an inability to source great grant opportunities, which we hope to address in the following ways:
The selection of the Pluralist Grants Programs and their managers will involve a facilitated bottoms-up approach, sourcing ideas, people, and processes. Factors considered in the selection may include, but are not limited to:
With this approach we are confident that the Arbitrum DAO Pluralistic Grants Program will be fair, impactful and ultimately support the growth and success of the Arbitrum Ecosystem.
The Pluralistic Grants model also provides 300k ARB to support matching Gitcoin rounds which run on Arbitrum. This is not a payment to Gitcoin the organization, but a payment to match the funding pools of programs willing to run on Arbitrum. Gitcoin core rounds include support for Open Source Software, Ethereum Infrastructure, & Zero Knowledge. This aligns with the stated Arbitrum goal of supporting the Ethereum ecosystem while also attracting users who might otherwise choose another L2. It also allows us to tap into the support of the Gitcoin DevRel team to help source builders, host hackathons.
Funding grants this way will not only benefit the Arbitrum ecosystem but enable the Gitcoin product team to prioritize making their Allo protocol available on Arbitrum. By being able to execute pluralistic programs on their Allo protocol allows us an open data substrate which will enable us to compare programs and projects across the pluralist framework. It also allows program managers to use quadratic funding and quadratic voting (if they choose) which require Sybil defense. This is a crucial enabler for the next section.
Improved Accountability, Transparency, and Reporting are key benefits of the Pluralistic Grants model. Web3 spends 100’s of millions annually on different grants and grants programs and to date, there has been little focus on the efficiency of those grant programs or the efficacy of their spending. We intend to build grant program efficiency metrics as well as specific grantee project efficacy (or results) metrics.
By using a common framework for executing a plurality of grant programs, we have the ability to identify, track and refine metrics for each unique grant program. Something that has not been done to date, and would be more difficult to do in stand-alone grant environments.
By doing this, we can begin to build qualitative data on the efficiency of each distribution method in a way that can identify improvements for that mechanism, but also compare mechanisms across stakeholder groups and use cases. By building these metrics, Arbitrum will be able to parse down the crowded field of grant execution options and deliver the most effective Grants Program web3 has seen to date.
Grant program execution typically stops when the money has been distributed, and we think that is premature. As part of this program we intend to experiment with a series of existing post-project evaluation tools (after action reviews, qualitative/quantitative metrics, case studies) but add in or invent novel web3 project evaluation solutions (hypercerts, on-chain analysis, panel reviews) to rate every project receiving funding in a way that can demonstrate the efficacy of the spending as it relates to building the Arbitrum ecosystem.
We know there are inefficiencies and fraud in the web3 grant mechanisms; this part of the program allows Arbitrum to make the most of its investments. Doing this will lead to a higher return on the Arbitrum investment and more funding for the most worthy projects while leaving room to experiment with the novel web3 mechanism that can help us revolutionize the grant process.
On Tally, the request is to send 3.36 million ARB to the PL-ARB Grants Safety Multisig.
arb1:0xC158b555F0B1ddd7F4D4f97Fd2a9acd144f8e0D4
The 4/6 which includes 4 delegates with over 500k ARB plus 2 Plurality Labs team members.
Delegates
Plurality Labs
There are two layers of community protection against misuse or abuse of funds.
The role of the multisig signer is solely to protect and prevent fraud and abuse such as perceived “self-dealing” by Plurality Labs. They are not expected to actively participate in deciding where funds should be allocated.
This multisig will review, sign and execute all fund disbursement for the Arbitrum DAO Pluralistic Grants program.
During our sessions with the community, we learned that there is not an expectation of any election or term limits for this multisig because it does not actively make any decisions. Instead the requirements should be large delegates (skin in the game), active (will actually sign in timely manner), and has reputation (wants to maintain positive impression).
This vote will enable the DAO at any time to set term limits or request elections and for that request to be executed within 30 days. Governance requests for the Grants Safety Multisig will only require a winning vote on snapshot which meets non-constitutional quorum.
Upon receipt of 3.36 million ARB, the Grants Safety Multisig will send 30% of the Plurality Labs service fee to the Plurality Labs wallet: arb1:0x76Ae3Af25332F5cd01c312E281685Bb35D7d27eA
The remaining 70% will be streamed to the Plurality Labs wallet over a period of 6 months. This means that if the DAO believes Plurality Labs is performing poorly, they can even clawback the payment to Plurality Labs.
We also intend to use the Zodiac module shared by the Tally team allowing the DAO the ability to clawback funds from the grants program at any time.
Ran grants operations for Gitcoin Grants rounds 8-10 growing gross marketplace value from $2 - $10 million. First Gitcoin employee to leave the company and work full-time for the DAO. Started the Fraud Detection & Defense (FDD) workstream. FDD is responsible for stopping over $3 million in fraud while Gitcoin Grants delivered over $50 million in funding.
More reading about the work done in the FDD Review. Joe will be supporting overall project management and grants framework design.
Cofounder of r3gen, a web3 financial service provider working with clients including Squid, Coordinape, Inverse Finance and Treasure DAO. Previously PwC consulting alumni specializing in Org Design, Operational Excellence and Change. Joined web3 full time at Index Coop where he served on the Leadership Council as Head of People and Community.
More information on the r3gen services and team can be found here 2.
People-first strategic design-thinking and organizational development leader. Partners with global business leaders to accelerate business strategies and execute people- and organization-focused solutions. Leadership approach combines possibility and participation while keeping firm foot in practical implementation. Thrives on building, leading and growing inclusive cross-functional teams to challenge the status quo. Experience includes IndexCoop, US Election Assistance Commission, Johnson & Johnson, Human Performance Institute, GE, Amazon, Martha Stewart and Charles Schwab to name a few.
As former CIO, CEO, and non-profit chairman of the board, Shawn spent his corporate career preparing for DAO governance. Introduced to the blockchain in 2015 he went full-time degen in 2019 but moved to DAOs in 2021 when he joined Index Coop leading the governance communications and people operations. In August 2022, he joined Gitcoin where he currently leads governance
The overall plan is to deploy a pluralist grants framework which operates in a politically decentralized & capture resistant way. This will fund grants programs in a continuous way that minimizes bureaucracy and increases action while providing accountability as part of the system.
Prior to releasing funds for milestone 2 to begin, Plurality Labs will offer a review of the previous milestone accomplishments and failures… The same process will occur before Milestone 3.
Milestones 2 & 3 are about scaling the frameworks and models we use while iteratively testing them. By the end of Milestone 3, we hope to have built the needed components for the entire process to run autonomously onchain.
We expect this to take 18 months in total. Each milestone being a 6 month cycle of iterative improvement. At the end of the third milestone we will provide:
Forum Discussion https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-3-non-constitutional-fund-the-arbitrum-grants-framework-proposal-milestone-1/14976
Snapshot Passed 7/18 https://snapshot.org/#/arbitrumfoundation.eth/proposal/0xa0e14b85197d73e825ac30f72b7d895d644ed06159a32a578f4efe47a2739b2f
