Establishing a DAO Events Budget for 2025

Abstract

To ensure Arbitrum’s continued presence at the industry’s most prominent events, and to enable the DAO to host in-person initiatives to accelerate collaboration and increase efficiency of operations, we (Entropy Advisors, the ADPC, and Disruption Joe) would like to earmark a budget for events for 2025 and take lead on running ongoing RFPs to satisfy the DAOs event demands. The 3 members of this group will lean on OCL and the Arbitrum Foundation to ensure that any events organized by the DAO are aligned with the broader ecosystem of contributors, work towards a unified message/brand, and are synergistic with events led by the Foundation and OCL.

Our proposed Events strategy should focus on 2 key categories:

1. Delegate Gatherings aimed at streamlining operations through in-person meetups such as a delegate retreat.
2. Ecosystem Growth Events to foster innovation and community engagement, ideally coinciding with other major crypto conferences (specifically ETHDenver, Bitcoin 2025: Las Vegas, EthCC, among other potential events) at the same location. These events can include, but are not limited to:

• Virtual hackathons
• Non-crypto conference presence (RustConf, CES, etc.)
• In-person hackathons
• Side events
• Sponsorships of major events
• Arbitrum Days around the world (not just EthCC)
• Educational workshops (Stylus & Orbit)

The selection of event provider(s) will follow a two-step process: Together with the ADPC and Disruption Joe, we will gauge community sentiment/attendance levels regarding certain events. If there is consensus to put on a certain event but there is no PM/event coordinator to lead the effort, the group will procure, select, and support service providers to make the vision a reality. It is highly likely the OCL or the Arbitrum Foundation will lead many of these events, which is made apparent by the preliminary schedule proposed below. Alternatively, if an events provider comes to the DAO with a proposal for an event that passes a Snapshot vote that garners at least 3% of the votable token supply with a simple majority For/Abstain, the funds for that proposal will come from the 2025 events budget brought forth in this proposal.

We propose the earmarking of $1.5M USD to fund this initiative, with any unused funds at the end of 2025 to be returned to the DAO treasury. 4M ARB will be sent to a Foundation-controlled address to be liquidated into stablecoins, with any excess ARB immediately returned to the DAO treasury and the stablecoins to an MSS-controlled address. The ADPC, Entropy, and Disruption Joe will be waiving payment to get this stood up, but we expect this initiative to fall under the OpCo once it becomes fully operational. We also envision a dedicated employee to lead the DAO’s event strategy within the OpCo, so this is more of an effort to get the ball rolling so we are properly prepared for 2025. We plan to have the OpCo established in mid 2025, and once an events coordinator is employed by this entity, the funds will be transferred to the OpCo while Entropy, the ADPC, and Disruption Joe will be relieved of their duties thereafter.

Motivation

Events play a crucial role in strengthening the Arbitrum community and brand, attracting more users and developers to the ecosystem, expediting DAO initiatives by facilitating in-person collaboration, and providing avenues for alliance with other partners within the industry. While the Questbook program has done an excellent job in ensuring the Arbitrum brand is represented at smaller conferences across multiple regions, the DAO does not currently have a dedicated plan or budget for events. Larger Arbitrum events, such as Arbitrum Day, are left to the Arbitrum Foundation or Offchain Labs to organize. The DAO certainly appreciates what the Foundation and OCL do on the events front, but the DAO should serve a complementary role – which if enabled – will maximize Arbitrum’s overall ability to grow a healthy ecosystem and capture network effects in our speed and flexibility for deployment.

There is significant value in aligning on the scope/timing of hackathons, GovHack-type events, and major events presence (such as EthCC, DevCon, etc). For example, Stylus represents one of the most significant software upgrades in Arbitrum’s history – it could be wise for the DAO to ensure a Stylus-focused hackathon is planned for 2025 in an effort to bring more developers into our ecosystem and to improve dev tooling/infra. In addition to ecosystem events, it is very important for delegates to meet up in person at a regular cadence. We see how much more we can accomplish in-person time and time again, and we believe the DAO could formulate and execute on a grander strategy if these delegate offsites were formally planned/coordinated.

Hosting events requires substantial upfront time and capital, typically involving 4-6 months of planning and $25-100k in down payments for venues, travel, accommodations, catering, and other expenses. Planning and funding events on a case-by-case basis are impractical due to the lead time and the lengthy DAO voting process. Recently, the DAO approved $309k to host an event at EthCC in Brussels. However, the proposal was not executed on-chain until approximately five weeks before the event. Hack Humanity, the entity behind the GovHack event, took on substantial risk by using its funds to secure a venue, caterers, and other necessities without a guarantee of DAO funding. Although Hack Humanity felt comfortable taking this risk due to previous collaboration with the DAO and assistance from Entropy Advisors, this upfront financial burden should not fall on service providers in the future. One off RFP processes would enable organizers to plan higher-quality events with the extra time & budget provided. Alternatively, any service provider can gauge DAO sentiment directly via snapshot, which will drastically reduce the burden of the Arbitrum DAO governance process put on service providers.

To ensure the Arbitrum DAO has the ability to represent itself at various events and to create new in-person experiences, we propose earmarking funds so this can be achieved in a streamlined manner. While we propose 3 core events in the section below, any DAO member can make a proposal to utilize these earmarked funds at any time. We are also happy to alter the below calendar in accordance with feedback received on the forum.

Proposed Industry Events for 2025, Q1&Q2

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The above events were chosen based on the need to bolster Arbitrum’s presence at the industry’s top events. As mentioned above, the Questbook program has done an excellent job at making sure Arbitrum has a presence at smaller events across the globe. To date (September 10th, 2024) the events track has funded event initiatives in the following regions: Latam (8), Africa (6), India (4), APAC (4), and Europe (2).

There are also ample opportunities to fund events in the back half of 2025 that align with Arbitrum’s strategic objectives (Ex. RustConf, GamesCon, Solana Breakpoint). However, with the expectation that a more comprehensive events strategy will be rolled up into OpCo upon the hiring of a full time events coordinator, we felt it was better suited to only establish a rough strategy for the first half of 2025 while leaving the door open for other service providers and community members to bring forth their own ideas.

ETHDenver - February

ETHDenver is an Ethereum centric conference that has one of the largest attendee lists of any event throughout 2025. Arbitrum has historically had a presence here, but we would like to partner with OCL to bolster the DAO’s representation. We envision a very large floor space at ETHDenver (see photo below of Near’s booth at ETHDenver in 2024 for inspiration), with plenty of room for Arbitrum projects to showcase their products, delegates and other DAO contributors to talk to people who are interested in getting involved, and an area for more technical folks to ask OCL questions about the Arbitrum roadmap and tech upgrades. Last year, Arbitrum had a smaller 10x20 or 20x20 floor space at ETHDenver, but this year we want to go bigger. OCL will lead the charge on this front, but the ADPC, Disruption Joe, and Entropy can assist as needed and funnel ideas from the community to their team.

<img height="407" width="624" alt="Screenshot 2024-08-22 at 1.15.50 PM" src="https://global.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/uploads/arbitrum1/original/2X/1/11b5cb68df2614f42437162176baa40b07

... please visit link below to view full proposal

https://tally.xyz/gov/arbitrum/proposal/83546392681388778220788629004310255202561156229718364611160970131196959784333