With 147 applications and ~31.92 million ARB in funding requests, demand for the Stylus Sprint program significantly exceeded expectations. The committee received a large number of exceptional applications, but unfortunately, due to the initial budget constraints, the committee was only able to fund 17 applications. They were chosen based on a combination of factors including cost, timeline, necessity for immediate start, RFP category importance, and the priority to fund both applications and infrastructure/tooling.
While the committee has accepted a subset of the applicants, there remains an important opportunity to support impactful ideas and high-quality teams. With Stylus as one of Arbitrum’s strongest competitive advantages, the committee strongly believes that enabling all impressive applications received as a part of the Stylus Sprint with funding is a worthwhile investment for the DAO.
This proposal seeks an additional allocation of 4 million ARB tokens to extend funding opportunities to promising projects that were not initially accepted into the Sprint. With this budget extension, the committee will be able to fund an additional group of applicants, outlined in detail below. While there are many more strong applications, the recommended list scored especially high during the review process and are ones that the committee is confident have the potential to provide value to the Arbitrum and Stylus ecosystems.
As stated in the original Stylus Sprint proposal, large requests may be directed to the DAO directly to request funding. This process was communicated to applicants, some of which elected to go this route over reducing their request. The smaller applicants in this list are in the committee’s opinion worthwhile investments that have the potential to improve Stylus long-term.
The following list of applicants are the ones that come with a strong recommendation from the committee and to reiterate were unable to be accepted due to budget constraints.
Open Application
RFP Track
Rationale and a summary of each applicant’s proposed scope can be found in this document.
It is important to note that the decision to include the above applicants is based on the finalized version of their submission that was reviewed during the grading period.
Due to the open nature of the DAO, applicants not included in this recommendation maintain the ability to move their request directly to the forums in case they feel like they have a compelling case despite the non-acceptance from the committee, effectively circumventing the Stylus Sprint and evaluation committee. The committee is aware of some applicants that may bring revised versions and/or lower budgets than when they were originally reviewed. While we appreciate that Arbitrum DAO’s open and decentralized essence provides the freedom to make such requests, we’d encourage delegates to be mindful of the possible precedent funding projects circumventing the program would set. When appropriate, the committee has already directed certain applications to be on the look out for alternative DAO programs, such as the Season 3 of Arbitrum D.A.O program if it's approved.
If this proposed extension is approved on Snapshot, we will move it immediately to an onchain vote the following Thursday, February 20th. The recommended applicants will be held to the current Stylus Sprint timeline, so the committee would like to not unnecessarily delay the ability to fund these projects. Projects funded as part of the Stylus Sprint’s budget increase will benefit from the infrastructure already in place as far as MSS/payments and milestone reviews by the evaluation committee.
The Snapshot vote will be a basic vote with For, Against, and Abstain as options.
The Stylus Sprint committee is requesting an additional 4,000,000 ARB to extend its Stylus Sprint budget. If approved, the funds will be sent to the existing MSS-controlled Stylus Sprint multisig.
January 30th: Forum Post February 6-13th: Snapshot Vote February 20th - March 6th: Tally Vote March 9th: Funds delivered to Stylus Sprint multisig March 10th: Recommended teams join the Stylus Sprint
Entropy and the committee have no conflicts of interest associated with the recommended applicants or this proposal requesting an extension of funds.
With 147 applications and ~31.92 million ARB in funding requests, demand for the Stylus Sprint program significantly exceeded expectations. The committee received a large number of exceptional applications, but unfortunately, due to the initial budget constraints, the committee was only able to fund 17 applications. They were chosen based on a combination of factors including cost, timeline, necessity for immediate start, RFP category importance, and the priority to fund both applications and infrastructure/tooling.
While the committee has accepted a subset of the applicants, there remains an important opportunity to support impactful ideas and high-quality teams. With Stylus as one of Arbitrum’s strongest competitive advantages, the committee strongly believes that enabling all impressive applications received as a part of the Stylus Sprint with funding is a worthwhile investment for the DAO.
This proposal seeks an additional allocation of 4 million ARB tokens to extend funding opportunities to promising projects that were not initially accepted into the Sprint. With this budget extension, the committee will be able to fund an additional group of applicants, outlined in detail below. While there are many more strong applications, the recommended list scored especially high during the review process and are ones that the committee is confident have the potential to provide value to the Arbitrum and Stylus ecosystems.
As stated in the original Stylus Sprint proposal, large requests may be directed to the DAO directly to request funding. This process was communicated to applicants, some of which elected to go this route over reducing their request. The smaller applicants in this list are in the committee’s opinion worthwhile investments that have the potential to improve Stylus long-term.
The following list of applicants are the ones that come with a strong recommendation from the committee and to reiterate were unable to be accepted due to budget constraints.
Open Application
RFP Track
Rationale and a summary of each applicant’s proposed scope can be found in this document.
It is important to note that the decision to include the above applicants is based on the finalized version of their submission that was reviewed during the grading period.
Due to the open nature of the DAO, applicants not included in this recommendation maintain the ability to move their request directly to the forums in case they feel like they have a compelling case despite the non-acceptance from the committee, effectively circumventing the Stylus Sprint and evaluation committee. The committee is aware of some applicants that may bring revised versions and/or lower budgets than when they were originally reviewed. While we appreciate that Arbitrum DAO’s open and decentralized essence provides the freedom to make such requests, we’d encourage delegates to be mindful of the possible precedent funding projects circumventing the program would set. When appropriate, the committee has already directed certain applications to be on the look out for alternative DAO programs, such as the Season 3 of Arbitrum D.A.O program if it's approved.
If this proposed extension is approved on Snapshot, we will move it immediately to an onchain vote the following Thursday, February 20th. The recommended applicants will be held to the current Stylus Sprint timeline, so the committee would like to not unnecessarily delay the ability to fund these projects. Projects funded as part of the Stylus Sprint’s budget increase will benefit from the infrastructure already in place as far as MSS/payments and milestone reviews by the evaluation committee.
The Snapshot vote will be a basic vote with For, Against, and Abstain as options.
The Stylus Sprint committee is requesting an additional 4,000,000 ARB to extend its Stylus Sprint budget. If approved, the funds will be sent to the existing MSS-controlled Stylus Sprint multisig.
January 30th: Forum Post February 6-13th: Snapshot Vote February 20th - March 6th: Tally Vote March 9th: Funds delivered to Stylus Sprint multisig March 10th: Recommended teams join the Stylus Sprint
Entropy and the committee have no conflicts of interest associated with the recommended applicants or this proposal requesting an extension of funds.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/juanrah-delegate-communication-thread/27395/32?u=juanrah
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/66?u=linzerd
We vote FOR the proposal to increase the budget of the Stylus Sprint committee. Even with the increase in budget, we see application onboarding as beneficial for Arbitrum - and necessary for it to continue growing.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/juanrah-delegate-communication-thread/27395/32?u=juanrah
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/66?u=linzerd
We vote FOR the proposal to increase the budget of the Stylus Sprint committee. Even with the increase in budget, we see application onboarding as beneficial for Arbitrum - and necessary for it to continue growing.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/76?u=bob-rossi
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/71
Democratising lobbyism, on-chain. Check out lobbyfi.xyz
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/112?u=tane
Driving Stylus adoption, creates a unique moat for Arbitrum and investing in leading protocols utilizing it will align them long term with arbitrum and their continued activity on it.
The Event Horizon Community voted FOR on this Proposal (ehARB-84): EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-84
The Event Horizon Community voted FOR on this Proposal (ehARB-84): EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-84
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/37?u=castlecapital
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/106?u=tekr0x.eth
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/98?u=danielm
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/99?u=ocandocrypto
Stylus adoption is one of arbitrums biggest differentiators and the first program went well
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/97?u=euphoria
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/45
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/gfx-labs-delegate-communication-thread/13794
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/44?u=bruce
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/21?u=ezr3al
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/94?u=tempetechie
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/93?u=kcaz
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/92?u=pedrob
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/90?u=griff
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/88?u=todayindefi
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/larva-delegate-communication-thread/24476/123?u=larva
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/85?u=dragonawr
As i commented before the talent aplied it's excelent. So worth the extra budget
overall I think it is better to fund these projects (which are indeed high quality) than not to fund them. But, as per my previous offchain vote, I really don’t agree with the approach that was followed by the proposers here, as I think the DAO should have done another totally independent season of this grant program instead of an extension that asked almost double the money than initially aproved, mostly so that other high quality projects could apply as well and compete for the funds. The approach that was followed by @Entropy here, where they published a public proposal to the DAO with the specific projects that would be funded and by how much, put the DAO and its delegates in a kind of hostage situation, where if the DAO would have decided not to fund this extension, Arbitrum DAO would be seen as not welcoming to these builders that applied to the program and were expecting the funding. I feel like our delegates hand was forced into approving this proposal, and I must say that hereby I cast my onchain FOR vote a little bit… in protest. https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/83?u=paulofonseca
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/48?u=0xalex
Democratising lobbyism, on-chain. Check out lobbyfi.xyz
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/77?u=oni
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/76?u=bob-rossi
this is not the right way to do this. This proposal was rushed, the proposer didn't incorporate feedback from the delegates, and I overall don't agree with increasing the budget to almost double, without opening applications for other projects to apply as well. As I recommended before, we should invest heavily in stylus, and the right move, in my opinion, is to double down on the program and make a second season of it, with maybe even more budget than the first. But doing it like this is not okay. https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/73?u=paulofonseca
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/71
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/70?u=princetonblockchain
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/69?u=ocandocrypto
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/68?u=tane
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/67?u=0xtalvo.eth_mty
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/66?u=linzerd
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/63?u=euphoria
The Event Horizon Community Voted to Support this Proposal ehARB-83: EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-83
The Event Horizon Community Voted to Support this Proposal ehARB-83: EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-83
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/griff-green-delegate-communication-thread/25040/64?u=griff
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/58?u=mcfly
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/57?u=amira
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/gfx-labs-delegate-communication-thread/13794
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/rfc-fund-the-stylus-sprint/26437/79?u=chamadao
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/37?u=castlecapital
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/55?u=dragonawr
The quality of the applicants is worth the extra budget, but the criteria should've been stricter in the first place to only accept the top builders.
This was an excellent program and Stylus is the primary differentiator for Arbitrum.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/54?u=todayindefi
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/juanrah-delegate-communication-thread/27395/26?u=juanrah
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/50?u=gabriel
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/49?u=0x_ultra
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/48?u=0xalex
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/46?u=pedrob
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/45
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/44?u=bruce
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/42?u=ezr3al
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/41?u=maxlomu
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/39?u=entropy
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/39?u=0xdonpepe
I am voting for this proposal because many good projects did not get funding due to budget limits. The extra 4 million ARB will help support these strong teams and ideas, which can improve Stylus and Arbitrum. This will bring more growth and make the ecosystem better.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/10?u=tempetechie
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/33?u=tekr0x.eth
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/larva-delegate-communication-thread/24476/121?u=larva
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/76?u=bob-rossi
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/71
Democratising lobbyism, on-chain. Check out lobbyfi.xyz
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/112?u=tane
Driving Stylus adoption, creates a unique moat for Arbitrum and investing in leading protocols utilizing it will align them long term with arbitrum and their continued activity on it.
The Event Horizon Community voted FOR on this Proposal (ehARB-84): EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-84
The Event Horizon Community voted FOR on this Proposal (ehARB-84): EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-84
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/37?u=castlecapital
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/106?u=tekr0x.eth
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/98?u=danielm
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/99?u=ocandocrypto
Stylus adoption is one of arbitrums biggest differentiators and the first program went well
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/97?u=euphoria
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/45
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/gfx-labs-delegate-communication-thread/13794
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/44?u=bruce
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/21?u=ezr3al
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/94?u=tempetechie
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/93?u=kcaz
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/92?u=pedrob
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/90?u=griff
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/88?u=todayindefi
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/larva-delegate-communication-thread/24476/123?u=larva
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/85?u=dragonawr
As i commented before the talent aplied it's excelent. So worth the extra budget
overall I think it is better to fund these projects (which are indeed high quality) than not to fund them. But, as per my previous offchain vote, I really don’t agree with the approach that was followed by the proposers here, as I think the DAO should have done another totally independent season of this grant program instead of an extension that asked almost double the money than initially aproved, mostly so that other high quality projects could apply as well and compete for the funds. The approach that was followed by @Entropy here, where they published a public proposal to the DAO with the specific projects that would be funded and by how much, put the DAO and its delegates in a kind of hostage situation, where if the DAO would have decided not to fund this extension, Arbitrum DAO would be seen as not welcoming to these builders that applied to the program and were expecting the funding. I feel like our delegates hand was forced into approving this proposal, and I must say that hereby I cast my onchain FOR vote a little bit… in protest. https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/83?u=paulofonseca
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/48?u=0xalex
Democratising lobbyism, on-chain. Check out lobbyfi.xyz
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/77?u=oni
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/76?u=bob-rossi
this is not the right way to do this. This proposal was rushed, the proposer didn't incorporate feedback from the delegates, and I overall don't agree with increasing the budget to almost double, without opening applications for other projects to apply as well. As I recommended before, we should invest heavily in stylus, and the right move, in my opinion, is to double down on the program and make a second season of it, with maybe even more budget than the first. But doing it like this is not okay. https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/73?u=paulofonseca
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/71
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/70?u=princetonblockchain
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/69?u=ocandocrypto
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/68?u=tane
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/67?u=0xtalvo.eth_mty
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/66?u=linzerd
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/63?u=euphoria
The Event Horizon Community Voted to Support this Proposal ehARB-83: EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-83
The Event Horizon Community Voted to Support this Proposal ehARB-83: EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-83
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/griff-green-delegate-communication-thread/25040/64?u=griff
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/58?u=mcfly
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/57?u=amira
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/gfx-labs-delegate-communication-thread/13794
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/rfc-fund-the-stylus-sprint/26437/79?u=chamadao
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/37?u=castlecapital
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/55?u=dragonawr
The quality of the applicants is worth the extra budget, but the criteria should've been stricter in the first place to only accept the top builders.
This was an excellent program and Stylus is the primary differentiator for Arbitrum.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/54?u=todayindefi
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/juanrah-delegate-communication-thread/27395/26?u=juanrah
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/50?u=gabriel
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/49?u=0x_ultra
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/48?u=0xalex
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/46?u=pedrob
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/45
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/44?u=bruce
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/42?u=ezr3al
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/41?u=maxlomu
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/39?u=entropy
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/39?u=0xdonpepe
I am voting for this proposal because many good projects did not get funding due to budget limits. The extra 4 million ARB will help support these strong teams and ideas, which can improve Stylus and Arbitrum. This will bring more growth and make the ecosystem better.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/10?u=tempetechie
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/33?u=tekr0x.eth
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/larva-delegate-communication-thread/24476/121?u=larva
More funding means we can accelerate Arbitrum's growth and give projects with untapped potential the green light
Aped
More funding means we can accelerate Arbitrum's growth and give projects with untapped potential the green light
Aped
With 147 applications and ~31.92 million ARB in funding requests, demand for the Stylus Sprint program significantly exceeded expectations. The committee received a large number of exceptional applications, but unfortunately, due to the initial budget constraints, the committee was only able to fund 17 applications. They were chosen based on a combination of factors including cost, timeline, necessity for immediate start, RFP category importance, and the priority to fund both applications and infrastructure/tooling.
While the committee has accepted a subset of the applicants, there remains an important opportunity to support impactful ideas and high-quality teams. With Stylus as one of Arbitrum’s strongest competitive advantages, the committee strongly believes that enabling all impressive applications received as a part of the Stylus Sprint with funding is a worthwhile investment for the DAO.
This proposal seeks an additional allocation of 4 million ARB tokens to extend funding opportunities to promising projects that were not initially accepted into the Sprint. With this budget extension, the committee will be able to fund an additional group of applicants, outlined in detail below. While there are many more strong applications, the recommended list scored especially high during the review process and are ones that the committee is confident have the potential to provide value to the Arbitrum and Stylus ecosystems.
As stated in the original Stylus Sprint proposal, large requests may be directed to the DAO directly to request funding. This process was communicated to applicants, some of which elected to go this route over reducing their request. The smaller applicants in this list are in the committee’s opinion worthwhile investments that have the potential to improve Stylus long-term.
The following list of applicants are the ones that come with a strong recommendation from the committee and to reiterate were unable to be accepted due to budget constraints.
Open Application
RFP Track
Rationale and a summary of each applicant’s proposed scope can be found in this document.
It is important to note that the decision to include the above applicants is based on the finalized version of their submission that was reviewed during the grading period.
Due to the open nature of the DAO, applicants not included in this recommendation maintain the ability to move their request directly to the forums in case they feel like they have a compelling case despite the non-acceptance from the committee, effectively circumventing the Stylus Sprint and evaluation committee. The committee is aware of some applicants that may bring revised versions and/or lower budgets than when they were originally reviewed. While we appreciate that Arbitrum DAO’s open and decentralized essence provides the freedom to make such requests, we’d encourage delegates to be mindful of the possible precedent funding projects circumventing the program would set. When appropriate, the committee has already directed certain applications to be on the look out for alternative DAO programs, such as the Season 3 of Arbitrum D.A.O program if it’s approved.
If this proposed extension is approved on Snapshot, we will move it immediately to an onchain vote the following Thursday, February 20th. The recommended applicants will be held to the current Stylus Sprint timeline, so the committee would like to not unnecessarily delay the ability to fund these projects. Projects funded as part of the Stylus Sprint’s budget increase will benefit from the infrastructure already in place as far as MSS/payments and milestone reviews by the evaluation committee.
The Snapshot vote will be a basic vote with For, Against, and Abstain as options.
The Stylus Sprint committee is requesting an additional 4,000,000 ARB to extend its Stylus Sprint budget. If approved, the funds will be sent to the existing MSS-controlled Stylus Sprint multisig.
January 30th: Forum Post February 6-13th: Snapshot Vote February 20th - March 6th: Tally Vote March 9th: Funds delivered to Stylus Sprint multisig March 10th: Recommended teams join the Stylus Sprint
Entropy and the committee have no conflicts of interest associated with the recommended applicants or this proposal requesting an extension of funds.
With 147 applications and ~31.92 million ARB in funding requests, demand for the Stylus Sprint program significantly exceeded expectations. The committee received a large number of exceptional applications, but unfortunately, due to the initial budget constraints, the committee was only able to fund 17 applications. They were chosen based on a combination of factors including cost, timeline, necessity for immediate start, RFP category importance, and the priority to fund both applications and infrastructure/tooling.
While the committee has accepted a subset of the applicants, there remains an important opportunity to support impactful ideas and high-quality teams. With Stylus as one of Arbitrum’s strongest competitive advantages, the committee strongly believes that enabling all impressive applications received as a part of the Stylus Sprint with funding is a worthwhile investment for the DAO.
This proposal seeks an additional allocation of 4 million ARB tokens to extend funding opportunities to promising projects that were not initially accepted into the Sprint. With this budget extension, the committee will be able to fund an additional group of applicants, outlined in detail below. While there are many more strong applications, the recommended list scored especially high during the review process and are ones that the committee is confident have the potential to provide value to the Arbitrum and Stylus ecosystems.
As stated in the original Stylus Sprint proposal, large requests may be directed to the DAO directly to request funding. This process was communicated to applicants, some of which elected to go this route over reducing their request. The smaller applicants in this list are in the committee’s opinion worthwhile investments that have the potential to improve Stylus long-term.
The following list of applicants are the ones that come with a strong recommendation from the committee and to reiterate were unable to be accepted due to budget constraints.
Open Application
RFP Track
Rationale and a summary of each applicant’s proposed scope can be found in this document.
It is important to note that the decision to include the above applicants is based on the finalized version of their submission that was reviewed during the grading period.
Due to the open nature of the DAO, applicants not included in this recommendation maintain the ability to move their request directly to the forums in case they feel like they have a compelling case despite the non-acceptance from the committee, effectively circumventing the Stylus Sprint and evaluation committee. The committee is aware of some applicants that may bring revised versions and/or lower budgets than when they were originally reviewed. While we appreciate that Arbitrum DAO’s open and decentralized essence provides the freedom to make such requests, we’d encourage delegates to be mindful of the possible precedent funding projects circumventing the program would set. When appropriate, the committee has already directed certain applications to be on the look out for alternative DAO programs, such as the Season 3 of Arbitrum D.A.O program if it’s approved.
If this proposed extension is approved on Snapshot, we will move it immediately to an onchain vote the following Thursday, February 20th. The recommended applicants will be held to the current Stylus Sprint timeline, so the committee would like to not unnecessarily delay the ability to fund these projects. Projects funded as part of the Stylus Sprint’s budget increase will benefit from the infrastructure already in place as far as MSS/payments and milestone reviews by the evaluation committee.
The Snapshot vote will be a basic vote with For, Against, and Abstain as options.
The Stylus Sprint committee is requesting an additional 4,000,000 ARB to extend its Stylus Sprint budget. If approved, the funds will be sent to the existing MSS-controlled Stylus Sprint multisig.
January 30th: Forum Post February 6-13th: Snapshot Vote February 20th - March 6th: Tally Vote March 9th: Funds delivered to Stylus Sprint multisig March 10th: Recommended teams join the Stylus Sprint
Entropy and the committee have no conflicts of interest associated with the recommended applicants or this proposal requesting an extension of funds.
Overall, we are in support of this proposal as it represents an efficient mechanism to capture additional value from an already successful program, strengthening Arbitrum's position in the Layer 2 ecosystem through strategic investment in Stylus development.
We find this proposal for extending the Stylus Sprint budget to be well-warranted given the exceptional quality and quantity of applications received. The initiative has clearly struck a chord with the builder community, evidenced by the 147 applications requesting nearly 32M ARB - far exceeding initial expectations.
Overall, we are in support of this proposal as it represents an efficient mechanism to capture additional value from an already successful program, strengthening Arbitrum's position in the Layer 2 ecosystem through strategic investment in Stylus development.
We find this proposal for extending the Stylus Sprint budget to be well-warranted given the exceptional quality and quantity of applications received. The initiative has clearly struck a chord with the builder community, evidenced by the 147 applications requesting nearly 32M ARB - far exceeding initial expectations.
While we understand the concerns raised by some delegates regarding the precedent of program extensions versus new seasons, we believe the immediate opportunity to fund these high-quality projects outweighs these procedural considerations. The caliber of the selected projects and their potential impact on the Stylus ecosystem makes this a compelling use of DAO resources.
At first glance, expanding the budget by 80% seem excessive.
However, as others have mentioned—and especially after testing it—we believe Stylus could give Arbitrum a significant edge over other ecosystems if properly developed.
Given the committee’s work, the selected candidates are likely well-suited to drive this initiative forward.
At first glance, expanding the budget by 80% seem excessive.
However, as others have mentioned—and especially after testing it—we believe Stylus could give Arbitrum a significant edge over other ecosystems if properly developed.
Given the committee’s work, the selected candidates are likely well-suited to drive this initiative forward.
Running these programs requires time and resources, and a similarly complex selection process for an improvised "Second Season" could set us back, increase costs, and delay progress.
The time allocated to drafting proposals was more than sufficient, and the feedback—whenever requested—was consistently constructive.
Having seen the strong coordination between all parties—DAO, Committee, Applicants and OCL—it would be a missed opportunity not to support an initiative that could become a defining advantage for Arbitrum.
Overall, we are in support of this proposal as it represents an efficient mechanism to capture additional value from an already successful program, strengthening Arbitrum's position in the Layer 2 ecosystem through strategic investment in Stylus development.
We find this proposal for extending the Stylus Sprint budget to be well-warranted given the exceptional quality and quantity of applications received. The initiative has clearly struck a chord with the builder community, evidenced by the 147 applications requesting nearly 32M ARB - far exceeding initial expectations.
Overall, we are in support of this proposal as it represents an efficient mechanism to capture additional value from an already successful program, strengthening Arbitrum's position in the Layer 2 ecosystem through strategic investment in Stylus development.
We find this proposal for extending the Stylus Sprint budget to be well-warranted given the exceptional quality and quantity of applications received. The initiative has clearly struck a chord with the builder community, evidenced by the 147 applications requesting nearly 32M ARB - far exceeding initial expectations.
While we understand the concerns raised by some delegates regarding the precedent of program extensions versus new seasons, we believe the immediate opportunity to fund these high-quality projects outweighs these procedural considerations. The caliber of the selected projects and their potential impact on the Stylus ecosystem makes this a compelling use of DAO resources.
At first glance, expanding the budget by 80% seem excessive.
However, as others have mentioned—and especially after testing it—we believe Stylus could give Arbitrum a significant edge over other ecosystems if properly developed.
Given the committee’s work, the selected candidates are likely well-suited to drive this initiative forward.
At first glance, expanding the budget by 80% seem excessive.
However, as others have mentioned—and especially after testing it—we believe Stylus could give Arbitrum a significant edge over other ecosystems if properly developed.
Given the committee’s work, the selected candidates are likely well-suited to drive this initiative forward.
Running these programs requires time and resources, and a similarly complex selection process for an improvised "Second Season" could set us back, increase costs, and delay progress.
The time allocated to drafting proposals was more than sufficient, and the feedback—whenever requested—was consistently constructive.
Having seen the strong coordination between all parties—DAO, Committee, Applicants and OCL—it would be a missed opportunity not to support an initiative that could become a defining advantage for Arbitrum.
Didn't change position
With this proposal passing last week, the additional 4m ARB has been sent to the existing Stylus Sprint MSS controlled multisig and the 9 recommended applicants joined the Stylus Sprint. These teams are now in the process of completing the necessary KYC/KYB and will soon being work on their deliverables.
Additionally, our team has posted the first program update on behalf of the Stylus Sprint committee. With most teams working through the compliance process in February, only a few teams have submitted their first milestone reports. We expect a more substantial update by the end of April.
DAOplomats voted FOR this proposal on Tally.
We maintained our support from the temp check using the same rationale.
I voted FOR to this proposal. In general I do not support increasing initial budget since it was voted that way for a reason, but the rationale from Entropy makes sense and gives the chance to for additional high quality applications.
I voted FOR to this proposal. In general I do not support increasing initial budget since it was voted that way for a reason, but the rationale from Entropy makes sense and gives the chance to for additional high quality applications.
My stance has not changed, I voted FOR on Snapshot and voted FOR on Tally. As others have noted, Stylus is unique to Arbitrum and offers several advantages compared to other Ethereum L2s. Looking forward to Entropy sharing updates on the first milestone reports.
Voted FOR on Tally for the same reasons exposed in my prior comment.
I will be voting FOR in Tally. As I said earlier, funding Stylus’ projects means investing in the future of the ecosystem.
I believe the strong response to the program with 147 applications demonstrates strong demand to build with Stylus and selecting only 17 programs could not be achieved without a disciplined approach by the Committee.
I will be voting FOR in Tally. As I said earlier, funding Stylus’ projects means investing in the future of the ecosystem.
I believe the strong response to the program with 147 applications demonstrates strong demand to build with Stylus and selecting only 17 programs could not be achieved without a disciplined approach by the Committee.
I also think that waiting for a complete assessment of the first round could delay ecosystem development and it is not considering the fast-paced environment in the L2 landscape.
Didn't change position
With this proposal passing last week, the additional 4m ARB has been sent to the existing Stylus Sprint MSS controlled multisig and the 9 recommended applicants joined the Stylus Sprint. These teams are now in the process of completing the necessary KYC/KYB and will soon being work on their deliverables.
Additionally, our team has posted the first program update on behalf of the Stylus Sprint committee. With most teams working through the compliance process in February, only a few teams have submitted their first milestone reports. We expect a more substantial update by the end of April.
DAOplomats voted FOR this proposal on Tally.
We maintained our support from the temp check using the same rationale.
I voted FOR to this proposal. In general I do not support increasing initial budget since it was voted that way for a reason, but the rationale from Entropy makes sense and gives the chance to for additional high quality applications.
I voted FOR to this proposal. In general I do not support increasing initial budget since it was voted that way for a reason, but the rationale from Entropy makes sense and gives the chance to for additional high quality applications.
My stance has not changed, I voted FOR on Snapshot and voted FOR on Tally. As others have noted, Stylus is unique to Arbitrum and offers several advantages compared to other Ethereum L2s. Looking forward to Entropy sharing updates on the first milestone reports.
Voted FOR on Tally for the same reasons exposed in my prior comment.
I will be voting FOR in Tally. As I said earlier, funding Stylus’ projects means investing in the future of the ecosystem.
I believe the strong response to the program with 147 applications demonstrates strong demand to build with Stylus and selecting only 17 programs could not be achieved without a disciplined approach by the Committee.
I will be voting FOR in Tally. As I said earlier, funding Stylus’ projects means investing in the future of the ecosystem.
I believe the strong response to the program with 147 applications demonstrates strong demand to build with Stylus and selecting only 17 programs could not be achieved without a disciplined approach by the Committee.
I also think that waiting for a complete assessment of the first round could delay ecosystem development and it is not considering the fast-paced environment in the L2 landscape.
We voted FOR the proposal on Tally based on the clarifications provided on our earlier questions https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/64?u=castlecapital
We vote FOR the proposal on Tally.
We maintain the support made at the Snapshot phase.
We voted FOR the proposal on Tally based on the clarifications provided on our earlier questions https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/64?u=castlecapital
We vote FOR the proposal on Tally.
We maintain the support made at the Snapshot phase.
Voted For: I agree with increasing the budget to fund additional projects. The Stylus Sprint program is an important piece of our ecosystem. We can see a real show of strength by having so many projects apply to this program (147). It makes sense to support as many as we can because this will allow us to grow the developer base for future development on Arbitrum and our Orbit chains.
Blockworks is voting FOR this proposal on Tally for the reasons we have stated prior in this response:
Candidly, we support this proposal and appreciate the conservative approach. Additionally, in reference to responses from other delegates to submit these applications separately or increase the scope of the program to be more general to accept even more applicants, we disagree. Again, Stylus is one of the few differentiators with lock-in potential Arbitrum holds relative to other L2s. What’s more is that the program is ran conservatively for a reason, it cuts down on unnecessary procedural bloat, and being that it is a sprint, this is to incentivize teams willing to double down on Arbitrum right now. So, truly we see no purpose in diluting this with a much larger number of candidates that are likely low quality (you can check the Questbook) that increase the risk of migration and add bloat.
gm, voted FOR in line with my previous statement. I understand that increasing the budget isn’t ideal, but this sprint is meant to showcase Stylus’ utility—a key advantage that sets Arbitrum apart from other L2s. I’m fully onboard to leverage it and push for it.
I will be Against !
I will be Against !
I still have no reason for, I stand by my decision
Voting "FOR" on tally because of the same reasons stated above. https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/18?u=gabriel
I voted For on Tally and maintain the same reasoning here.
This will be my second vote since I am a new member of the DAO. The increase of the Stylus Sprint Committee's Budget seems a nice and helpful idea so my vote is 'for'. All the pros have already been analyzed, so I will not repeat them. However, I have two objections, as food for thought. The first is about whether the additional programs could have been anticipated in advance. The second, and more important one, comes from many proposals I’ve already read regarding the undertaking of additional programs, as we already have many unfinished ones. Therefore, expanding the budget should only happen with proper oversight of the programs to ensure that all of them are successfully implemented.
As in @web3citizenxyz representation. Voting FOR. Below the rationale:
So I haven't changed my position. I voted FOR on Snapshot and I wil vote FOR this proposal on Tally. I think a lot of good projects don't get funded because of budget constraints. An additional 4 million ARB will help support these strong teams and ideas that can improve Stylus and Arbitrum. The wider the Arbitrum ecosystem, the more opportunities we will get in the future.
I voted FOR this proposal on Snapshot. Stylus is an important differentiator for Arbitrum, and I believe the additional applicants funded by this proposal are worthwhile.
I voted FOR this proposal on Tally
I voted FOR to this proposal. In general I do not support increasing initial budget since it was voted that way for a reason, but the rationale from Entropy makes sense and gives the chance to for additional high quality applications.
Lo0bbyFi voted in favor of the proposal since the 'for' pool overbid the 'against' pool within the community auction.
We voted AGAINST on Tally as we do not believe this is a sensible use of DAO funds. This nearly doubles the initial budget and we feel this is a clear case of budget creep. It suggests that either: the committee administering this program lacks discipline, or the criteria used to score projects are deficient. We also believe this proposal violates the soft funding cap laid out in the initial budget proposal. Either way, if this program were to need additional budget the impact of initial funding should be assessed along with the criteria used for scoring and then another funding round be carried out.
I voted FOR on Tally for the same reason I voted for on Snapshot.
For this reason, I support the initiative and agree with increasing the budget.
Blockworks Advisory is voting FOR this proposal.
By and large, our reasoning here has not changed.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR this proposal in the Tally voting.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR this proposal in the Tally voting.
We stand by our stance from the Snapshot vote and believe it is better to fund these high-quality projects selected by the committee than to leave them unfunded. Delaying their funding to a future round could slow down the growth and adoption of Stylus, affecting its momentum. By supporting these projects now, we enable more teams to build, experiment, and contribute to the ecosystem, ensuring continued progress without unnecessary setbacks.
We look forward to seeing the impact of these funded projects and how they contribute to the growth of Stylus and the broader Arbitrum ecosystem.
I voted FOR on Tally as well. The reasoning remains the same.
Voted For: I agree with increasing the budget to fund additional projects. The Stylus Sprint program is an important piece of our ecosystem. We can see a real show of strength by having so many projects apply to this program (147). It makes sense to support as many as we can because this will allow us to grow the developer base for future development on Arbitrum and our Orbit chains.
Blockworks is voting FOR this proposal on Tally for the reasons we have stated prior in this response:
Candidly, we support this proposal and appreciate the conservative approach. Additionally, in reference to responses from other delegates to submit these applications separately or increase the scope of the program to be more general to accept even more applicants, we disagree. Again, Stylus is one of the few differentiators with lock-in potential Arbitrum holds relative to other L2s. What’s more is that the program is ran conservatively for a reason, it cuts down on unnecessary procedural bloat, and being that it is a sprint, this is to incentivize teams willing to double down on Arbitrum right now. So, truly we see no purpose in diluting this with a much larger number of candidates that are likely low quality (you can check the Questbook) that increase the risk of migration and add bloat.
gm, voted FOR in line with my previous statement. I understand that increasing the budget isn’t ideal, but this sprint is meant to showcase Stylus’ utility—a key advantage that sets Arbitrum apart from other L2s. I’m fully onboard to leverage it and push for it.
I will be Against !
I will be Against !
I still have no reason for, I stand by my decision
Voting "FOR" on tally because of the same reasons stated above. https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/18?u=gabriel
I voted For on Tally and maintain the same reasoning here.
This will be my second vote since I am a new member of the DAO. The increase of the Stylus Sprint Committee's Budget seems a nice and helpful idea so my vote is 'for'. All the pros have already been analyzed, so I will not repeat them. However, I have two objections, as food for thought. The first is about whether the additional programs could have been anticipated in advance. The second, and more important one, comes from many proposals I’ve already read regarding the undertaking of additional programs, as we already have many unfinished ones. Therefore, expanding the budget should only happen with proper oversight of the programs to ensure that all of them are successfully implemented.
As in @web3citizenxyz representation. Voting FOR. Below the rationale:
So I haven't changed my position. I voted FOR on Snapshot and I wil vote FOR this proposal on Tally. I think a lot of good projects don't get funded because of budget constraints. An additional 4 million ARB will help support these strong teams and ideas that can improve Stylus and Arbitrum. The wider the Arbitrum ecosystem, the more opportunities we will get in the future.
I voted FOR this proposal on Snapshot. Stylus is an important differentiator for Arbitrum, and I believe the additional applicants funded by this proposal are worthwhile.
I voted FOR this proposal on Tally
I voted FOR to this proposal. In general I do not support increasing initial budget since it was voted that way for a reason, but the rationale from Entropy makes sense and gives the chance to for additional high quality applications.
Lo0bbyFi voted in favor of the proposal since the 'for' pool overbid the 'against' pool within the community auction.
We voted AGAINST on Tally as we do not believe this is a sensible use of DAO funds. This nearly doubles the initial budget and we feel this is a clear case of budget creep. It suggests that either: the committee administering this program lacks discipline, or the criteria used to score projects are deficient. We also believe this proposal violates the soft funding cap laid out in the initial budget proposal. Either way, if this program were to need additional budget the impact of initial funding should be assessed along with the criteria used for scoring and then another funding round be carried out.
I voted FOR on Tally for the same reason I voted for on Snapshot.
For this reason, I support the initiative and agree with increasing the budget.
Blockworks Advisory is voting FOR this proposal.
By and large, our reasoning here has not changed.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR this proposal in the Tally voting.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR this proposal in the Tally voting.
We stand by our stance from the Snapshot vote and believe it is better to fund these high-quality projects selected by the committee than to leave them unfunded. Delaying their funding to a future round could slow down the growth and adoption of Stylus, affecting its momentum. By supporting these projects now, we enable more teams to build, experiment, and contribute to the ecosystem, ensuring continued progress without unnecessary setbacks.
We look forward to seeing the impact of these funded projects and how they contribute to the growth of Stylus and the broader Arbitrum ecosystem.
I voted FOR on Tally as well. The reasoning remains the same.
For this reason, I support the initiative and agree with increasing the budget.
I'm again confirming my feedback voting FOR this proposal on Tally.
Voting FOR on tally for the same reasons of the Snapshot vote
I will be voting FOR onchain on Tally. Happy to double down on my previous Snapshot vote as I believe there is enough value to pursue in the applications that would benefit from it. However, upon further consideration I do share the same concerns as @paulofonseca where extensions should not be the SOP for prolonging programs without a greater revision of their success or results, especially when such a large budget increase is required.
Will be keeping an eye out for similar cases in the future to avoid this becoming the norm.
Voting For onchain keep the same though as before, the level of the extra proposals its excelent and worth the extra budget.
I'm voting for this proposal. The Stylus Sprint attracted very quality applicants. The applicants that didnt make the cut look AMAZING, let’s get them building so we can show the blockchain space how epic Stylus is.
I think this vote shows how nimble as a DAO we can be :-D
LobbyFi’s rationale on the price and making the voting power available for sale for this proposal
Similarly as with the off-chain proposal, LobbyFi will price the instant buy at 1% of the highest individual grant amount, setting the price at 1.75 ETH (1M ARB * 0.5 ARB/$ * 1%). The auction will be on, as for most of the (on-chain) proposals LobbyFi will be making its VP available for.
Revising our stance to FOR on tally
The consensus from other delegates seem to be the quality of projects is high so overalll we believe the benefits outweigh the risks despite some concerns. The additional 4M ARB investment will accelerate Stylus adoption, strengthen Arbitrum’s ecosystem, and fairly support deserving applicants. We would vote FOR the proposal while encouraging strong tracking of project deliverables.
Revising our stance to FOR on tally
The consensus from other delegates seem to be the quality of projects is high so overalll we believe the benefits outweigh the risks despite some concerns. The additional 4M ARB investment will accelerate Stylus adoption, strengthen Arbitrum’s ecosystem, and fairly support deserving applicants. We would vote FOR the proposal while encouraging strong tracking of project deliverables.
While budget discipline is important, this extension does not necessarily lower the bar—it allows the DAO to capture additional value by funding well-vetted projects that narrowly missed the original cut.
Stylus is a strategic priority for Arbitrum, and investing in additional infrastructure, tooling, and applications will strengthen its competitive edge.
However, to prevent setting an unsustainable precedent, the DAO should treat this as an exception and ensure future grant programs are structured with more accurate budget planning from the start.
I’m voting FOR on this proposal on Tally because there are some several high quality projects worth funding through this extension of the program’s budget. And I think is better for Arbitrum tu build these ideas than to not build them at all. I really don’t have much to say about this, but to agree and hope to see positive outcomes…
Thank you for the response!
I attempted to vote YES but had technical issues.
After confirmation from Entropy regarding clarifications, I believe allowing this to proceed makes sense, but we need to really stop creating programs and immediately changing the threshold for application. It essentially removes the fear of lose when people apply for grants, incentives etc ... since things will just get expanded.
voting FOR on this onchain proposal because overall I think it is better to fund these projects (which are indeed high quality) than not to fund them. But, as per my previous offchain vote, I really don't agree with the approach that was followed by the proposers here, as I think the DAO should have done another totally independent season of this grant program instead of an extension that asked almost double the money than initially aproved, mostly so that other high quality projects could apply as well and compete for the funds. The approach that was followed by @Entropy here, where they published a public proposal to the DAO with the specific projects that would be funded and by how much, put the DAO and its delegates in a kind of hostage situation, where if the DAO would have decided not to fund this extension, Arbitrum DAO would be seen as not welcoming to these builders that applied to the program and were expecting the funding. I feel like our delegates hand was forced into approving this proposal, and I must say that hereby I cast my onchain FOR vote a little bit... in protest.
If your budget has been managed efficiently, the existing funds should be sufficient. Increasing the budget would be an unnecessary financial burden. If everyone requests a budget increase on short notice, it will affect funding for other important proposals in the future. I suggest that these projects should not rely on DAO grants—good projects will attract investors to fund them. In my opinion, there is absolutely no need to increase the budget.
I will be Against !
The Stylus Sprint Evaluation Committee's request passed favorably on Snapshot:
For: ~156.6m (96.01%) Against: ~6.2m (3.78%) Abstain: ~353k (0.22%)
Therefore, Entropy plans to maintain the timeline as outlined in the proposal and has posted the proposal on Tally. The request remains unchanged at 4M ARB.
LobbyFi cast the vote IN SUPPORT of the proposal since the community auction 'for' pool has gotten more ETH deposited than the 'against' pool.
voting Against on the current offchain vote because this is not the right way to do this. This proposal was rushed, the proposer didn't incorporate feedback from the delegates, and I overall don't agree with increasing the budget to almost double, without opening applications for other projects to apply as well. As I recommended before, we should invest heavily in stylus, and the right move, in my opinion, is to double down on the program and make a second season of it, with maybe even more budget than the first. But doing it like this is not okay.
The following reflects the views of GMX’s Governance Committee, and is based on the combined research, evaluation, consensus, and ideation of various committee members.
The proposal to allocate an additional 4 million ARB to the Stylus Sprint program is a strategic investment in high-quality infrastructure projects and top-tier applicants that were initially excluded due to budget constraints. Funding initiatives from the accepted applicants strengthen Arbitrum’s Stylus infrastructure foundation, ensuring long-term scalability and adoption. With a transparent selection process and oversight by the existing MSS-controlled Stylus Sprint multisig, this allocation is both justified and well-managed.
Thank you for your proposal @Entropy.
I voted FOR in Snapshot despite the comments focused on increasing the initial budget, I believe that allowing these initiatives to go unfunded would be a mistake.
Investing in these projects is an opportunity to make us stronger. I hope we take note of these experiences to improve our planning.
Voting "For". While having to expand the initial budget isn't ideal, it's clear that this project provides value and there was meaningful review of the projects to avoid a 'we're just gonna pay for the sake of paying' situation. At the end of the day, showing Arbitrum supports these builders is more valuable than the cost savings in sticking strictly to the budget. So in that sense the i think the benefits outweigh any negatives and am for it.
Edit: To save space editing here to note I will be voting "for" this on Tally
@krst The Sprint committee's negotiations with applicants have been successful and the total request is now under 4M ARB. We’d like to refer you to the above comment:
@krst The Sprint committee's negotiations with applicants have been successful and the total request is now under 4M ARB. We’d like to refer you to the above comment:
The total request of the recommended applicants now stands at 3,978,200 ARB. The committee will keep its request at 4M ARB so that there is a bit of room for any contingencies.
The proposal has also now been updated to reflect this change, apologies for the confusion.
@Saurabh thanks for the additional questions.
We believe this is a similar question to the one posed by @CastleCapital, but if this is not the case please let us know. Our response to how these projects impact Stylus can be found below:
Addressing the questions from @CastleCapital. In summary, the committee believes these applications present promising opportunities to strengthen the Stylus ecosystem. Diving deeper, projects like Pyth, Moving Stylus, Nuffle Labs, Syndicate’s MintVM, Solang, and Ember further introduce Stylus to developers across high-growth ecosystems, including Solana, Move based chains (Sui, Aptos, and Movement), and Uniswap V4. They significantly expand Stylus’ reach and accessibility. The committee’s goal is to create a network effect where developers in these ecosystems recognize Arbitrum as the most cost-effective and scalable option due to Stylus.
Beyond ecosystem expansion, foundational tools like StylusFuzz, Sylow, and CodeTracer provide advanced testing, debugging, and on-chain capabilities, making Stylus viable for high-value projects with rigorous security and performance requirements. This budget increase ensures these strategically important projects receive the necessary support and are opportunities that the committee believes are important to accelerating developer adoption and the long-term maturity of Stylus.
The committee has also outlined how each individual application will impact Stylus in this document.
b) Why was there no negotiation during the initial application process, which could have helped manage the budget more effectively?
During the application period, the committee provided feedback to several teams that their requests were either too high or needed further justification/detail to explain the budget. This led to some teams updating their application. During the review period, the committee actively negotiated and held calls with teams to bring down their budgets. From the 17 accepted applications, the committee was able to reduce the requests by a total of 1,394,482 ARB and an average reduction of ~18% per application. From the above recommended list, to date the budgets have been reduced by a total 224,300 ARB; however, this number is greatly impacted by Sylow’s need for a budget increase. Without the budget increase the savings would have amounted to closer to 650K ARB. On Sylow’s Questbook application, the committee has posted additional context on the need for this increase and why we think the application is still worth funding even at a higher cost.
c) Will there be a Season 2 of the program, given that many of these projects are infrastructure -focused and will take 6–12 months to complete?
Currently there are no concrete plans for a 2nd season of the Stylus Sprint as it is too early to understand if the program should be rerun in the same format. Entropy strongly believes that it is worthwhile for the DAO to continue to support the adoption and growth of the Stylus ecosystem. Future iterations of the program will immensely benefit from many of the funded projects underway currently, though of course they will take some time to ship. For a future program, a greater application focus could make sense from our perspective, though we would still need to see how Stylus’ roadmap and adoption progress.
For this reason, I support the initiative and agree with increasing the budget.
I'm again confirming my feedback voting FOR this proposal on Tally.
Voting FOR on tally for the same reasons of the Snapshot vote
I will be voting FOR onchain on Tally. Happy to double down on my previous Snapshot vote as I believe there is enough value to pursue in the applications that would benefit from it. However, upon further consideration I do share the same concerns as @paulofonseca where extensions should not be the SOP for prolonging programs without a greater revision of their success or results, especially when such a large budget increase is required.
Will be keeping an eye out for similar cases in the future to avoid this becoming the norm.
Voting For onchain keep the same though as before, the level of the extra proposals its excelent and worth the extra budget.
I'm voting for this proposal. The Stylus Sprint attracted very quality applicants. The applicants that didnt make the cut look AMAZING, let’s get them building so we can show the blockchain space how epic Stylus is.
I think this vote shows how nimble as a DAO we can be :-D
LobbyFi’s rationale on the price and making the voting power available for sale for this proposal
Similarly as with the off-chain proposal, LobbyFi will price the instant buy at 1% of the highest individual grant amount, setting the price at 1.75 ETH (1M ARB * 0.5 ARB/$ * 1%). The auction will be on, as for most of the (on-chain) proposals LobbyFi will be making its VP available for.
Revising our stance to FOR on tally
The consensus from other delegates seem to be the quality of projects is high so overalll we believe the benefits outweigh the risks despite some concerns. The additional 4M ARB investment will accelerate Stylus adoption, strengthen Arbitrum’s ecosystem, and fairly support deserving applicants. We would vote FOR the proposal while encouraging strong tracking of project deliverables.
Revising our stance to FOR on tally
The consensus from other delegates seem to be the quality of projects is high so overalll we believe the benefits outweigh the risks despite some concerns. The additional 4M ARB investment will accelerate Stylus adoption, strengthen Arbitrum’s ecosystem, and fairly support deserving applicants. We would vote FOR the proposal while encouraging strong tracking of project deliverables.
While budget discipline is important, this extension does not necessarily lower the bar—it allows the DAO to capture additional value by funding well-vetted projects that narrowly missed the original cut.
Stylus is a strategic priority for Arbitrum, and investing in additional infrastructure, tooling, and applications will strengthen its competitive edge.
However, to prevent setting an unsustainable precedent, the DAO should treat this as an exception and ensure future grant programs are structured with more accurate budget planning from the start.
I’m voting FOR on this proposal on Tally because there are some several high quality projects worth funding through this extension of the program’s budget. And I think is better for Arbitrum tu build these ideas than to not build them at all. I really don’t have much to say about this, but to agree and hope to see positive outcomes…
Thank you for the response!
I attempted to vote YES but had technical issues.
After confirmation from Entropy regarding clarifications, I believe allowing this to proceed makes sense, but we need to really stop creating programs and immediately changing the threshold for application. It essentially removes the fear of lose when people apply for grants, incentives etc ... since things will just get expanded.
voting FOR on this onchain proposal because overall I think it is better to fund these projects (which are indeed high quality) than not to fund them. But, as per my previous offchain vote, I really don't agree with the approach that was followed by the proposers here, as I think the DAO should have done another totally independent season of this grant program instead of an extension that asked almost double the money than initially aproved, mostly so that other high quality projects could apply as well and compete for the funds. The approach that was followed by @Entropy here, where they published a public proposal to the DAO with the specific projects that would be funded and by how much, put the DAO and its delegates in a kind of hostage situation, where if the DAO would have decided not to fund this extension, Arbitrum DAO would be seen as not welcoming to these builders that applied to the program and were expecting the funding. I feel like our delegates hand was forced into approving this proposal, and I must say that hereby I cast my onchain FOR vote a little bit... in protest.
If your budget has been managed efficiently, the existing funds should be sufficient. Increasing the budget would be an unnecessary financial burden. If everyone requests a budget increase on short notice, it will affect funding for other important proposals in the future. I suggest that these projects should not rely on DAO grants—good projects will attract investors to fund them. In my opinion, there is absolutely no need to increase the budget.
I will be Against !
The Stylus Sprint Evaluation Committee's request passed favorably on Snapshot:
For: ~156.6m (96.01%) Against: ~6.2m (3.78%) Abstain: ~353k (0.22%)
Therefore, Entropy plans to maintain the timeline as outlined in the proposal and has posted the proposal on Tally. The request remains unchanged at 4M ARB.
LobbyFi cast the vote IN SUPPORT of the proposal since the community auction 'for' pool has gotten more ETH deposited than the 'against' pool.
voting Against on the current offchain vote because this is not the right way to do this. This proposal was rushed, the proposer didn't incorporate feedback from the delegates, and I overall don't agree with increasing the budget to almost double, without opening applications for other projects to apply as well. As I recommended before, we should invest heavily in stylus, and the right move, in my opinion, is to double down on the program and make a second season of it, with maybe even more budget than the first. But doing it like this is not okay.
The following reflects the views of GMX’s Governance Committee, and is based on the combined research, evaluation, consensus, and ideation of various committee members.
The proposal to allocate an additional 4 million ARB to the Stylus Sprint program is a strategic investment in high-quality infrastructure projects and top-tier applicants that were initially excluded due to budget constraints. Funding initiatives from the accepted applicants strengthen Arbitrum’s Stylus infrastructure foundation, ensuring long-term scalability and adoption. With a transparent selection process and oversight by the existing MSS-controlled Stylus Sprint multisig, this allocation is both justified and well-managed.
Thank you for your proposal @Entropy.
I voted FOR in Snapshot despite the comments focused on increasing the initial budget, I believe that allowing these initiatives to go unfunded would be a mistake.
Investing in these projects is an opportunity to make us stronger. I hope we take note of these experiences to improve our planning.
Voting "For". While having to expand the initial budget isn't ideal, it's clear that this project provides value and there was meaningful review of the projects to avoid a 'we're just gonna pay for the sake of paying' situation. At the end of the day, showing Arbitrum supports these builders is more valuable than the cost savings in sticking strictly to the budget. So in that sense the i think the benefits outweigh any negatives and am for it.
Edit: To save space editing here to note I will be voting "for" this on Tally
@krst The Sprint committee's negotiations with applicants have been successful and the total request is now under 4M ARB. We’d like to refer you to the above comment:
@krst The Sprint committee's negotiations with applicants have been successful and the total request is now under 4M ARB. We’d like to refer you to the above comment:
The total request of the recommended applicants now stands at 3,978,200 ARB. The committee will keep its request at 4M ARB so that there is a bit of room for any contingencies.
The proposal has also now been updated to reflect this change, apologies for the confusion.
@Saurabh thanks for the additional questions.
We believe this is a similar question to the one posed by @CastleCapital, but if this is not the case please let us know. Our response to how these projects impact Stylus can be found below:
Addressing the questions from @CastleCapital. In summary, the committee believes these applications present promising opportunities to strengthen the Stylus ecosystem. Diving deeper, projects like Pyth, Moving Stylus, Nuffle Labs, Syndicate’s MintVM, Solang, and Ember further introduce Stylus to developers across high-growth ecosystems, including Solana, Move based chains (Sui, Aptos, and Movement), and Uniswap V4. They significantly expand Stylus’ reach and accessibility. The committee’s goal is to create a network effect where developers in these ecosystems recognize Arbitrum as the most cost-effective and scalable option due to Stylus.
Beyond ecosystem expansion, foundational tools like StylusFuzz, Sylow, and CodeTracer provide advanced testing, debugging, and on-chain capabilities, making Stylus viable for high-value projects with rigorous security and performance requirements. This budget increase ensures these strategically important projects receive the necessary support and are opportunities that the committee believes are important to accelerating developer adoption and the long-term maturity of Stylus.
The committee has also outlined how each individual application will impact Stylus in this document.
b) Why was there no negotiation during the initial application process, which could have helped manage the budget more effectively?
During the application period, the committee provided feedback to several teams that their requests were either too high or needed further justification/detail to explain the budget. This led to some teams updating their application. During the review period, the committee actively negotiated and held calls with teams to bring down their budgets. From the 17 accepted applications, the committee was able to reduce the requests by a total of 1,394,482 ARB and an average reduction of ~18% per application. From the above recommended list, to date the budgets have been reduced by a total 224,300 ARB; however, this number is greatly impacted by Sylow’s need for a budget increase. Without the budget increase the savings would have amounted to closer to 650K ARB. On Sylow’s Questbook application, the committee has posted additional context on the need for this increase and why we think the application is still worth funding even at a higher cost.
c) Will there be a Season 2 of the program, given that many of these projects are infrastructure -focused and will take 6–12 months to complete?
Currently there are no concrete plans for a 2nd season of the Stylus Sprint as it is too early to understand if the program should be rerun in the same format. Entropy strongly believes that it is worthwhile for the DAO to continue to support the adoption and growth of the Stylus ecosystem. Future iterations of the program will immensely benefit from many of the funded projects underway currently, though of course they will take some time to ship. For a future program, a greater application focus could make sense from our perspective, though we would still need to see how Stylus’ roadmap and adoption progress.
The Stylus Sprint Evaluation Committee's request passed favorably on Snapshot:
For: ~156.6m (96.01%) Against: ~6.2m (3.78%) Abstain: ~353k (0.22%)
Therefore, Entropy plans to maintain the timeline as outlined in the proposal and has posted the proposal on Tally. The request remains unchanged at 4M ARB.
Voting will begin on Thursday, February 20th and if the proposal passes, funds for the budget increase will be sent to the existing MSS controlled multi-sig for the Stylus Sprint. The recommend applications will then move forward with the Arbitrum Foundation's compliance process and join the other 17 teams in the Stylus Sprint.
The following reflects the views of GMX’s Governance Committee, and is based on the combined research, evaluation, consensus, and ideation of various committee members.
The proposal to allocate an additional 4 million ARB to the Stylus Sprint program is a strategic investment in high-quality infrastructure projects and top-tier applicants that were initially excluded due to budget constraints. Funding initiatives from the accepted applicants strengthen Arbitrum’s Stylus infrastructure foundation, ensuring long-term scalability and adoption. With a transparent selection process and oversight by the existing MSS-controlled Stylus Sprint multisig, this allocation is both justified and well-managed.
A few key questions remain: a) How will funding this tooling impact Stylus? b) Why was there no negotiation during the initial application process, which could have helped manage the budget more effectively? c) Will there be a Season 2 of the program, given that many of these projects are infrastructure -focused and will take 6–12 months to complete?
While concerns about setting a precedent are valid, this situation is unique due to the exceptional demand—147 applications requesting 31.92 million ARB—and the strategic focus on infrastructure. The committee has exercised prudence by selecting only high-scoring applicants, ensuring the additional funding is directed toward impactful projects. Given Stylus’s importance to Arbitrum’s growth, approving this proposal allows the DAO to capitalize on high-quality innovation without unnecessary delays. We recommend supporting the projects.
Additionally, we suggest providing further funding or creating an RFP for Stylus developer documentation. A key concern among developers from the Solana ecosystem has been the lack of comprehensive documentation. This gap could potentially be addressed through the Questbook program.
I vote in favor of this proposal on Snapshot. Thank you, Entropy, for keeping us informed about the budget update. I believe Stylus will strengthen Arbitrum's recognition as the top L2 option and keep us in the spotlight for new developers looking to build on it. I trust the committee will prioritize innovative projects that create significant impact.
I voted FOR this proposal. Stylus is one of the key tech advancements of the Arbitrum ecosystem, and we as delegates must incentivize the activity of worthy projects to use these tools to build infrastructure and apps on top of Arbitrum.
While this proposal does double the budget of the Stylus Sprint proposal approved earlier, the committee evaluated and rated these projects as promising in a pool of 147 applications. I see no reason to not support them given the recommendation and the relevance of these proposals.
I voted FOR this proposal. Stylus is one of the key tech advancements of the Arbitrum ecosystem, and we as delegates must incentivize the activity of worthy projects to use these tools to build infrastructure and apps on top of Arbitrum.
While this proposal does double the budget of the Stylus Sprint proposal approved earlier, the committee evaluated and rated these projects as promising in a pool of 147 applications. I see no reason to not support them given the recommendation and the relevance of these proposals.
I also oppose the suggestion of opening another round for more projects to be included. This would complicate the committee's selection even more. Another proposal for a similar initiative might be opened later to include these, and evaluated more thoroughly with a more relaxed timeframe.
For me, approving this is essential, even with the high investment this activity encompasses.
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to “FOR” on this proposal at the Snapshot Vote.
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to “FOR” on this proposal at the Snapshot Vote.
As members of the committee, we agree with the recommendation made, although it means almost doubling the budget originally allocated, the reality is that these proposals deserve to be funded by the DAO, just as we believe that the DAO can benefit from the fact that these promising projects/applicants use Stylus.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas. It’s based on their combined research, fact-checking, and ideation.
We’re voting FOR the proposal.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas. It’s based on their combined research, fact-checking, and ideation.
We’re voting FOR the proposal.
We supported the original proposal to fund the Stylus Sprint and believe that we shouldn’t let budget constraints limit the number of projects we can fund simply because we received more applications than perhaps anticipated. That’s even more true if the projects to be funded through the additional funds are high-quality, as evaluated by the committee.
The 17 approved projects receiving funding from the original budget are already a positive outcome—pending their milestone completion, of course—and the opportunity to fund an additional nine projects that have passed most of the evaluation stages should be treated with the same mindset.
One small clarification we’d like to address is a slight discrepancy between the requested budget of 4,000,000 ARB and the 4,058,200 ARB needed to fund all projects. While we understand the committee might be working with the projects to negotiate and finalize the amounts, perhaps it’s worth clarifying what will happen if they fail to reduce the amount asked - will the budget request be increased before the onchain vote?
PBC Governance is voting FOR the Stylus Sprint budget increase at the Snapshot Stage.
After reviewing the recommended applications ourselves, we echoed many of the points the Entropy team made in their latest comment - especially regarding the significant potential to draw developers from other chain ecosystems and provide them with a superior development experience / environment. We're also fans of supporting hook development for Uni V4 - lots of potential there, as Arbitrum's consistently been the leading L2 for volume. As we're all aware, Stylus and the EVM+ approach sets Arbitrum apart from other ecosystems, and doubling down on funding (quite literally) here seems rational.
As in @web3citizenxyz representation. Voting FOR. Below the rationale:
We vote FOR the proposal on Snapshot.
We showed our support in the previous comment and we acknowledged the committees' effort to negotiate with the applicants of the projects chosen in the list by reviewing each application in Questbook and its review score/comments. Competitive development platforms require great tooling and middleware to support great applications to be built and this is the area the DAO should invest in.
We are tentatively voting FOR the proposal on Snapshot but would appreciate it if @Entropy could clarify the questions raised in our earlier response. https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/37?u=castlecapital
Voted FOR on Snapshot.
Found the summary document very helpful to make a decision. While I obviously do not have the technical depth to evaluate each team’s solution I
Entropy has an update on 2 of the recommended applications, Ember and Nuffle Labs. Both have agreed to revise their budgets down by 40k ARB, so each is now requesting 60K and 460K ARB respectively. The scope and deliverables remain largely unchanged and additional information can be found in the comment section of their application on Questbook. Tagging @mcfly who mentioned in their rationale the cost of Ember.
The total request of the recommended applicants now stands at 3,978,200 ARB. The committee will keep its request at 4M ARB so that there is a bit of room for any contingencies. At the culmination of the Stylus Sprint, expected to be Janruary 27th, 2026, all remaining ARB, whether from this unallocated amount or from projects that fail to hit their milestones within the timeline, will be returned to the DAO.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR this proposal in the Snapshot voting.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR this proposal in the Snapshot voting.
Stylus has huge potential, and its growth is key to strengthening Arbitrum’s ecosystem. We trust the reviewing committee, and providing additional funding ensures that high-quality projects are not left behind due to budget limits, which ultimately benefits the ecosystem.
The recommended list of projects includes strong applications that, if delayed for another round of funding, could slow down the growth of Stylus. By supporting these projects now, we allow more teams to contribute and help Stylus reach its full potential.
For these reasons, we support this proposal and the teams working to build on Stylus. We look forward to seeing the progress and impact of these funded projects.
We have voted AGAINST this proposal as we do not believe this is a sensible use of DAO funds. This nearly doubles the initial budget and we feel this is a case of budget creep. It suggests that either: the committee administering this program lacks discipline, or the scoring method is deficient. We also believe this proposal violates the soft funding cap laid out in the initial budget proposal. Either way, if this program were to need additional budget we believe the proper way to do this is for the impact of initial funding to be assessed along with the criteria used for scoring and then another funding round be carried out.
I voted FOR this proposal on Snapshot. Stylus is an important differentiator for Arbitrum, and I believe the additional applicants funded by this proposal are worthwhile.
I am voting FOR this proposal in Snapshot.
I believe Stylus is a differentiator for Arbitrum in contrast with other L2s and we should support its growth as much as possible. It brings new solutions for smart contracts through WASM and it opens the door to many developers from traditional programming backgrounds who can now bring their expertise to our ecosystem.
I am voting FOR this proposal in Snapshot.
I believe Stylus is a differentiator for Arbitrum in contrast with other L2s and we should support its growth as much as possible. It brings new solutions for smart contracts through WASM and it opens the door to many developers from traditional programming backgrounds who can now bring their expertise to our ecosystem.
The Stylus Sprint program is establishing strong network effects early and I am not surprised that there were many quality applications. It is noteworthy to mention that this budget expansion will enable projects focused on accelerating the adoption of Stylus such as the Solang compiler. Funding Stylus' projects means investing in the future of the ecosystem.
It is also important to consider timing. L2 scaling solutions is a competitive landscape and this proposal will help Arbitrum strengthen its position.
The Stylus Sprint Evaluation Committee's request passed favorably on Snapshot:
For: ~156.6m (96.01%) Against: ~6.2m (3.78%) Abstain: ~353k (0.22%)
Therefore, Entropy plans to maintain the timeline as outlined in the proposal and has posted the proposal on Tally. The request remains unchanged at 4M ARB.
Voting will begin on Thursday, February 20th and if the proposal passes, funds for the budget increase will be sent to the existing MSS controlled multi-sig for the Stylus Sprint. The recommend applications will then move forward with the Arbitrum Foundation's compliance process and join the other 17 teams in the Stylus Sprint.
The following reflects the views of GMX’s Governance Committee, and is based on the combined research, evaluation, consensus, and ideation of various committee members.
The proposal to allocate an additional 4 million ARB to the Stylus Sprint program is a strategic investment in high-quality infrastructure projects and top-tier applicants that were initially excluded due to budget constraints. Funding initiatives from the accepted applicants strengthen Arbitrum’s Stylus infrastructure foundation, ensuring long-term scalability and adoption. With a transparent selection process and oversight by the existing MSS-controlled Stylus Sprint multisig, this allocation is both justified and well-managed.
A few key questions remain: a) How will funding this tooling impact Stylus? b) Why was there no negotiation during the initial application process, which could have helped manage the budget more effectively? c) Will there be a Season 2 of the program, given that many of these projects are infrastructure -focused and will take 6–12 months to complete?
While concerns about setting a precedent are valid, this situation is unique due to the exceptional demand—147 applications requesting 31.92 million ARB—and the strategic focus on infrastructure. The committee has exercised prudence by selecting only high-scoring applicants, ensuring the additional funding is directed toward impactful projects. Given Stylus’s importance to Arbitrum’s growth, approving this proposal allows the DAO to capitalize on high-quality innovation without unnecessary delays. We recommend supporting the projects.
Additionally, we suggest providing further funding or creating an RFP for Stylus developer documentation. A key concern among developers from the Solana ecosystem has been the lack of comprehensive documentation. This gap could potentially be addressed through the Questbook program.
I vote in favor of this proposal on Snapshot. Thank you, Entropy, for keeping us informed about the budget update. I believe Stylus will strengthen Arbitrum's recognition as the top L2 option and keep us in the spotlight for new developers looking to build on it. I trust the committee will prioritize innovative projects that create significant impact.
I voted FOR this proposal. Stylus is one of the key tech advancements of the Arbitrum ecosystem, and we as delegates must incentivize the activity of worthy projects to use these tools to build infrastructure and apps on top of Arbitrum.
While this proposal does double the budget of the Stylus Sprint proposal approved earlier, the committee evaluated and rated these projects as promising in a pool of 147 applications. I see no reason to not support them given the recommendation and the relevance of these proposals.
I voted FOR this proposal. Stylus is one of the key tech advancements of the Arbitrum ecosystem, and we as delegates must incentivize the activity of worthy projects to use these tools to build infrastructure and apps on top of Arbitrum.
While this proposal does double the budget of the Stylus Sprint proposal approved earlier, the committee evaluated and rated these projects as promising in a pool of 147 applications. I see no reason to not support them given the recommendation and the relevance of these proposals.
I also oppose the suggestion of opening another round for more projects to be included. This would complicate the committee's selection even more. Another proposal for a similar initiative might be opened later to include these, and evaluated more thoroughly with a more relaxed timeframe.
For me, approving this is essential, even with the high investment this activity encompasses.
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to “FOR” on this proposal at the Snapshot Vote.
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to “FOR” on this proposal at the Snapshot Vote.
As members of the committee, we agree with the recommendation made, although it means almost doubling the budget originally allocated, the reality is that these proposals deserve to be funded by the DAO, just as we believe that the DAO can benefit from the fact that these promising projects/applicants use Stylus.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas. It’s based on their combined research, fact-checking, and ideation.
We’re voting FOR the proposal.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas. It’s based on their combined research, fact-checking, and ideation.
We’re voting FOR the proposal.
We supported the original proposal to fund the Stylus Sprint and believe that we shouldn’t let budget constraints limit the number of projects we can fund simply because we received more applications than perhaps anticipated. That’s even more true if the projects to be funded through the additional funds are high-quality, as evaluated by the committee.
The 17 approved projects receiving funding from the original budget are already a positive outcome—pending their milestone completion, of course—and the opportunity to fund an additional nine projects that have passed most of the evaluation stages should be treated with the same mindset.
One small clarification we’d like to address is a slight discrepancy between the requested budget of 4,000,000 ARB and the 4,058,200 ARB needed to fund all projects. While we understand the committee might be working with the projects to negotiate and finalize the amounts, perhaps it’s worth clarifying what will happen if they fail to reduce the amount asked - will the budget request be increased before the onchain vote?
PBC Governance is voting FOR the Stylus Sprint budget increase at the Snapshot Stage.
After reviewing the recommended applications ourselves, we echoed many of the points the Entropy team made in their latest comment - especially regarding the significant potential to draw developers from other chain ecosystems and provide them with a superior development experience / environment. We're also fans of supporting hook development for Uni V4 - lots of potential there, as Arbitrum's consistently been the leading L2 for volume. As we're all aware, Stylus and the EVM+ approach sets Arbitrum apart from other ecosystems, and doubling down on funding (quite literally) here seems rational.
As in @web3citizenxyz representation. Voting FOR. Below the rationale:
We vote FOR the proposal on Snapshot.
We showed our support in the previous comment and we acknowledged the committees' effort to negotiate with the applicants of the projects chosen in the list by reviewing each application in Questbook and its review score/comments. Competitive development platforms require great tooling and middleware to support great applications to be built and this is the area the DAO should invest in.
We are tentatively voting FOR the proposal on Snapshot but would appreciate it if @Entropy could clarify the questions raised in our earlier response. https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/request-to-increase-the-stylus-sprint-committee-s-budget/28312/37?u=castlecapital
Voted FOR on Snapshot.
Found the summary document very helpful to make a decision. While I obviously do not have the technical depth to evaluate each team’s solution I
Entropy has an update on 2 of the recommended applications, Ember and Nuffle Labs. Both have agreed to revise their budgets down by 40k ARB, so each is now requesting 60K and 460K ARB respectively. The scope and deliverables remain largely unchanged and additional information can be found in the comment section of their application on Questbook. Tagging @mcfly who mentioned in their rationale the cost of Ember.
The total request of the recommended applicants now stands at 3,978,200 ARB. The committee will keep its request at 4M ARB so that there is a bit of room for any contingencies. At the culmination of the Stylus Sprint, expected to be Janruary 27th, 2026, all remaining ARB, whether from this unallocated amount or from projects that fail to hit their milestones within the timeline, will be returned to the DAO.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR this proposal in the Snapshot voting.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR this proposal in the Snapshot voting.
Stylus has huge potential, and its growth is key to strengthening Arbitrum’s ecosystem. We trust the reviewing committee, and providing additional funding ensures that high-quality projects are not left behind due to budget limits, which ultimately benefits the ecosystem.
The recommended list of projects includes strong applications that, if delayed for another round of funding, could slow down the growth of Stylus. By supporting these projects now, we allow more teams to contribute and help Stylus reach its full potential.
For these reasons, we support this proposal and the teams working to build on Stylus. We look forward to seeing the progress and impact of these funded projects.
We have voted AGAINST this proposal as we do not believe this is a sensible use of DAO funds. This nearly doubles the initial budget and we feel this is a case of budget creep. It suggests that either: the committee administering this program lacks discipline, or the scoring method is deficient. We also believe this proposal violates the soft funding cap laid out in the initial budget proposal. Either way, if this program were to need additional budget we believe the proper way to do this is for the impact of initial funding to be assessed along with the criteria used for scoring and then another funding round be carried out.
I voted FOR this proposal on Snapshot. Stylus is an important differentiator for Arbitrum, and I believe the additional applicants funded by this proposal are worthwhile.
I am voting FOR this proposal in Snapshot.
I believe Stylus is a differentiator for Arbitrum in contrast with other L2s and we should support its growth as much as possible. It brings new solutions for smart contracts through WASM and it opens the door to many developers from traditional programming backgrounds who can now bring their expertise to our ecosystem.
I am voting FOR this proposal in Snapshot.
I believe Stylus is a differentiator for Arbitrum in contrast with other L2s and we should support its growth as much as possible. It brings new solutions for smart contracts through WASM and it opens the door to many developers from traditional programming backgrounds who can now bring their expertise to our ecosystem.
The Stylus Sprint program is establishing strong network effects early and I am not surprised that there were many quality applications. It is noteworthy to mention that this budget expansion will enable projects focused on accelerating the adoption of Stylus such as the Solang compiler. Funding Stylus' projects means investing in the future of the ecosystem.
It is also important to consider timing. L2 scaling solutions is a competitive landscape and this proposal will help Arbitrum strengthen its position.
Voted FOR on Snapshot.
Found the summary document very helpful to make a decision. While I obviously do not have the technical depth to evaluate each team’s solution I
Entropy has an update on 2 of the recommended applications, Ember and Nuffle Labs. Both have agreed to revise their budgets down by 40k ARB, so each is now requesting 60K and 460K ARB respectively. The scope and deliverables remain largely unchanged and additional information can be found in the comment section of their application on Questbook. Tagging @mcfly who mentioned in their rationale the cost of Ember.
The total request of the recommended applicants now stands at 3,978,200 ARB. The committee will keep its request at 4M ARB so that there is a bit of room for any contingencies. At the culmination of the Stylus Sprint, expected to be Janruary 27th, 2026, all remaining ARB, whether from this unallocated amount or from projects that fail to hit their milestones within the timeline, will be returned to the DAO.
Addressing the questions from @CastleCapital. In summary, the committee believes these applications present promising opportunities to strengthen the Stylus ecosystem. Diving deeper, projects like Pyth, Moving Stylus, Nuffle Labs, Syndicate’s MintVM, Solang, and Ember further introduce Stylus to developers across high-growth ecosystems, including Solana, Move based chains (Sui, Aptos, and Movement), and Uniswap V4. They significantly expand Stylus’ reach and accessibility. The committee’s goal is to create a network effect where developers in these ecosystems recognize Arbitrum as the most cost-effective and scalable option due to Stylus.
Beyond ecosystem expansion, foundational tools like StylusFuzz, Sylow, and CodeTracer provide advanced testing, debugging, and on-chain capabilities, making Stylus viable for high-value projects with rigorous security and performance requirements. This budget increase ensures these strategically important projects receive the necessary support and are opportunities that the committee believes are important to accelerating developer adoption and the long-term maturity of Stylus.
Regarding internal discussion within the committee, there was consensus on the need for a budget increase. Throughout the review process the committee worked to arrange 1 on 1 calls with as many promising applications as possible and synced several times on its own calls. It became clear quite early that there were more high-quality applicants and promising projects than our budget would allow for and in order to fund all of them an increase in the total budget would be required.
Lastly, outside of the funded applicants delivering on their milestones (many of which include adoption based KPIs and/or case studies to demonstrate a use cases with the tooling built), the committee will also be looking at the number of new developers entering the Stylus ecosystem (measured by Open Source Observer) and the increase in total gas consumption of Stylus contracts.
DAOplomats is voting FOR this proposal on Snapshot.
As initially stated, we are onboard with this request. Since this is a one-time funding, it's best we support projects that cover other important aspects of Stylus.
Voting for in Snapshot following my previous comments. I think it's a great opportunity to enhance the sprint.
Super happy to see the overwhelming response to the Stylus Sprint with such a high number of applications. When I initially voted in favor of funding the Stylus sprint my hope was that it would attract new developers to the ecosystem, and I'm happy to see that this has happened.
I fully support the request to increase the budget. As many have already pointed out, Stylus represents a significant competitive advantage for the ecosystem, and I believe it's crucial that we invest heavily in this direction by supporting such projects. While I understand that increasing budgets can sometimes set a problematic precedent, I don't believe this is the case here. On the contrary, I think this move demonstrates our genuine commitment to supporting projects that prove their worth. By approving this budget increase, we're sending a clear message that the DAO is prepared to back developers with promising ideas and projects which I think is extremely important. I also think that the milestone based structure of the fund helps mitigate potential risks, funding projects based on their quality and results. Overall, I believe this is a positive signal to the developer community. I'm looking forward to seeing future results!
I'm voting AGAINST this proposal on Snapshot as per my earlier feedback.
We are voting AGAINST this proposal. We don't see the impact of giving 100k ARB for one hook. There is already dozens of such hooks in the open.
When the original proposal for the Stylus Sprint was posted, we said this:
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/rfc-fund-the-stylus-sprint/26437/79
When the original proposal for the Stylus Sprint was posted, we said this:
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/rfc-fund-the-stylus-sprint/26437/79
There were no clear deliverables and goals, which is why we voted against then. Now, there is a further proposal to extend the budget. This suggests there was no clear budget as well for the original program. This is not how the DAO should be spending funds, and is another example of what we have been regularly saying: "too much spending with too little impact."
We are voting AGAINST this proposal.
I will be voting vote FOR on Snapshot. Having reviewed the Stylus' program track record from past proposal and seeing some of the pitches, the budget allocated towards this seems quite sensitive, especially when compared to other programs whose direct benefits to the ecosystem are not as obvious.
I am particularly interested in the Ember LP optimization and its potential improvements over fees structures for all parties involved.
Voting ABSTAIN on this proposal
Rationale
Voting ABSTAIN on this proposal
Rationale
Stylus is obviously a unique competitive advantage for Arbitrum and we do want to see it succeed but this proposal is very on the fence for us and we dont think we'd do it justice by trying to judge Blockchain tooling and infra projects without the ability to do so.
I have voted FOR this proposal on Snapshot. As other delegates have pointed out, Stylus is a key differentiator and asset for the Arbitrum ecosystem. Some of my technical friends who aren't involved with Arbitrum have heard about the funding opportunities and were impressed by the ability to develop smart contracts in multiple programming languages. So I think this is a net positive.
I believe the budget of 4M ARB is reasonable considering the size of the DAO Treasury. It's crucial that Arbitrum invests to bootstrap its ecosystem, especially given the fierce competition among Layer 2 solutions.
I have voted FOR this proposal on Snapshot. As other delegates have pointed out, Stylus is a key differentiator and asset for the Arbitrum ecosystem. Some of my technical friends who aren't involved with Arbitrum have heard about the funding opportunities and were impressed by the ability to develop smart contracts in multiple programming languages. So I think this is a net positive.
I believe the budget of 4M ARB is reasonable considering the size of the DAO Treasury. It's crucial that Arbitrum invests to bootstrap its ecosystem, especially given the fierce competition among Layer 2 solutions.
At Kleros, we are exploring ways to promote ecosystem-aligned investments, including the use of Futarchy to optimize key metrics. (this can also work for grants ofc). I would be more than happy to discuss this approach with anyone interested.
I voted FOR. The projects funded with this extension seem to be worthy of this extra expenditure, and the explanation for their selection provided in the extra comments was reasonable.
For the reasons outlined in my feedback, I vote for this proposal
We support this proposal as a valuable investment in Arbitrum’s future. Stylus is a major innovation, and it’s exciting to see such strong early interest. The 4M ARB increase will help fund nine promising projects that will enhance developer tools, security, and infrastructure, all essential for broader adoption.
That said, expanding the budget from 5M to 9M ARB is a significant step. We, along with other delegates, believe more insight is needed into how these projects were prioritized, the committee’s decision-making process, and the key success metrics. Transparency is essential to ensure the DAO makes well-informed decisions.
I support the request for an additional allocation of 4 million ARB as outlined in this proposal. Funding smaller, high-quality projects offers greater flexibility and cost control while having an immeasurable impact on enhancing and improving Stylus.
Stylus makes Arbitrum a differentiated ecosystem with competitive lock-in potential. So it is a pleasure to see how well-received this initiative was at such early stages.
Candidly, we support this proposal and appreciate the conservative approach. Additionally, in reference to responses from other delegates to submit these applications separately or increase the scope of the program to be more general to accept even more applicants, we disagree. Again, Stylus is one of the few differentiators with lock-in potential Arbitrum holds relative to other L2s. What’s more is that the program is ran conservatively for a reason, it cuts down on unnecessary procedural bloat, and being that it is a sprint, this is to incentivize teams willing to double down on Arbitrum right now. So, truly we see no purpose in diluting this with a much larger number of candidates that are likely low quality (you can check the Questbook) that increase the risk of migration and add bloat.
Goint to vote No for the reasons outlined in my previous post.
gm, I voted FOR on Snapshot. Stylus is a fantastic innovation and we need to strongly advocate, advertise and promote it across the ecosystems.
I noticed the vast majority of the approved applications (both in batch 1 and 2) are tools for developers and applications. I think it's fine to fund initially these type of shovels, however I would encourage to focus on innovative apps that can really showcase the technology.
Voted FOR on Snapshot.
Found the summary document very helpful to make a decision. While I obviously do not have the technical depth to evaluate each team’s solution I
Entropy has an update on 2 of the recommended applications, Ember and Nuffle Labs. Both have agreed to revise their budgets down by 40k ARB, so each is now requesting 60K and 460K ARB respectively. The scope and deliverables remain largely unchanged and additional information can be found in the comment section of their application on Questbook. Tagging @mcfly who mentioned in their rationale the cost of Ember.
The total request of the recommended applicants now stands at 3,978,200 ARB. The committee will keep its request at 4M ARB so that there is a bit of room for any contingencies. At the culmination of the Stylus Sprint, expected to be Janruary 27th, 2026, all remaining ARB, whether from this unallocated amount or from projects that fail to hit their milestones within the timeline, will be returned to the DAO.
Addressing the questions from @CastleCapital. In summary, the committee believes these applications present promising opportunities to strengthen the Stylus ecosystem. Diving deeper, projects like Pyth, Moving Stylus, Nuffle Labs, Syndicate’s MintVM, Solang, and Ember further introduce Stylus to developers across high-growth ecosystems, including Solana, Move based chains (Sui, Aptos, and Movement), and Uniswap V4. They significantly expand Stylus’ reach and accessibility. The committee’s goal is to create a network effect where developers in these ecosystems recognize Arbitrum as the most cost-effective and scalable option due to Stylus.
Beyond ecosystem expansion, foundational tools like StylusFuzz, Sylow, and CodeTracer provide advanced testing, debugging, and on-chain capabilities, making Stylus viable for high-value projects with rigorous security and performance requirements. This budget increase ensures these strategically important projects receive the necessary support and are opportunities that the committee believes are important to accelerating developer adoption and the long-term maturity of Stylus.
Regarding internal discussion within the committee, there was consensus on the need for a budget increase. Throughout the review process the committee worked to arrange 1 on 1 calls with as many promising applications as possible and synced several times on its own calls. It became clear quite early that there were more high-quality applicants and promising projects than our budget would allow for and in order to fund all of them an increase in the total budget would be required.
Lastly, outside of the funded applicants delivering on their milestones (many of which include adoption based KPIs and/or case studies to demonstrate a use cases with the tooling built), the committee will also be looking at the number of new developers entering the Stylus ecosystem (measured by Open Source Observer) and the increase in total gas consumption of Stylus contracts.
DAOplomats is voting FOR this proposal on Snapshot.
As initially stated, we are onboard with this request. Since this is a one-time funding, it's best we support projects that cover other important aspects of Stylus.
Voting for in Snapshot following my previous comments. I think it's a great opportunity to enhance the sprint.
Super happy to see the overwhelming response to the Stylus Sprint with such a high number of applications. When I initially voted in favor of funding the Stylus sprint my hope was that it would attract new developers to the ecosystem, and I'm happy to see that this has happened.
I fully support the request to increase the budget. As many have already pointed out, Stylus represents a significant competitive advantage for the ecosystem, and I believe it's crucial that we invest heavily in this direction by supporting such projects. While I understand that increasing budgets can sometimes set a problematic precedent, I don't believe this is the case here. On the contrary, I think this move demonstrates our genuine commitment to supporting projects that prove their worth. By approving this budget increase, we're sending a clear message that the DAO is prepared to back developers with promising ideas and projects which I think is extremely important. I also think that the milestone based structure of the fund helps mitigate potential risks, funding projects based on their quality and results. Overall, I believe this is a positive signal to the developer community. I'm looking forward to seeing future results!
I'm voting AGAINST this proposal on Snapshot as per my earlier feedback.
We are voting AGAINST this proposal. We don't see the impact of giving 100k ARB for one hook. There is already dozens of such hooks in the open.
When the original proposal for the Stylus Sprint was posted, we said this:
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/rfc-fund-the-stylus-sprint/26437/79
When the original proposal for the Stylus Sprint was posted, we said this:
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/rfc-fund-the-stylus-sprint/26437/79
There were no clear deliverables and goals, which is why we voted against then. Now, there is a further proposal to extend the budget. This suggests there was no clear budget as well for the original program. This is not how the DAO should be spending funds, and is another example of what we have been regularly saying: "too much spending with too little impact."
We are voting AGAINST this proposal.
I will be voting vote FOR on Snapshot. Having reviewed the Stylus' program track record from past proposal and seeing some of the pitches, the budget allocated towards this seems quite sensitive, especially when compared to other programs whose direct benefits to the ecosystem are not as obvious.
I am particularly interested in the Ember LP optimization and its potential improvements over fees structures for all parties involved.
Voting ABSTAIN on this proposal
Rationale
Voting ABSTAIN on this proposal
Rationale
Stylus is obviously a unique competitive advantage for Arbitrum and we do want to see it succeed but this proposal is very on the fence for us and we dont think we'd do it justice by trying to judge Blockchain tooling and infra projects without the ability to do so.
I have voted FOR this proposal on Snapshot. As other delegates have pointed out, Stylus is a key differentiator and asset for the Arbitrum ecosystem. Some of my technical friends who aren't involved with Arbitrum have heard about the funding opportunities and were impressed by the ability to develop smart contracts in multiple programming languages. So I think this is a net positive.
I believe the budget of 4M ARB is reasonable considering the size of the DAO Treasury. It's crucial that Arbitrum invests to bootstrap its ecosystem, especially given the fierce competition among Layer 2 solutions.
I have voted FOR this proposal on Snapshot. As other delegates have pointed out, Stylus is a key differentiator and asset for the Arbitrum ecosystem. Some of my technical friends who aren't involved with Arbitrum have heard about the funding opportunities and were impressed by the ability to develop smart contracts in multiple programming languages. So I think this is a net positive.
I believe the budget of 4M ARB is reasonable considering the size of the DAO Treasury. It's crucial that Arbitrum invests to bootstrap its ecosystem, especially given the fierce competition among Layer 2 solutions.
At Kleros, we are exploring ways to promote ecosystem-aligned investments, including the use of Futarchy to optimize key metrics. (this can also work for grants ofc). I would be more than happy to discuss this approach with anyone interested.
I voted FOR. The projects funded with this extension seem to be worthy of this extra expenditure, and the explanation for their selection provided in the extra comments was reasonable.
For the reasons outlined in my feedback, I vote for this proposal
We support this proposal as a valuable investment in Arbitrum’s future. Stylus is a major innovation, and it’s exciting to see such strong early interest. The 4M ARB increase will help fund nine promising projects that will enhance developer tools, security, and infrastructure, all essential for broader adoption.
That said, expanding the budget from 5M to 9M ARB is a significant step. We, along with other delegates, believe more insight is needed into how these projects were prioritized, the committee’s decision-making process, and the key success metrics. Transparency is essential to ensure the DAO makes well-informed decisions.
I support the request for an additional allocation of 4 million ARB as outlined in this proposal. Funding smaller, high-quality projects offers greater flexibility and cost control while having an immeasurable impact on enhancing and improving Stylus.
Stylus makes Arbitrum a differentiated ecosystem with competitive lock-in potential. So it is a pleasure to see how well-received this initiative was at such early stages.
Candidly, we support this proposal and appreciate the conservative approach. Additionally, in reference to responses from other delegates to submit these applications separately or increase the scope of the program to be more general to accept even more applicants, we disagree. Again, Stylus is one of the few differentiators with lock-in potential Arbitrum holds relative to other L2s. What’s more is that the program is ran conservatively for a reason, it cuts down on unnecessary procedural bloat, and being that it is a sprint, this is to incentivize teams willing to double down on Arbitrum right now. So, truly we see no purpose in diluting this with a much larger number of candidates that are likely low quality (you can check the Questbook) that increase the risk of migration and add bloat.
Goint to vote No for the reasons outlined in my previous post.
gm, I voted FOR on Snapshot. Stylus is a fantastic innovation and we need to strongly advocate, advertise and promote it across the ecosystems.
I noticed the vast majority of the approved applications (both in batch 1 and 2) are tools for developers and applications. I think it's fine to fund initially these type of shovels, however I would encourage to focus on innovative apps that can really showcase the technology.
For the reasons outlined in my feedback, I vote for this proposal
For this reason, I support the initiative and agree with increasing the budget.
We support this proposal as a valuable investment in Arbitrum’s future. Stylus is a major innovation, and it’s exciting to see such strong early interest. The 4M ARB increase will help fund nine promising projects that will enhance developer tools, security, and infrastructure, all essential for broader adoption.
That said, expanding the budget from 5M to 9M ARB is a significant step. We, along with other delegates, believe more insight is needed into how these projects were prioritized, the committee’s decision-making process, and the key success metrics. Transparency is essential to ensure the DAO makes well-informed decisions.
Overall, we are support further investment in Stylus and encourage a stronger emphasis on innovative applications that truly showcase its potential. Keeping the program focused and high-quality is the right move, and we’re aligned with this direction.
Voting YES. The extra projects proposed here are solid - improving oracles, zk tech development tools, and other key infrastructure for Arbitrum. This is exactly the kind of strategic investment we need.
I like how transparent this request is - we can see exactly which projects would get funded and why. This sets a good precedent for how to ask for additional funding: show the community specific high-value projects that couldn't make the initial cut.
Voting YES. The extra projects proposed here are solid - improving oracles, zk tech development tools, and other key infrastructure for Arbitrum. This is exactly the kind of strategic investment we need.
I like how transparent this request is - we can see exactly which projects would get funded and why. This sets a good precedent for how to ask for additional funding: show the community specific high-value projects that couldn't make the initial cut.
I disagree with the sentiment to open this for new applications. We had a successful process, these are the overflow projects that scored high but couldn't get funded due to budget constraints. Let's keep it focused on these specific projects rather than opening a new funding round. After seeing the results of the project as a whole we can re-evaluate it.
I'm voting FOR this proposal on Snapshot, and Event Horizon. Stylus is crucial to Arbitrum's long-term success, and this budget increase effectively meets the overwhelming demand for the Stylus Sprint program. I am confident in the committee's thorough review process and clear prioritization of projects, making sure that the selected initiatives are ready to launch and deliver meaningful impact.
Glad to hear that the Arbitrum ecosystem has so many amazing new projects. The more there are, the better. I completely agree that more funding needs to be provided and that the opportunity to apply should not be opened again because, as @JoJo said, it will lead to Groundhog Day.
it would be extremely hard, for the committee, to accept anything that is not the list above: if you think about it, all the proposals in the list have been marked as very good, valuable, up to the point there is an ask for further funds. How does a new application, not present in the list nor in the previous 150 proposals, fit into the 4M budget? It can only do it if it’s exceptional up to the point to be better of one of the application in this list. But then, it means you would have to reject, again, one of these 9 that are pre approved but with no budget, still falling in the issue of “we want to move this forward but we are overallocated”.
Glad to hear that the Arbitrum ecosystem has so many amazing new projects. The more there are, the better. I completely agree that more funding needs to be provided and that the opportunity to apply should not be opened again because, as @JoJo said, it will lead to Groundhog Day.
it would be extremely hard, for the committee, to accept anything that is not the list above: if you think about it, all the proposals in the list have been marked as very good, valuable, up to the point there is an ask for further funds. How does a new application, not present in the list nor in the previous 150 proposals, fit into the 4M budget? It can only do it if it’s exceptional up to the point to be better of one of the application in this list. But then, it means you would have to reject, again, one of these 9 that are pre approved but with no budget, still falling in the issue of “we want to move this forward but we are overallocated”.
But why the budget is requested in ARB and not in USDC or USDT? This may lead to risks of lack of funding and deployment of projects, since the price of ARB is unstable, which may negatively affect not only the Stylus program itself but also the Arbitrum ecosystem, since projects will not be completed and unfinished, and the DAO’s money will simply be thrown away
We appreciate the potential of Stylus and recognize its importance for Arbitrum's ecosystem. However, we have some questions about the proposed 80% budget increase from the original 5m ARB allocation.
What about these specific projects are so critical that they necessitate a budget increase?
What internal discussions occurred within the committee to justify this request for a budget increase? Was there a formal vote before a decision to request additional funds was reached? If so, we want to know the breakdown of committee members' positions and how they voted.
Has the committee considered what the success metrics (beyond milestone delivery) will be for the projects considered for the additional fund requested or the program as a whole and its impact on Stylus? How are we defining success for Arbitrum?
We appreciate the potential of Stylus and recognize its importance for Arbitrum's ecosystem. However, we have some questions about the proposed 80% budget increase from the original 5m ARB allocation.
What about these specific projects are so critical that they necessitate a budget increase?
What internal discussions occurred within the committee to justify this request for a budget increase? Was there a formal vote before a decision to request additional funds was reached? If so, we want to know the breakdown of committee members' positions and how they voted.
Has the committee considered what the success metrics (beyond milestone delivery) will be for the projects considered for the additional fund requested or the program as a whole and its impact on Stylus? How are we defining success for Arbitrum?
While we fundamentally support investing in Stylus's growth, we believe clarity of what transpired leading up to this proposal is crucial for the DAO to make an informed decision. The jump from 5m to 9m ARB is significant and should be provided with a clear and detailed justification.
Voting FOR. After reviewing the pending projects we agree with the assessment of the committee. These are valuable for Arbitrum.
That being said, we hope we can advance more towards investments rather than grants in the future. This is not a full black and white line as multiple projects serve more as network goods (generally public goods for the specific Arbitrum network), so more of a directional comment.
Excited to see the overwhelming interest from builders in the Stylus Sprint program. When we voted in support of the program, we did so because we believed that Stylus was going to be a driver of growth for the Arbitrum ecosystem. What we've seen in terms of program traction so far, seems to confirm this.
Given the unique advantage that Stylus brings to Arbitrum, as well as the quality of applicants, we think it’s in the interest of the DAO to capitalize on this by increasing the budget to support more projects.
Excited to see the overwhelming interest from builders in the Stylus Sprint program. When we voted in support of the program, we did so because we believed that Stylus was going to be a driver of growth for the Arbitrum ecosystem. What we've seen in terms of program traction so far, seems to confirm this.
Given the unique advantage that Stylus brings to Arbitrum, as well as the quality of applicants, we think it’s in the interest of the DAO to capitalize on this by increasing the budget to support more projects.
We understand concerns regarding setting a wrong precedent around the utilization / allocation of grants budgets. However, we view this a strategic opportunity for the DAO to capitalize on. It’s important for the DAO to remain flexible under these circumstances.
Finally, we do not believe it is the best approach to ask applicants to bring their grant requests directly to the DAO. This will result in duplication of efforts (applications have already been reviewed) and additional delays. It also potentially sets another wrong precedent of grantees bypassing specially designated funding programs to seek direct funding from the DAO—defeating the purpose of program itself.
LobbyFi’s rationale on the price and making the voting power available for sale for this proposal
Based on the general agreement amongst the community that increasing the budget is the correct move, and taking into account the strategic importance of Stylus, LobbyFi sees the broader community + the particular grantees as the profiteers from a positive proposal outcome. For this reason, the community auction for LobbyFi’s voting power will be made available.
LobbyFi’s rationale on the price and making the voting power available for sale for this proposal
Based on the general agreement amongst the community that increasing the budget is the correct move, and taking into account the strategic importance of Stylus, LobbyFi sees the broader community + the particular grantees as the profiteers from a positive proposal outcome. For this reason, the community auction for LobbyFi’s voting power will be made available.
Since the budget increase is quite substantial (80%) and no new application period is planned (with the projects to get the grant already known), we will set the instant buy price at 1% of the highest grant amount (1M ARB * 0.45 ARB/$ * 1% ≈ 1.7 ETH) for the largest profiteer to have a chance to “rescue” the proposal in case it is needed.
Voted For: My suggestion was to re-open the application window in case the proposal passes and the budget increases. After getting the feedback from Jojo that a budget increase is already set for specific projects, I agree that there is no need to re-open the application. Also, I learned that projects could update their application and budget in Questbook anytime (like Moving Stylus did). Seeing this dynamic is enough for me to vote For this proposal. It is great to see that this sprint gained such great traction. Love to see a successful proposal like this.
The Stylus Sprint Evaluation Committee’s request for a 4M ARB increase to its budget is now up for a vote on Snapshot. Voting will conclude in 1 week on February 13th.
Additionally, after further discussion with the team behind the Moving Stylus application, we have come to an agreement on a reduced budget of 450k ARB (Prev. 500k). More information can be found on their Questbook application.
Stylus is Arbitrum’s most significant differentiator in the competitive L2 landscape, and investing in its ecosystem is critical for maintaining our leadership in the space. By enabling developers to build with Rust, C, and other languages alongside Solidity, Stylus lowers the barrier to entry and makes Arbitrum far more accessible to a broader range of developers.
Beyond accessibility, Stylus unlocks the potential for more advanced applications and significantly improves execution efficiency. These are the kinds of innovations that will drive meaningful adoption and reinforce Arbitrum’s position as the most technically advanced and developer-friendly L2.
Stylus is Arbitrum’s most significant differentiator in the competitive L2 landscape, and investing in its ecosystem is critical for maintaining our leadership in the space. By enabling developers to build with Rust, C, and other languages alongside Solidity, Stylus lowers the barrier to entry and makes Arbitrum far more accessible to a broader range of developers.
Beyond accessibility, Stylus unlocks the potential for more advanced applications and significantly improves execution efficiency. These are the kinds of innovations that will drive meaningful adoption and reinforce Arbitrum’s position as the most technically advanced and developer-friendly L2.
Given the importance of Stylus, I fully support expanding the sprint committee’s budget to ensure high-potential initiatives receive the funding they need. Supporting developer tooling and ecosystem growth around Stylus is a high-impact investment that will strengthen Arbitrum’s long-term competitive advantage.
Stylus is definitely a key factor in helping Arbitrum stay competitive, increasing the budget to attract more innovative projects makes sense to me.
I will support this proposal :)
I don't have any issues with the increase of 4M (seems reasonable, even with the total budget being 9M, is not too much for Arbitrum's long-term growth plan). I also trust the committee will choose the best projects.
Stylus is definitely a key factor in helping Arbitrum stay competitive, increasing the budget to attract more innovative projects makes sense to me.
I will support this proposal :)
I don't have any issues with the increase of 4M (seems reasonable, even with the total budget being 9M, is not too much for Arbitrum's long-term growth plan). I also trust the committee will choose the best projects.
I believe @Entropy has carefully considered when posting this proposal. While asking for double the initial budget could set a questionable precedent, I can see their effort to bring more promising projects to Arbitrum.
We support this backfunding proposal to increase the Stylus Sprint budget and fund the recommended applicants. Stylus is Arbitrum’s most significant differentiator in the competitive L2 landscape, making developer tooling for Stylus a top priority.
Given the strong demand from applicants, the high quality of submissions, and Stylus’s strategic importance to Arbitrum, we believe the DAO should consider making the Stylus Sprint a bi-annual initiative. This would provide additional opportunities for previously denied applicants to reapply while also attracting new applicants, ensuring a continuous cycle of new ideas.
Appreciate the comment @ACI, we’d like to address a few points directly.
Starting with the following question:
Can you confirm if any of the other approved proposals also exceed this cap and why they have been approved without individual proposals?
I believe that increasing the budget will be very useful for the development of Stylus. The companies presented are useful and will not be able to develop without grants (such as Pyth and Trail of Bits) That is why I support this initiative.
We were going to mention this as well. However, if we would be increasing the budget to cater for the listed projects, there is no point asking these >500k projects to come to the DAO directly.
Thank you for putting this up, Entropy.
We have been thinking about this proposal and the effects this might have not only here but across other initiatives and believe this is a good idea.
Thank you for putting this up, Entropy.
We have been thinking about this proposal and the effects this might have not only here but across other initiatives and believe this is a good idea.
The evaluation committee is made up of very structured entities, so for them to draw up this proposal regardless of the original funding intention goes to show how convinced they are of the listed projects here and their alignment to the sprint's priorities.
On this
I believe there was a 500k ARB soft cap imposed on applications in the initial proposal with requests exceeding this to be sent to the DAO directly.
We were going to mention this as well. However, if we would be increasing the budget to cater for the listed projects, there is no point asking these >500k projects to come to the DAO directly. Seeing this is a one-off sprint funding initiative, it would be net positive to have them all in this basket then fund them altogether. According to Entropy as well, some of these projects might still see a cut in their budgets so that's worthy of note too.
For the reasons outlined in my feedback, I vote for this proposal
For this reason, I support the initiative and agree with increasing the budget.
We support this proposal as a valuable investment in Arbitrum’s future. Stylus is a major innovation, and it’s exciting to see such strong early interest. The 4M ARB increase will help fund nine promising projects that will enhance developer tools, security, and infrastructure, all essential for broader adoption.
That said, expanding the budget from 5M to 9M ARB is a significant step. We, along with other delegates, believe more insight is needed into how these projects were prioritized, the committee’s decision-making process, and the key success metrics. Transparency is essential to ensure the DAO makes well-informed decisions.
Overall, we are support further investment in Stylus and encourage a stronger emphasis on innovative applications that truly showcase its potential. Keeping the program focused and high-quality is the right move, and we’re aligned with this direction.
Voting YES. The extra projects proposed here are solid - improving oracles, zk tech development tools, and other key infrastructure for Arbitrum. This is exactly the kind of strategic investment we need.
I like how transparent this request is - we can see exactly which projects would get funded and why. This sets a good precedent for how to ask for additional funding: show the community specific high-value projects that couldn't make the initial cut.
Voting YES. The extra projects proposed here are solid - improving oracles, zk tech development tools, and other key infrastructure for Arbitrum. This is exactly the kind of strategic investment we need.
I like how transparent this request is - we can see exactly which projects would get funded and why. This sets a good precedent for how to ask for additional funding: show the community specific high-value projects that couldn't make the initial cut.
I disagree with the sentiment to open this for new applications. We had a successful process, these are the overflow projects that scored high but couldn't get funded due to budget constraints. Let's keep it focused on these specific projects rather than opening a new funding round. After seeing the results of the project as a whole we can re-evaluate it.
I'm voting FOR this proposal on Snapshot, and Event Horizon. Stylus is crucial to Arbitrum's long-term success, and this budget increase effectively meets the overwhelming demand for the Stylus Sprint program. I am confident in the committee's thorough review process and clear prioritization of projects, making sure that the selected initiatives are ready to launch and deliver meaningful impact.
Glad to hear that the Arbitrum ecosystem has so many amazing new projects. The more there are, the better. I completely agree that more funding needs to be provided and that the opportunity to apply should not be opened again because, as @JoJo said, it will lead to Groundhog Day.
it would be extremely hard, for the committee, to accept anything that is not the list above: if you think about it, all the proposals in the list have been marked as very good, valuable, up to the point there is an ask for further funds. How does a new application, not present in the list nor in the previous 150 proposals, fit into the 4M budget? It can only do it if it’s exceptional up to the point to be better of one of the application in this list. But then, it means you would have to reject, again, one of these 9 that are pre approved but with no budget, still falling in the issue of “we want to move this forward but we are overallocated”.
Glad to hear that the Arbitrum ecosystem has so many amazing new projects. The more there are, the better. I completely agree that more funding needs to be provided and that the opportunity to apply should not be opened again because, as @JoJo said, it will lead to Groundhog Day.
it would be extremely hard, for the committee, to accept anything that is not the list above: if you think about it, all the proposals in the list have been marked as very good, valuable, up to the point there is an ask for further funds. How does a new application, not present in the list nor in the previous 150 proposals, fit into the 4M budget? It can only do it if it’s exceptional up to the point to be better of one of the application in this list. But then, it means you would have to reject, again, one of these 9 that are pre approved but with no budget, still falling in the issue of “we want to move this forward but we are overallocated”.
But why the budget is requested in ARB and not in USDC or USDT? This may lead to risks of lack of funding and deployment of projects, since the price of ARB is unstable, which may negatively affect not only the Stylus program itself but also the Arbitrum ecosystem, since projects will not be completed and unfinished, and the DAO’s money will simply be thrown away
We appreciate the potential of Stylus and recognize its importance for Arbitrum's ecosystem. However, we have some questions about the proposed 80% budget increase from the original 5m ARB allocation.
What about these specific projects are so critical that they necessitate a budget increase?
What internal discussions occurred within the committee to justify this request for a budget increase? Was there a formal vote before a decision to request additional funds was reached? If so, we want to know the breakdown of committee members' positions and how they voted.
Has the committee considered what the success metrics (beyond milestone delivery) will be for the projects considered for the additional fund requested or the program as a whole and its impact on Stylus? How are we defining success for Arbitrum?
We appreciate the potential of Stylus and recognize its importance for Arbitrum's ecosystem. However, we have some questions about the proposed 80% budget increase from the original 5m ARB allocation.
What about these specific projects are so critical that they necessitate a budget increase?
What internal discussions occurred within the committee to justify this request for a budget increase? Was there a formal vote before a decision to request additional funds was reached? If so, we want to know the breakdown of committee members' positions and how they voted.
Has the committee considered what the success metrics (beyond milestone delivery) will be for the projects considered for the additional fund requested or the program as a whole and its impact on Stylus? How are we defining success for Arbitrum?
While we fundamentally support investing in Stylus's growth, we believe clarity of what transpired leading up to this proposal is crucial for the DAO to make an informed decision. The jump from 5m to 9m ARB is significant and should be provided with a clear and detailed justification.
Voting FOR. After reviewing the pending projects we agree with the assessment of the committee. These are valuable for Arbitrum.
That being said, we hope we can advance more towards investments rather than grants in the future. This is not a full black and white line as multiple projects serve more as network goods (generally public goods for the specific Arbitrum network), so more of a directional comment.
Excited to see the overwhelming interest from builders in the Stylus Sprint program. When we voted in support of the program, we did so because we believed that Stylus was going to be a driver of growth for the Arbitrum ecosystem. What we've seen in terms of program traction so far, seems to confirm this.
Given the unique advantage that Stylus brings to Arbitrum, as well as the quality of applicants, we think it’s in the interest of the DAO to capitalize on this by increasing the budget to support more projects.
Excited to see the overwhelming interest from builders in the Stylus Sprint program. When we voted in support of the program, we did so because we believed that Stylus was going to be a driver of growth for the Arbitrum ecosystem. What we've seen in terms of program traction so far, seems to confirm this.
Given the unique advantage that Stylus brings to Arbitrum, as well as the quality of applicants, we think it’s in the interest of the DAO to capitalize on this by increasing the budget to support more projects.
We understand concerns regarding setting a wrong precedent around the utilization / allocation of grants budgets. However, we view this a strategic opportunity for the DAO to capitalize on. It’s important for the DAO to remain flexible under these circumstances.
Finally, we do not believe it is the best approach to ask applicants to bring their grant requests directly to the DAO. This will result in duplication of efforts (applications have already been reviewed) and additional delays. It also potentially sets another wrong precedent of grantees bypassing specially designated funding programs to seek direct funding from the DAO—defeating the purpose of program itself.
LobbyFi’s rationale on the price and making the voting power available for sale for this proposal
Based on the general agreement amongst the community that increasing the budget is the correct move, and taking into account the strategic importance of Stylus, LobbyFi sees the broader community + the particular grantees as the profiteers from a positive proposal outcome. For this reason, the community auction for LobbyFi’s voting power will be made available.
LobbyFi’s rationale on the price and making the voting power available for sale for this proposal
Based on the general agreement amongst the community that increasing the budget is the correct move, and taking into account the strategic importance of Stylus, LobbyFi sees the broader community + the particular grantees as the profiteers from a positive proposal outcome. For this reason, the community auction for LobbyFi’s voting power will be made available.
Since the budget increase is quite substantial (80%) and no new application period is planned (with the projects to get the grant already known), we will set the instant buy price at 1% of the highest grant amount (1M ARB * 0.45 ARB/$ * 1% ≈ 1.7 ETH) for the largest profiteer to have a chance to “rescue” the proposal in case it is needed.
Voted For: My suggestion was to re-open the application window in case the proposal passes and the budget increases. After getting the feedback from Jojo that a budget increase is already set for specific projects, I agree that there is no need to re-open the application. Also, I learned that projects could update their application and budget in Questbook anytime (like Moving Stylus did). Seeing this dynamic is enough for me to vote For this proposal. It is great to see that this sprint gained such great traction. Love to see a successful proposal like this.
The Stylus Sprint Evaluation Committee’s request for a 4M ARB increase to its budget is now up for a vote on Snapshot. Voting will conclude in 1 week on February 13th.
Additionally, after further discussion with the team behind the Moving Stylus application, we have come to an agreement on a reduced budget of 450k ARB (Prev. 500k). More information can be found on their Questbook application.
Stylus is Arbitrum’s most significant differentiator in the competitive L2 landscape, and investing in its ecosystem is critical for maintaining our leadership in the space. By enabling developers to build with Rust, C, and other languages alongside Solidity, Stylus lowers the barrier to entry and makes Arbitrum far more accessible to a broader range of developers.
Beyond accessibility, Stylus unlocks the potential for more advanced applications and significantly improves execution efficiency. These are the kinds of innovations that will drive meaningful adoption and reinforce Arbitrum’s position as the most technically advanced and developer-friendly L2.
Stylus is Arbitrum’s most significant differentiator in the competitive L2 landscape, and investing in its ecosystem is critical for maintaining our leadership in the space. By enabling developers to build with Rust, C, and other languages alongside Solidity, Stylus lowers the barrier to entry and makes Arbitrum far more accessible to a broader range of developers.
Beyond accessibility, Stylus unlocks the potential for more advanced applications and significantly improves execution efficiency. These are the kinds of innovations that will drive meaningful adoption and reinforce Arbitrum’s position as the most technically advanced and developer-friendly L2.
Given the importance of Stylus, I fully support expanding the sprint committee’s budget to ensure high-potential initiatives receive the funding they need. Supporting developer tooling and ecosystem growth around Stylus is a high-impact investment that will strengthen Arbitrum’s long-term competitive advantage.
Stylus is definitely a key factor in helping Arbitrum stay competitive, increasing the budget to attract more innovative projects makes sense to me.
I will support this proposal :)
I don't have any issues with the increase of 4M (seems reasonable, even with the total budget being 9M, is not too much for Arbitrum's long-term growth plan). I also trust the committee will choose the best projects.
Stylus is definitely a key factor in helping Arbitrum stay competitive, increasing the budget to attract more innovative projects makes sense to me.
I will support this proposal :)
I don't have any issues with the increase of 4M (seems reasonable, even with the total budget being 9M, is not too much for Arbitrum's long-term growth plan). I also trust the committee will choose the best projects.
I believe @Entropy has carefully considered when posting this proposal. While asking for double the initial budget could set a questionable precedent, I can see their effort to bring more promising projects to Arbitrum.
We support this backfunding proposal to increase the Stylus Sprint budget and fund the recommended applicants. Stylus is Arbitrum’s most significant differentiator in the competitive L2 landscape, making developer tooling for Stylus a top priority.
Given the strong demand from applicants, the high quality of submissions, and Stylus’s strategic importance to Arbitrum, we believe the DAO should consider making the Stylus Sprint a bi-annual initiative. This would provide additional opportunities for previously denied applicants to reapply while also attracting new applicants, ensuring a continuous cycle of new ideas.
Appreciate the comment @ACI, we’d like to address a few points directly.
Starting with the following question:
Can you confirm if any of the other approved proposals also exceed this cap and why they have been approved without individual proposals?
I believe that increasing the budget will be very useful for the development of Stylus. The companies presented are useful and will not be able to develop without grants (such as Pyth and Trail of Bits) That is why I support this initiative.
We were going to mention this as well. However, if we would be increasing the budget to cater for the listed projects, there is no point asking these >500k projects to come to the DAO directly.
Thank you for putting this up, Entropy.
We have been thinking about this proposal and the effects this might have not only here but across other initiatives and believe this is a good idea.
Thank you for putting this up, Entropy.
We have been thinking about this proposal and the effects this might have not only here but across other initiatives and believe this is a good idea.
The evaluation committee is made up of very structured entities, so for them to draw up this proposal regardless of the original funding intention goes to show how convinced they are of the listed projects here and their alignment to the sprint's priorities.
On this
I believe there was a 500k ARB soft cap imposed on applications in the initial proposal with requests exceeding this to be sent to the DAO directly.
We were going to mention this as well. However, if we would be increasing the budget to cater for the listed projects, there is no point asking these >500k projects to come to the DAO directly. Seeing this is a one-off sprint funding initiative, it would be net positive to have them all in this basket then fund them altogether. According to Entropy as well, some of these projects might still see a cut in their budgets so that's worthy of note too.
The Stylus Sprint Evaluation Committee’s request for a 4M ARB increase to its budget is now up for a vote on Snapshot. Voting will conclude in 1 week on February 13th.
Additionally, after further discussion with the team behind the Moving Stylus application, we have come to an agreement on a reduced budget of 450k ARB (Prev. 500k). More information can be found on their Questbook application.
As mentioned above, the committee is actively negotiating budgets with each applicant. Entropy will continue to relay other updates/reductions to the recommended applicants’ budgets as they occur.
Appreciate the comment @ACI, we’d like to address a few points directly.
Starting with the following question:
Can you confirm if any of the other approved proposals also exceed this cap and why they have been approved without individual proposals?
Thirdweb’s application (900k) was the only submission included in the initial budget that was over the recommended soft-cap. Below is the exact wording from the original Stylus Sprint proposal:
There is no maximum request amount, but requests over 500k that are deemed quality, have a likelihood of being sent to the DAO instead of included in the program depending on the total ARB requested in the program and quality of the applications.
Thridweb was funded as part of the 5M budget for a variety of factors - including its timeline compared to some of the other recommended applications who were more flexible in being delayed, the scope of work outlined, the strategic importance of the partnership to the Arbitrum ecosystem, and taking into account the team’s willingness to greatly reduce their overall request to ensure work could start immediately.
We understand that such factors may lead to the impression that the original accepted applicants are overall better than the 9 recommended, as evidenced by the following comments:
Overall it feels like this is a proposal which doesn’t represent good value for the DAO as evidenced by the fact that better applications have been funded in place of these ones
grading criteria were initially designed to take the best of the applications in an objective way, funding these applications would necessarily represent diminishing returns for the DAO
However, we would like to strongly emphasize that this is not the case, but rather the result of the program’s multiple priorities and tracks. The committee had several different objectives, such as including applications that could help scale Stylus usage, highlight a core strength of Stylus, or tools/infrastructure that fill a specific need. The scoring system was designed to introduce a level of objectivity and help the committee compare applications when necessary, but deciding which applications to accept, reject, and recommend was partially a subjective process to determine how we could best accomplish the above mentioned goals within the 5M budget. The committee worked together to come to these decisions, with the scores and rationale then being aggregated and posted to Questbook.
The 17 accepted applicants allowed us to partially achieve these goals and cover several of the RFP categories, but not all of them. As outlined in this request’s rationale, the committee believes the recommended applications are impactful ideas paired with qualified teams. Funding them would help the Sprint and the committee by extension, fully deliver on its stated goals and lay a strong foundation for the Stylus ecosystem over the Sprint’s duration.
Finally, regarding the following statement:
It seems several of the proposals here exceed that and so should be voted on as standalone proposals if I’ve understood this correctly.
Rather than sending 9 applications to the DAO, some of which require a certain level of technical expertise and understanding of the current Stylus ecosystem, it was communicated to Entropy that it was preferred to present the applications together as opposed to having delegates vote on each application individually like for example during STIP. The request for an increase in budget can be seen as the applications being directed to the DAO. Entropy strongly believes that giving the evaluation committee agency over an increased budget is a better path to this effect than 9 (with more likely coming in unendorsed) proposals coming in individually.
We were going to mention this as well. However, if we would be increasing the budget to cater for the listed projects, there is no point asking these >500k projects to come to the DAO directly.
I see where you're coming from but in my mind the point would be that funding of this scale is "extraordinary" and out of scope of the initial funding budget and so should require extra scrutiny from the DAO. Bundling these proposals together in this way does not provide the same level of scrutiny and approval as individual proposals.
I appreciate the work on this proposal and the detailed review of the additional applications. I have a few concerns and observations about this proposal coming from a stance of getting the best value for the DAO:
Since the grading process is complete, and the grading criteria were initially designed to take the best of the applications in an objective way, funding these applications would necessarily represent diminishing returns for the DAO. Initial funding caps and criteria are designed to set boundaries for grant/funding rounds to avoid situations where there might be some “budget creep” and to force prioritisation and objective comparison. It seems bad precedent to expand scope after the fact. Instead, if these are extremely valuable proposals they should have been approved in place of others, and if the scoring process worked then these are not as good value for money as the initially approved applications and represent diminishing ROI.
I believe there was a 500k ARB soft cap imposed on applications in the initial proposal with requests exceeding this to be sent to the DAO directly. It seems several of the proposals here exceed that and so should be voted on as standalone proposals if I’ve understood this correctly. Can you confirm if any of the other approved proposals also exceed this cap and why they have been approved without individual proposals?
Almost doubling the cap seems excessive. It would be slightly more understandable if it was one or two proposals that could be voted on as standalones. In my mind this suggests either defficiencies in the review process or an ineffective scoring method.
I appreciate the work on this proposal and the detailed review of the additional applications. I have a few concerns and observations about this proposal coming from a stance of getting the best value for the DAO:
Since the grading process is complete, and the grading criteria were initially designed to take the best of the applications in an objective way, funding these applications would necessarily represent diminishing returns for the DAO. Initial funding caps and criteria are designed to set boundaries for grant/funding rounds to avoid situations where there might be some “budget creep” and to force prioritisation and objective comparison. It seems bad precedent to expand scope after the fact. Instead, if these are extremely valuable proposals they should have been approved in place of others, and if the scoring process worked then these are not as good value for money as the initially approved applications and represent diminishing ROI.
I believe there was a 500k ARB soft cap imposed on applications in the initial proposal with requests exceeding this to be sent to the DAO directly. It seems several of the proposals here exceed that and so should be voted on as standalone proposals if I’ve understood this correctly. Can you confirm if any of the other approved proposals also exceed this cap and why they have been approved without individual proposals?
Almost doubling the cap seems excessive. It would be slightly more understandable if it was one or two proposals that could be voted on as standalones. In my mind this suggests either defficiencies in the review process or an ineffective scoring method.
Overall it feels like this is a proposal which doesn’t represent good value for the DAO as evidenced by the fact that better applications have been funded in place of these ones, and the enormous increase in budget in % terms. If this is due to the initial program design being flawed, I believe it should be iterated on and another round completed once impact of the first round has been established.
Stylus It is indeed important, thank you for your proposal for temporary additional funds to fill the budget gap, why these 9 projects here and not other high quality applications? What were the selection criteria for these 9 projects? What are the criteria for the selection of these 9 projects? If the budget is increased this time, what if other projects want to bypass the evaluation and go directly to the DAO for additional budget in the future? The DAO should establish a stricter mechanism for additional budgets, allow applicants to adjust their budgets and reapply, give a chance to projects that are willing to reduce their funding requests, and plan a long-term Stylus Sprint funding framework to establish a more stable fund management mechanism to avoid frequent additional budgets in the future. In any case, I will continue to support the proposal and really hope and expect Stylus to be successful.
Our team appreciates the feedback and comments thus far. We’d like to follow up on some of the points that @JoJo shared a few days ago and address the additional questions.
First, on the discussion of reopening applications. While we recognize the thought process and opinions of the delegates who feel this is a better route, we’d like to highlight that the application period was open for 9 weeks (November 11th - January 13th) and that applicants were able to update and incorporate the committee’s feedback into their submissions throughout the process. Additionally, as JoJo explained, the program is designed to be a “Sprint” with the priority of bootstrapping the Stylus ecosystem given its currently nascent state. The 17 accepted applicants along with the 9 recommended in this proposal will help lay an important foundation. For example, Sylow, if built, would dramatically reduce the complexity and time to build certain ideas with Stylus. Another application, Moving Stylus, if successful would open up an entirely new range of possibilities. Without their work, an application today could cost much more ARB to fund due to the increased engineering hours and technical expertise required. Therefore, by letting these applications bear fruit, the DAO may be able to fund ideas in the coming months for hopefully cheaper.
Our team appreciates the feedback and comments thus far. We’d like to follow up on some of the points that @JoJo shared a few days ago and address the additional questions.
First, on the discussion of reopening applications. While we recognize the thought process and opinions of the delegates who feel this is a better route, we’d like to highlight that the application period was open for 9 weeks (November 11th - January 13th) and that applicants were able to update and incorporate the committee’s feedback into their submissions throughout the process. Additionally, as JoJo explained, the program is designed to be a “Sprint” with the priority of bootstrapping the Stylus ecosystem given its currently nascent state. The 17 accepted applicants along with the 9 recommended in this proposal will help lay an important foundation. For example, Sylow, if built, would dramatically reduce the complexity and time to build certain ideas with Stylus. Another application, Moving Stylus, if successful would open up an entirely new range of possibilities. Without their work, an application today could cost much more ARB to fund due to the increased engineering hours and technical expertise required. Therefore, by letting these applications bear fruit, the DAO may be able to fund ideas in the coming months for hopefully cheaper.
On the concern of additional ARB hitting the market, we’d like to remind delegates that the Stylus Sprint is milestone based. Teams will only receive funds if they deliver on the proposed scope and hit certain checkpoints. These milestones are also spread out over the course of an entire year, so the requested 4M will not be hitting the open market immediately. On behalf of the committee, Entropy will also be providing status updates to the DAO so they have transparency into what has been delivered and what remains to be built.
but does the committee review the size of the requested ARB for each application and conclude no need to reduce the scope of each app to minimize the size of the exceeding budget to be allocated? The listed applications seem all promising, but their requested asks are not small.
My only comment is regarding the total amount. If I’m not mistaken, the sum of the selected applications comes to 4,108,200 ARB, while the amount requested is 4M. This detail needs to be adjusted.
The committee actively worked to negotiate the budgets of each application. While each is at a point where the committee is comfortable with the value being returned for the ARB spent, we proceeded with the 4M ARB number as we’re confident we can continue to reduce some of the budgets slightly.
Stylus Sprint grading rubric, would it be possible to share the applicant scores? The rationale has already been shared, and reviewing the scores as well would help delegates and community members understand how these projects were prioritized over others.
All of the accepted and recommended applicants’ scores can be found on Questbook.
Are these the only projects that are worthy of funding in this initial cohort? What was the cut-off criteria?
As JoJo also explained briefly, there was a combination of factors that led to the committee recommending these 9. While each scored highly (>= 19/25), there was also a priority to include in the Sprint a range of application based submissions and certain tooling/infra that was deemed high-value in the short to medium term. Additionally, for certain RFP categories, like the GUI for the Stylus Cache Manager, it was deemed preferable to fund only one team to build this tool as multiple could cause unnecessary fragmentation and competition for adoption from what is right now a very limited set of projects. In those instances for example, there were several applicants worthy of funding that scored well, but certain factors like execution capability/risk were valued highly and influenced the committee’s final decision.
Lastly, as our subset of recommended applications began to grow, eventually a cut-off had to be made. Expanding on what JoJo mentioned, the presented list does not greatly overlap with what has already been funded and would cover some of the other priorities/goals the committee had for the Sprint.
Currently, the plan is to still move forward with a Snapshot vote on Thursday.
We are again and again spending more than originally requested instead of fixing a budget and then see the outcome. You all have seen where the price right now is. And this won't stop with more and more ARB token being given away and sold on the open markt causing the price to crash more and then new proposals are coming up, asking again for more ARB token as the price declines and they initial amount is now way lower. This is a dead spiral and one of the major actor is the DAO itself.
I would like to support it, but maybe its time to stick to a proposal see the outcome and then decide rather than asking for more token.
Stylus is one of the key differentiators and competitive advantages that Arbitrum has, making it a crucial element to dedicate funding to. Given this, we believe it’s important to support builders who can contribute meaningfully to its growth.
As noted in the post,
Stylus is one of the key differentiators and competitive advantages that Arbitrum has, making it a crucial element to dedicate funding to. Given this, we believe it’s important to support builders who can contribute meaningfully to its growth.
As noted in the post,
the recommended list scored especially high during the review process and are ones that the committee is confident have the potential to provide value to the Arbitrum and Stylus ecosystems
Given the strength of these applications, we support increasing the budget for the Stylus Sprint to include these additional teams, as we are confident they will bring value to the ecosystem.
For clarity, we support the funding increase specifically to accommodate the above-mentioned list of teams. We align with the points presented by @JoJo and agree that applications should not be reopened.
We're in favor of increasing the budget. After reviewing the applications and their potential impact, it's clear that that the program had high-quality proposals unable to move forward (pyth's high performance oracle implementation, solang support, nuffle's stylus based contracts, among others.) The additional 4M ARB will allow to fund initiatives that align with Arbitrum's growth and it is a strategic move to solidify Stylus as a core Arbitrum advantage.
Edited to reflect the budget number confirmed by Entropy.
I'm in favor of the additional funds. We should take advantage of the 'exceptional applications' mentioned by @Entropy. In the end, this is meant to be a sprint, and the additional ARB to be spent will help achieve the original sprint goals.
If this is approved, could we get two different reports to see if this 'increase' was really worth it?
I'm in favor of the additional funds. We should take advantage of the 'exceptional applications' mentioned by @Entropy. In the end, this is meant to be a sprint, and the additional ARB to be spent will help achieve the original sprint goals.
If this is approved, could we get two different reports to see if this 'increase' was really worth it?
As a personal note, I really like the idea of Nuffle Labs, as it will allow Arbitrum to retain TVL and offer new yield sources on the chain.
Thanks for putting this together! It’s clear that a lot of thought went into evaluating these applications, and I really appreciate the transparency around the process.
That said, I don’t think extending the budget for the Stylus Sprint is the right move. The initial 5M ARB budget was set with clear expectations, and I worry that making exceptions now could set a precedent that future funding rounds are flexible. That kind of uncertainty can make it harder for the DAO to plan long-term.
Thanks for putting this together! It’s clear that a lot of thought went into evaluating these applications, and I really appreciate the transparency around the process.
That said, I don’t think extending the budget for the Stylus Sprint is the right move. The initial 5M ARB budget was set with clear expectations, and I worry that making exceptions now could set a precedent that future funding rounds are flexible. That kind of uncertainty can make it harder for the DAO to plan long-term.
I also know how much effort teams put into their applications, and it’s tough to see great projects miss out due to budget limits. The level of talent and innovation in this round is a testament to the excitement around Stylus, and I really hope these teams stay engaged and explore other paths to funding.
Appreciate all the work the committee has done to make this process fair and transparent. This isn’t a no to these projects—just a belief that we need to stay disciplined in how we allocate funds.
I don't know some of the names in there, but others like Pyth and Trail of Bits to name a couple are quite important and have a very good reputation in crypto and in Arbitrum. If they didn't got approved in the first round it means that there were even better applications, which is good! But I think is worth extending the budget if the commission think is for the best.
I like this and explicitly disagree with Paulo's suggestion to reopen applications.
Thank you for your proposal, seeing so many applications means that Stylus is very popular and will add a lot of work, but selecting the best projects to fund will be good for Arbitrum. There are a few questions and suggestions about the proposal for additional funding of 4 million ARB.
Is it possible to increase the funding by 4 million ARB this time? We have already approved 5 million ARBs, but the total amount of applications is as high as 31.92 million ARBs, which means that even with this additional 4 million ARBs, it is still far from being able to satisfy all the applications. The demand for applications far exceeds the budget, will there be further additions in the future?
How will the funds be utilized and how will the return be measured? How will DAO measure the input-output ratio of the additional 4 million ARB?
We truly appreciate the work being done and are pleased to see that the program has received so many applications. That said, we believe that increasing the budget should not necessarily mean opening the application to more projects, as this could delay the program.
We are pleased with several of the applications and trust the selection process taking place. For this reason, we see no reason to oppose the proposed budget increase.
We truly appreciate the work being done and are pleased to see that the program has received so many applications. That said, we believe that increasing the budget should not necessarily mean opening the application to more projects, as this could delay the program.
We are pleased with several of the applications and trust the selection process taking place. For this reason, we see no reason to oppose the proposed budget increase.
We look forward to seeing the progress and results of this program.
I agree with the idea of increasing the budget.
But, since we are almost doubling the budget (from 5M ARB initial + increase of 4M ARB) to 9M ARB, we should also open an application to give an opportunity to new projects (like @paulofonseca suggested).
I agree with the idea of increasing the budget.
But, since we are almost doubling the budget (from 5M ARB initial + increase of 4M ARB) to 9M ARB, we should also open an application to give an opportunity to new projects (like @paulofonseca suggested).
Since the last application window was from Nov 11th until Jan 6th, many projects that applied early have made progress with their project. Let’s give them a chance to apply again or update their application.
Without increasing the budget, this proposal could only fund 17/147 projects. If the proposal to increase it passes, we expect to double that to at least 34+ projects, right? @JoJo, do you think the new budget will cover high-funding applications that were left out?
gm!
Thank you very much for the proposal to increase the budget.
gm!
Thank you very much for the proposal to increase the budget.
As a general comment, I believe it's very positive to have had such strong demand for application development and infrastructure with Stylus. That being said, the true success of the program will depend on the impact of executing these proposals and on Stylus adoption by developers. For this reason, I think the number of applications should not be the only parameter for evaluating the budget increase.
That said, I completely agree with this:
With Stylus as one of Arbitrum’s strongest competitive advantages, the committee strongly believes that enabling all impressive applications received as a part of the Stylus Sprint with funding is a worthwhile investment for the DAO.
Stylus is indeed a competitive advantage that we should leverage to attract developers from other ecosystems.
From my experience with the LTIPP, designing new incentive programs is complex. This certainly includes the amount of budget allocated to a particular initiative. It's difficult to predict how many applicants there will be, what types of initiatives will be submitted, or the unforeseen complexities that arise when evaluating submissions.
The committee behind the project selection has a lot of experience, and they wouldn't bring this proposal forward without having thoroughly assessed the quality of the submissions and their potential impact. On the other hand, this approach allows the DAO to take advantage of the process, time, and money invested in the infrastructure to fund more high-quality submissions that can have an impact on attracting developers.
The following list of applicants are the ones that come with a strong recommendation from the committee and to reiterate were unable to be accepted due to budget constraints.
In particular, after reviewing the proposals, I believe there is a good diversity of submissions that mostly differ from those already approved, expanding both the applications (use cases) and the infrastructure available for developing with Stylus.
For this reason, I support the initiative and agree with increasing the budget.
My only comment is regarding the total amount. If I'm not mistaken, the sum of the selected applications comes to 4,108,200 ARB, while the amount requested is 4M. This detail needs to be adjusted.
I agree with increasing the budget, we need innovative Stylus projects. It's also great to hear that so many builders applied, running out of a budget in this case is definitely a good "problem" to have (better than seeing low interest from builders).
Also, I agree with @JoJo to not extend the application window, because this may lead to the budget shortage again.
Why this specific amount in ARB and/or projects? While I understand the reasoning, why not a shorter list and lower amount (as the current version doubles the original budget).
The Stylus Sprint Evaluation Committee’s request for a 4M ARB increase to its budget is now up for a vote on Snapshot. Voting will conclude in 1 week on February 13th.
Additionally, after further discussion with the team behind the Moving Stylus application, we have come to an agreement on a reduced budget of 450k ARB (Prev. 500k). More information can be found on their Questbook application.
As mentioned above, the committee is actively negotiating budgets with each applicant. Entropy will continue to relay other updates/reductions to the recommended applicants’ budgets as they occur.
Appreciate the comment @ACI, we’d like to address a few points directly.
Starting with the following question:
Can you confirm if any of the other approved proposals also exceed this cap and why they have been approved without individual proposals?
Thirdweb’s application (900k) was the only submission included in the initial budget that was over the recommended soft-cap. Below is the exact wording from the original Stylus Sprint proposal:
There is no maximum request amount, but requests over 500k that are deemed quality, have a likelihood of being sent to the DAO instead of included in the program depending on the total ARB requested in the program and quality of the applications.
Thridweb was funded as part of the 5M budget for a variety of factors - including its timeline compared to some of the other recommended applications who were more flexible in being delayed, the scope of work outlined, the strategic importance of the partnership to the Arbitrum ecosystem, and taking into account the team’s willingness to greatly reduce their overall request to ensure work could start immediately.
We understand that such factors may lead to the impression that the original accepted applicants are overall better than the 9 recommended, as evidenced by the following comments:
Overall it feels like this is a proposal which doesn’t represent good value for the DAO as evidenced by the fact that better applications have been funded in place of these ones
grading criteria were initially designed to take the best of the applications in an objective way, funding these applications would necessarily represent diminishing returns for the DAO
However, we would like to strongly emphasize that this is not the case, but rather the result of the program’s multiple priorities and tracks. The committee had several different objectives, such as including applications that could help scale Stylus usage, highlight a core strength of Stylus, or tools/infrastructure that fill a specific need. The scoring system was designed to introduce a level of objectivity and help the committee compare applications when necessary, but deciding which applications to accept, reject, and recommend was partially a subjective process to determine how we could best accomplish the above mentioned goals within the 5M budget. The committee worked together to come to these decisions, with the scores and rationale then being aggregated and posted to Questbook.
The 17 accepted applicants allowed us to partially achieve these goals and cover several of the RFP categories, but not all of them. As outlined in this request’s rationale, the committee believes the recommended applications are impactful ideas paired with qualified teams. Funding them would help the Sprint and the committee by extension, fully deliver on its stated goals and lay a strong foundation for the Stylus ecosystem over the Sprint’s duration.
Finally, regarding the following statement:
It seems several of the proposals here exceed that and so should be voted on as standalone proposals if I’ve understood this correctly.
Rather than sending 9 applications to the DAO, some of which require a certain level of technical expertise and understanding of the current Stylus ecosystem, it was communicated to Entropy that it was preferred to present the applications together as opposed to having delegates vote on each application individually like for example during STIP. The request for an increase in budget can be seen as the applications being directed to the DAO. Entropy strongly believes that giving the evaluation committee agency over an increased budget is a better path to this effect than 9 (with more likely coming in unendorsed) proposals coming in individually.
We were going to mention this as well. However, if we would be increasing the budget to cater for the listed projects, there is no point asking these >500k projects to come to the DAO directly.
I see where you're coming from but in my mind the point would be that funding of this scale is "extraordinary" and out of scope of the initial funding budget and so should require extra scrutiny from the DAO. Bundling these proposals together in this way does not provide the same level of scrutiny and approval as individual proposals.
I appreciate the work on this proposal and the detailed review of the additional applications. I have a few concerns and observations about this proposal coming from a stance of getting the best value for the DAO:
Since the grading process is complete, and the grading criteria were initially designed to take the best of the applications in an objective way, funding these applications would necessarily represent diminishing returns for the DAO. Initial funding caps and criteria are designed to set boundaries for grant/funding rounds to avoid situations where there might be some “budget creep” and to force prioritisation and objective comparison. It seems bad precedent to expand scope after the fact. Instead, if these are extremely valuable proposals they should have been approved in place of others, and if the scoring process worked then these are not as good value for money as the initially approved applications and represent diminishing ROI.
I believe there was a 500k ARB soft cap imposed on applications in the initial proposal with requests exceeding this to be sent to the DAO directly. It seems several of the proposals here exceed that and so should be voted on as standalone proposals if I’ve understood this correctly. Can you confirm if any of the other approved proposals also exceed this cap and why they have been approved without individual proposals?
Almost doubling the cap seems excessive. It would be slightly more understandable if it was one or two proposals that could be voted on as standalones. In my mind this suggests either defficiencies in the review process or an ineffective scoring method.
I appreciate the work on this proposal and the detailed review of the additional applications. I have a few concerns and observations about this proposal coming from a stance of getting the best value for the DAO:
Since the grading process is complete, and the grading criteria were initially designed to take the best of the applications in an objective way, funding these applications would necessarily represent diminishing returns for the DAO. Initial funding caps and criteria are designed to set boundaries for grant/funding rounds to avoid situations where there might be some “budget creep” and to force prioritisation and objective comparison. It seems bad precedent to expand scope after the fact. Instead, if these are extremely valuable proposals they should have been approved in place of others, and if the scoring process worked then these are not as good value for money as the initially approved applications and represent diminishing ROI.
I believe there was a 500k ARB soft cap imposed on applications in the initial proposal with requests exceeding this to be sent to the DAO directly. It seems several of the proposals here exceed that and so should be voted on as standalone proposals if I’ve understood this correctly. Can you confirm if any of the other approved proposals also exceed this cap and why they have been approved without individual proposals?
Almost doubling the cap seems excessive. It would be slightly more understandable if it was one or two proposals that could be voted on as standalones. In my mind this suggests either defficiencies in the review process or an ineffective scoring method.
Overall it feels like this is a proposal which doesn’t represent good value for the DAO as evidenced by the fact that better applications have been funded in place of these ones, and the enormous increase in budget in % terms. If this is due to the initial program design being flawed, I believe it should be iterated on and another round completed once impact of the first round has been established.
Stylus It is indeed important, thank you for your proposal for temporary additional funds to fill the budget gap, why these 9 projects here and not other high quality applications? What were the selection criteria for these 9 projects? What are the criteria for the selection of these 9 projects? If the budget is increased this time, what if other projects want to bypass the evaluation and go directly to the DAO for additional budget in the future? The DAO should establish a stricter mechanism for additional budgets, allow applicants to adjust their budgets and reapply, give a chance to projects that are willing to reduce their funding requests, and plan a long-term Stylus Sprint funding framework to establish a more stable fund management mechanism to avoid frequent additional budgets in the future. In any case, I will continue to support the proposal and really hope and expect Stylus to be successful.
Our team appreciates the feedback and comments thus far. We’d like to follow up on some of the points that @JoJo shared a few days ago and address the additional questions.
First, on the discussion of reopening applications. While we recognize the thought process and opinions of the delegates who feel this is a better route, we’d like to highlight that the application period was open for 9 weeks (November 11th - January 13th) and that applicants were able to update and incorporate the committee’s feedback into their submissions throughout the process. Additionally, as JoJo explained, the program is designed to be a “Sprint” with the priority of bootstrapping the Stylus ecosystem given its currently nascent state. The 17 accepted applicants along with the 9 recommended in this proposal will help lay an important foundation. For example, Sylow, if built, would dramatically reduce the complexity and time to build certain ideas with Stylus. Another application, Moving Stylus, if successful would open up an entirely new range of possibilities. Without their work, an application today could cost much more ARB to fund due to the increased engineering hours and technical expertise required. Therefore, by letting these applications bear fruit, the DAO may be able to fund ideas in the coming months for hopefully cheaper.
Our team appreciates the feedback and comments thus far. We’d like to follow up on some of the points that @JoJo shared a few days ago and address the additional questions.
First, on the discussion of reopening applications. While we recognize the thought process and opinions of the delegates who feel this is a better route, we’d like to highlight that the application period was open for 9 weeks (November 11th - January 13th) and that applicants were able to update and incorporate the committee’s feedback into their submissions throughout the process. Additionally, as JoJo explained, the program is designed to be a “Sprint” with the priority of bootstrapping the Stylus ecosystem given its currently nascent state. The 17 accepted applicants along with the 9 recommended in this proposal will help lay an important foundation. For example, Sylow, if built, would dramatically reduce the complexity and time to build certain ideas with Stylus. Another application, Moving Stylus, if successful would open up an entirely new range of possibilities. Without their work, an application today could cost much more ARB to fund due to the increased engineering hours and technical expertise required. Therefore, by letting these applications bear fruit, the DAO may be able to fund ideas in the coming months for hopefully cheaper.
On the concern of additional ARB hitting the market, we’d like to remind delegates that the Stylus Sprint is milestone based. Teams will only receive funds if they deliver on the proposed scope and hit certain checkpoints. These milestones are also spread out over the course of an entire year, so the requested 4M will not be hitting the open market immediately. On behalf of the committee, Entropy will also be providing status updates to the DAO so they have transparency into what has been delivered and what remains to be built.
but does the committee review the size of the requested ARB for each application and conclude no need to reduce the scope of each app to minimize the size of the exceeding budget to be allocated? The listed applications seem all promising, but their requested asks are not small.
My only comment is regarding the total amount. If I’m not mistaken, the sum of the selected applications comes to 4,108,200 ARB, while the amount requested is 4M. This detail needs to be adjusted.
The committee actively worked to negotiate the budgets of each application. While each is at a point where the committee is comfortable with the value being returned for the ARB spent, we proceeded with the 4M ARB number as we’re confident we can continue to reduce some of the budgets slightly.
Stylus Sprint grading rubric, would it be possible to share the applicant scores? The rationale has already been shared, and reviewing the scores as well would help delegates and community members understand how these projects were prioritized over others.
All of the accepted and recommended applicants’ scores can be found on Questbook.
Are these the only projects that are worthy of funding in this initial cohort? What was the cut-off criteria?
As JoJo also explained briefly, there was a combination of factors that led to the committee recommending these 9. While each scored highly (>= 19/25), there was also a priority to include in the Sprint a range of application based submissions and certain tooling/infra that was deemed high-value in the short to medium term. Additionally, for certain RFP categories, like the GUI for the Stylus Cache Manager, it was deemed preferable to fund only one team to build this tool as multiple could cause unnecessary fragmentation and competition for adoption from what is right now a very limited set of projects. In those instances for example, there were several applicants worthy of funding that scored well, but certain factors like execution capability/risk were valued highly and influenced the committee’s final decision.
Lastly, as our subset of recommended applications began to grow, eventually a cut-off had to be made. Expanding on what JoJo mentioned, the presented list does not greatly overlap with what has already been funded and would cover some of the other priorities/goals the committee had for the Sprint.
Currently, the plan is to still move forward with a Snapshot vote on Thursday.
We are again and again spending more than originally requested instead of fixing a budget and then see the outcome. You all have seen where the price right now is. And this won't stop with more and more ARB token being given away and sold on the open markt causing the price to crash more and then new proposals are coming up, asking again for more ARB token as the price declines and they initial amount is now way lower. This is a dead spiral and one of the major actor is the DAO itself.
I would like to support it, but maybe its time to stick to a proposal see the outcome and then decide rather than asking for more token.
Stylus is one of the key differentiators and competitive advantages that Arbitrum has, making it a crucial element to dedicate funding to. Given this, we believe it’s important to support builders who can contribute meaningfully to its growth.
As noted in the post,
Stylus is one of the key differentiators and competitive advantages that Arbitrum has, making it a crucial element to dedicate funding to. Given this, we believe it’s important to support builders who can contribute meaningfully to its growth.
As noted in the post,
the recommended list scored especially high during the review process and are ones that the committee is confident have the potential to provide value to the Arbitrum and Stylus ecosystems
Given the strength of these applications, we support increasing the budget for the Stylus Sprint to include these additional teams, as we are confident they will bring value to the ecosystem.
For clarity, we support the funding increase specifically to accommodate the above-mentioned list of teams. We align with the points presented by @JoJo and agree that applications should not be reopened.
We're in favor of increasing the budget. After reviewing the applications and their potential impact, it's clear that that the program had high-quality proposals unable to move forward (pyth's high performance oracle implementation, solang support, nuffle's stylus based contracts, among others.) The additional 4M ARB will allow to fund initiatives that align with Arbitrum's growth and it is a strategic move to solidify Stylus as a core Arbitrum advantage.
Edited to reflect the budget number confirmed by Entropy.
I'm in favor of the additional funds. We should take advantage of the 'exceptional applications' mentioned by @Entropy. In the end, this is meant to be a sprint, and the additional ARB to be spent will help achieve the original sprint goals.
If this is approved, could we get two different reports to see if this 'increase' was really worth it?
I'm in favor of the additional funds. We should take advantage of the 'exceptional applications' mentioned by @Entropy. In the end, this is meant to be a sprint, and the additional ARB to be spent will help achieve the original sprint goals.
If this is approved, could we get two different reports to see if this 'increase' was really worth it?
As a personal note, I really like the idea of Nuffle Labs, as it will allow Arbitrum to retain TVL and offer new yield sources on the chain.
Thanks for putting this together! It’s clear that a lot of thought went into evaluating these applications, and I really appreciate the transparency around the process.
That said, I don’t think extending the budget for the Stylus Sprint is the right move. The initial 5M ARB budget was set with clear expectations, and I worry that making exceptions now could set a precedent that future funding rounds are flexible. That kind of uncertainty can make it harder for the DAO to plan long-term.
Thanks for putting this together! It’s clear that a lot of thought went into evaluating these applications, and I really appreciate the transparency around the process.
That said, I don’t think extending the budget for the Stylus Sprint is the right move. The initial 5M ARB budget was set with clear expectations, and I worry that making exceptions now could set a precedent that future funding rounds are flexible. That kind of uncertainty can make it harder for the DAO to plan long-term.
I also know how much effort teams put into their applications, and it’s tough to see great projects miss out due to budget limits. The level of talent and innovation in this round is a testament to the excitement around Stylus, and I really hope these teams stay engaged and explore other paths to funding.
Appreciate all the work the committee has done to make this process fair and transparent. This isn’t a no to these projects—just a belief that we need to stay disciplined in how we allocate funds.
I don't know some of the names in there, but others like Pyth and Trail of Bits to name a couple are quite important and have a very good reputation in crypto and in Arbitrum. If they didn't got approved in the first round it means that there were even better applications, which is good! But I think is worth extending the budget if the commission think is for the best.
I like this and explicitly disagree with Paulo's suggestion to reopen applications.
Thank you for your proposal, seeing so many applications means that Stylus is very popular and will add a lot of work, but selecting the best projects to fund will be good for Arbitrum. There are a few questions and suggestions about the proposal for additional funding of 4 million ARB.
Is it possible to increase the funding by 4 million ARB this time? We have already approved 5 million ARBs, but the total amount of applications is as high as 31.92 million ARBs, which means that even with this additional 4 million ARBs, it is still far from being able to satisfy all the applications. The demand for applications far exceeds the budget, will there be further additions in the future?
How will the funds be utilized and how will the return be measured? How will DAO measure the input-output ratio of the additional 4 million ARB?
We truly appreciate the work being done and are pleased to see that the program has received so many applications. That said, we believe that increasing the budget should not necessarily mean opening the application to more projects, as this could delay the program.
We are pleased with several of the applications and trust the selection process taking place. For this reason, we see no reason to oppose the proposed budget increase.
We truly appreciate the work being done and are pleased to see that the program has received so many applications. That said, we believe that increasing the budget should not necessarily mean opening the application to more projects, as this could delay the program.
We are pleased with several of the applications and trust the selection process taking place. For this reason, we see no reason to oppose the proposed budget increase.
We look forward to seeing the progress and results of this program.
I agree with the idea of increasing the budget.
But, since we are almost doubling the budget (from 5M ARB initial + increase of 4M ARB) to 9M ARB, we should also open an application to give an opportunity to new projects (like @paulofonseca suggested).
I agree with the idea of increasing the budget.
But, since we are almost doubling the budget (from 5M ARB initial + increase of 4M ARB) to 9M ARB, we should also open an application to give an opportunity to new projects (like @paulofonseca suggested).
Since the last application window was from Nov 11th until Jan 6th, many projects that applied early have made progress with their project. Let’s give them a chance to apply again or update their application.
Without increasing the budget, this proposal could only fund 17/147 projects. If the proposal to increase it passes, we expect to double that to at least 34+ projects, right? @JoJo, do you think the new budget will cover high-funding applications that were left out?
gm!
Thank you very much for the proposal to increase the budget.
gm!
Thank you very much for the proposal to increase the budget.
As a general comment, I believe it's very positive to have had such strong demand for application development and infrastructure with Stylus. That being said, the true success of the program will depend on the impact of executing these proposals and on Stylus adoption by developers. For this reason, I think the number of applications should not be the only parameter for evaluating the budget increase.
That said, I completely agree with this:
With Stylus as one of Arbitrum’s strongest competitive advantages, the committee strongly believes that enabling all impressive applications received as a part of the Stylus Sprint with funding is a worthwhile investment for the DAO.
Stylus is indeed a competitive advantage that we should leverage to attract developers from other ecosystems.
From my experience with the LTIPP, designing new incentive programs is complex. This certainly includes the amount of budget allocated to a particular initiative. It's difficult to predict how many applicants there will be, what types of initiatives will be submitted, or the unforeseen complexities that arise when evaluating submissions.
The committee behind the project selection has a lot of experience, and they wouldn't bring this proposal forward without having thoroughly assessed the quality of the submissions and their potential impact. On the other hand, this approach allows the DAO to take advantage of the process, time, and money invested in the infrastructure to fund more high-quality submissions that can have an impact on attracting developers.
The following list of applicants are the ones that come with a strong recommendation from the committee and to reiterate were unable to be accepted due to budget constraints.
In particular, after reviewing the proposals, I believe there is a good diversity of submissions that mostly differ from those already approved, expanding both the applications (use cases) and the infrastructure available for developing with Stylus.
For this reason, I support the initiative and agree with increasing the budget.
My only comment is regarding the total amount. If I'm not mistaken, the sum of the selected applications comes to 4,108,200 ARB, while the amount requested is 4M. This detail needs to be adjusted.
I agree with increasing the budget, we need innovative Stylus projects. It's also great to hear that so many builders applied, running out of a budget in this case is definitely a good "problem" to have (better than seeing low interest from builders).
Also, I agree with @JoJo to not extend the application window, because this may lead to the budget shortage again.
Why this specific amount in ARB and/or projects? While I understand the reasoning, why not a shorter list and lower amount (as the current version doubles the original budget).
Thank you for your proposal, seeing so many applications means that Stylus is very popular and will add a lot of work, but selecting the best projects to fund will be good for Arbitrum. There are a few questions and suggestions about the proposal for additional funding of 4 million ARB.
Is it possible to increase the funding by 4 million ARB this time? We have already approved 5 million ARBs, but the total amount of applications is as high as 31.92 million ARBs, which means that even with this additional 4 million ARBs, it is still far from being able to satisfy all the applications. The demand for applications far exceeds the budget, will there be further additions in the future?
How will the funds be utilized and how will the return be measured? How will DAO measure the input-output ratio of the additional 4 million ARB?
What are the success criteria for the option programs? How to evaluate their real contribution to the Arbitrum ecosystem?
It is suggested to set up a “transparent tracking mechanism for the use of project funds”.
For projects with additional funds, DAO should request quarterly progress reports to ensure that the funds are utilized appropriately.Evaluate the actual progress of certain projects. If the progress lags behind or fails to meet expectations, there should be a mechanism for withdrawing or adjusting the funds rather than releasing the funds unconditionally.
Why this specific amount in ARB and/or projects? While I understand the reasoning, why not a shorter list and lower amount (as the current version doubles the original budget).
for most applications, both in this list and in the approved one, we already did negotiate the budget.
Are these the only projects that are worthy of funding in this initial cohort? What was the cut-off criteria?
This is a bit more complext to answer. All projects were evaluated based on the tracks; if not in the track, as open application, in term of dapp vs infra vs other. We naturally did tend to cluster application by theme, ie: cache managers for example, for which we had several applications, and decided to move forward a smaller subset to avoid too many overlaps. For projects that were unique, we moved toward an approach of utility, with the advise of the most technical part of the committee (OCL, OZ) related to what we collectively think brings most value to Stylus 6 months - 1 year down the road. Finally, specific dApp from strong team were also approved.
As we don’t have access to the rubric, it would be helpful to have a better insight of what were the factors that generate the current proposal.
As far as I know a lot are loaded in the questbook page, and some others we are currently loading.
Without increasing the budget, this proposal could only fund 17/147 projects. If the proposal to increase it passes, we expect to double that to at least 34+ projects, right? @JoJo, do you think the new budget will cover high-funding applications that were left out?
Without increasing the budget, this proposal could only fund 17/147 projects. If the proposal to increase it passes, we expect to double that to at least 34+ projects, right? @JoJo, do you think the new budget will cover high-funding applications that were left out?
The extention of 4M would be to specifically approve the following applications:
RFP Track
Rationale and a summary of each applicant’s proposed scope can be found in this document.
Now, since most are asking, let's say the dao approved 4M extention but also wants a new open process. What would likely happen is the following
Hope this clarifies the pitfall of just opening a second track versus approving the extention. The two things are not mutually exclusive btw, but please take in consideration that this is a push for a new technology, and giving some time to see how the current investments pan out is likely the best approach.
I have a question about the forum post itself:
In the wording, it seems that there is no opening for suggestions of going through a different path (like others suggested). Is that correct?
So my other questions are related to the format:
I have a question about the forum post itself:
In the wording, it seems that there is no opening for suggestions of going through a different path (like others suggested). Is that correct?
So my other questions are related to the format:
The following list of applicants are the ones that come with a strong recommendation from the committee and to reiterate were unable to be accepted due to budget constraints.
Why this specific amount in ARB and/or projects? While I understand the reasoning, why not a shorter list and lower amount (as the current version doubles the original budget).
Or, as we're proposing changing the value, why not a larger amount?
It is important to note that the decision to include the above applicants is based on the finalized version of their submission that was reviewed during the grading period.
Are these the only projects that are worthy of funding in this initial cohort? What was the cut-off criteria?
While there are many more strong applications, the recommended list scored especially high during the review process and are ones that the committee is confident have the potential to provide value to the Arbitrum and Stylus ecosystems.
As we don't have access to the rubric, it would be helpful to have a better insight of what were the factors that generate the current proposal.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
This proposal makes a strong case for increasing the Stylus Sprint budget. We appreciate the effort the committee has put into selecting high-potential projects despite receiving so many applications. Stylus is definitely a key advantage for Arbitrum, and funding strong teams will benefit the ecosystem.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
This proposal makes a strong case for increasing the Stylus Sprint budget. We appreciate the effort the committee has put into selecting high-potential projects despite receiving so many applications. Stylus is definitely a key advantage for Arbitrum, and funding strong teams will benefit the ecosystem.
The recommended list is the strong applications that if stalled for another round of application could equally harm the growth of Stylus. The moat of Stylus is paramount and we shall strive to let more teams build on it.
Being an applicant to one of the RFP, we have seen the demand for this program and this has come because of the right marketing of the program. Repeating this entire process when weighed against time is more costlier than allowing the budget extension. That said, we have one question that could help bring more clarity to the process.
the recommended list scored especially high during the review process and are ones that the committee is confident have the potential to provide value to the Arbitrum and Stylus ecosystems.
Since the selection process was based on structured evaluations as mentioned in the Stylus Sprint grading rubric, would it be possible to share the applicant scores? The rationale has already been shared, and reviewing the scores as well would help delegates and community members understand how these projects were prioritized over others.
Irrespective of the logistical challenge of adding the scores for each application we support extension of the budget to support the projects that will add value to the Arbitrum and Stylus ecosystems.
(P.S. - Lampros DAO applied for the Stylus Sprint program for the GUI for the Stylus Cache Manager RFP, [MVP] but our application was rejected. We are also not mentioned in the recommended applications list. This means we have no conflict of interest in supporting the budget extension for the program as a delegate.)
We'd like to show our support to the newly allocated budgets because we believe Stylus is a critical technological advantage that Arbitrum ecosystem has and it's vital to encourage prominent developers to build great tools/products through the program like this Sprint campaign.
Just to be clarified: we haven't reviewed all the applications in details, but does the committee review the size of the requested ARB for each application and conclude no need to reduce the scope of each app to minimize the size of the exceeding budget to be allocated? The listed applications seem all promising, but their requested asks are not small. Also, the total sum is 80% more than the original ask, which is a significant difference.
But…
I think this should only be done if there is a new application period for more projects to apply.
But…
I think this should only be done if there is a new application period for more projects to apply.
If we open applications again, I’m sure we will get projects that are even better than these already selected ones, that would score higher. It feels unfair for projects waiting for the opportunity, to see more funding being deployed, that they don’t even have a chance to try to get.
I don't know if it's the right way to frame it.
First, the submission period just recently closed: whoever wanted to apply, most likely did, as it's testified by the 150 applications received.
Second, as the name suggest, this was a "sprint", a way to bootstrap with strength a new technology, stylus. All the applications approved, and potentially this second subset, will definitely give a bit boost to other projects that want to fork, build on top, use the tools etc. But now we have to wait for these application to develop and bear their fruit. Remember, we are talking about mostly high funding application in this program; for smaller app, we still have the D.A.O. grant program that will launch in a few weeks that will also support stylus.
Agree!
But...
I think this should only be done if there is a new application period for more projects to apply.
If we open applications again, I'm sure we will get projects that are even better than these already selected ones, that would score higher. It feels unfair for projects waiting for the opportunity, to see more funding being deployed, that they don't even have a chance to try to get.
Thank you for your proposal, seeing so many applications means that Stylus is very popular and will add a lot of work, but selecting the best projects to fund will be good for Arbitrum. There are a few questions and suggestions about the proposal for additional funding of 4 million ARB.
Is it possible to increase the funding by 4 million ARB this time? We have already approved 5 million ARBs, but the total amount of applications is as high as 31.92 million ARBs, which means that even with this additional 4 million ARBs, it is still far from being able to satisfy all the applications. The demand for applications far exceeds the budget, will there be further additions in the future?
How will the funds be utilized and how will the return be measured? How will DAO measure the input-output ratio of the additional 4 million ARB?
What are the success criteria for the option programs? How to evaluate their real contribution to the Arbitrum ecosystem?
It is suggested to set up a “transparent tracking mechanism for the use of project funds”.
For projects with additional funds, DAO should request quarterly progress reports to ensure that the funds are utilized appropriately.Evaluate the actual progress of certain projects. If the progress lags behind or fails to meet expectations, there should be a mechanism for withdrawing or adjusting the funds rather than releasing the funds unconditionally.
Why this specific amount in ARB and/or projects? While I understand the reasoning, why not a shorter list and lower amount (as the current version doubles the original budget).
for most applications, both in this list and in the approved one, we already did negotiate the budget.
Are these the only projects that are worthy of funding in this initial cohort? What was the cut-off criteria?
This is a bit more complext to answer. All projects were evaluated based on the tracks; if not in the track, as open application, in term of dapp vs infra vs other. We naturally did tend to cluster application by theme, ie: cache managers for example, for which we had several applications, and decided to move forward a smaller subset to avoid too many overlaps. For projects that were unique, we moved toward an approach of utility, with the advise of the most technical part of the committee (OCL, OZ) related to what we collectively think brings most value to Stylus 6 months - 1 year down the road. Finally, specific dApp from strong team were also approved.
As we don’t have access to the rubric, it would be helpful to have a better insight of what were the factors that generate the current proposal.
As far as I know a lot are loaded in the questbook page, and some others we are currently loading.
Without increasing the budget, this proposal could only fund 17/147 projects. If the proposal to increase it passes, we expect to double that to at least 34+ projects, right? @JoJo, do you think the new budget will cover high-funding applications that were left out?
Without increasing the budget, this proposal could only fund 17/147 projects. If the proposal to increase it passes, we expect to double that to at least 34+ projects, right? @JoJo, do you think the new budget will cover high-funding applications that were left out?
The extention of 4M would be to specifically approve the following applications:
RFP Track
Rationale and a summary of each applicant’s proposed scope can be found in this document.
Now, since most are asking, let's say the dao approved 4M extention but also wants a new open process. What would likely happen is the following
Hope this clarifies the pitfall of just opening a second track versus approving the extention. The two things are not mutually exclusive btw, but please take in consideration that this is a push for a new technology, and giving some time to see how the current investments pan out is likely the best approach.
I have a question about the forum post itself:
In the wording, it seems that there is no opening for suggestions of going through a different path (like others suggested). Is that correct?
So my other questions are related to the format:
I have a question about the forum post itself:
In the wording, it seems that there is no opening for suggestions of going through a different path (like others suggested). Is that correct?
So my other questions are related to the format:
The following list of applicants are the ones that come with a strong recommendation from the committee and to reiterate were unable to be accepted due to budget constraints.
Why this specific amount in ARB and/or projects? While I understand the reasoning, why not a shorter list and lower amount (as the current version doubles the original budget).
Or, as we're proposing changing the value, why not a larger amount?
It is important to note that the decision to include the above applicants is based on the finalized version of their submission that was reviewed during the grading period.
Are these the only projects that are worthy of funding in this initial cohort? What was the cut-off criteria?
While there are many more strong applications, the recommended list scored especially high during the review process and are ones that the committee is confident have the potential to provide value to the Arbitrum and Stylus ecosystems.
As we don't have access to the rubric, it would be helpful to have a better insight of what were the factors that generate the current proposal.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
This proposal makes a strong case for increasing the Stylus Sprint budget. We appreciate the effort the committee has put into selecting high-potential projects despite receiving so many applications. Stylus is definitely a key advantage for Arbitrum, and funding strong teams will benefit the ecosystem.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
This proposal makes a strong case for increasing the Stylus Sprint budget. We appreciate the effort the committee has put into selecting high-potential projects despite receiving so many applications. Stylus is definitely a key advantage for Arbitrum, and funding strong teams will benefit the ecosystem.
The recommended list is the strong applications that if stalled for another round of application could equally harm the growth of Stylus. The moat of Stylus is paramount and we shall strive to let more teams build on it.
Being an applicant to one of the RFP, we have seen the demand for this program and this has come because of the right marketing of the program. Repeating this entire process when weighed against time is more costlier than allowing the budget extension. That said, we have one question that could help bring more clarity to the process.
the recommended list scored especially high during the review process and are ones that the committee is confident have the potential to provide value to the Arbitrum and Stylus ecosystems.
Since the selection process was based on structured evaluations as mentioned in the Stylus Sprint grading rubric, would it be possible to share the applicant scores? The rationale has already been shared, and reviewing the scores as well would help delegates and community members understand how these projects were prioritized over others.
Irrespective of the logistical challenge of adding the scores for each application we support extension of the budget to support the projects that will add value to the Arbitrum and Stylus ecosystems.
(P.S. - Lampros DAO applied for the Stylus Sprint program for the GUI for the Stylus Cache Manager RFP, [MVP] but our application was rejected. We are also not mentioned in the recommended applications list. This means we have no conflict of interest in supporting the budget extension for the program as a delegate.)
We'd like to show our support to the newly allocated budgets because we believe Stylus is a critical technological advantage that Arbitrum ecosystem has and it's vital to encourage prominent developers to build great tools/products through the program like this Sprint campaign.
Just to be clarified: we haven't reviewed all the applications in details, but does the committee review the size of the requested ARB for each application and conclude no need to reduce the scope of each app to minimize the size of the exceeding budget to be allocated? The listed applications seem all promising, but their requested asks are not small. Also, the total sum is 80% more than the original ask, which is a significant difference.
But…
I think this should only be done if there is a new application period for more projects to apply.
But…
I think this should only be done if there is a new application period for more projects to apply.
If we open applications again, I’m sure we will get projects that are even better than these already selected ones, that would score higher. It feels unfair for projects waiting for the opportunity, to see more funding being deployed, that they don’t even have a chance to try to get.
I don't know if it's the right way to frame it.
First, the submission period just recently closed: whoever wanted to apply, most likely did, as it's testified by the 150 applications received.
Second, as the name suggest, this was a "sprint", a way to bootstrap with strength a new technology, stylus. All the applications approved, and potentially this second subset, will definitely give a bit boost to other projects that want to fork, build on top, use the tools etc. But now we have to wait for these application to develop and bear their fruit. Remember, we are talking about mostly high funding application in this program; for smaller app, we still have the D.A.O. grant program that will launch in a few weeks that will also support stylus.
Agree!
But...
I think this should only be done if there is a new application period for more projects to apply.
If we open applications again, I'm sure we will get projects that are even better than these already selected ones, that would score higher. It feels unfair for projects waiting for the opportunity, to see more funding being deployed, that they don't even have a chance to try to get.
