[ARBITRUM] Unifying Arbitrum’s Mission, Vision, Purpose (MVP)

Timeline of Updates:

Oct 24 - MVP posted Oct 30 - Mission statement updated Nov 1 - Proposal put on hold while seeking final feedback. Dec 9 - Purpose statement updated. Dec 12 - Will proceed to Snapshot.

Non-Constitutional

Abstract

Following extensive conversations with stakeholders and active delegates, and feedback on our initial mission/vision/goals proposal, Entropy Advisors has decided to modify our approach for aligning the Arbitrum DAO on its end state goals and the more granular strategy through which these will be reached. This approach can be distilled into three separate phases:

1. Achieving wide-reaching agreement on why the Arbitrum DAO exists and what it is trying to accomplish. In other words, what is the Arbitrum DAO’s mission, vision, and purpose. The MVP is purposefully simple and unambiguous such that it is absolutely clear what the DAO is ultimately working towards, with additional complexity only introduced when strategic goals to reach the end state are created. Without an agreed upon north star, it is impossible to evaluate how one-off strategies and initiatives assist the DAO to reach its goals, simply because there is currently a wide set of different opinions on what the DAO is striving to achieve. Additionally, most—if not all—initiatives and strategies are evaluated in isolation without considering how they play into wider frameworks. While the MVP might feel too abstract, its purpose is to enable more complexity to be stacked on top of it through iterative efforts.

2. Once the DAO’s end state goals have been solidified, anyone will have the opportunity to propose a strategy matrix made up of 12- and 24-month focus areas for the DAO through an open process named Strategic Objective Setting (SOS). These areas should have well-established guidelines for tangible implementation and what they aim to accomplish, as well as only have one purpose—optimally moving the DAO towards its end state. This is the step that will allow the DAO to refocus its attention on the most critical deliverables and judge how one-off initiatives fit into its short- to medium-term priorities. Entropy Advisors is working on the SOS proposal in tandem with the MVP, and it will be posted as a subsequent separate proposal with the DAO choosing one matrix of strategies as the winner.

3. Combined with financial forecasting, the SOS will enable the DAO to budget itself for the next 12/24 months by earmarking capital to each strategic focus area ratified in step 2. Arguably, the most important aspect of this step is for the DAO to align on how profitable/loss-making it wants to be during the coming year(s). Lastly, with clearly defined strategic focus areas, it should also become simpler for the DAO to begin marketing its efforts since, e.g., a clear identity, as well as narratives, can be built around each of the DAO’s focus areas.

When it comes to this proposal, we’ve strived to distill numerous key stakeholders’ and delegates’ thoughts and ideas into a cohesive mission, vision, and purpose for the Arbitrum DAO, presented below. It’ll naturally be impossible to align all DAO participants on the DAO’s end state goals because of the ecosystem’s diversity. However, for this exercise to be successful, the passed Mission, Vision, and Purpose must have buy-in from a clear majority of the DAO and cannot be unilaterally pushed forward.

After looking into other ecosystems, we concluded that Lido currently has the best-suited mechanism to strategically define objectives in a decentralized and efficient manner, which is why we are striving to implement a program for Arbitrum that takes influence from Lido. We thank Lido DAO contributors who set a great example of how decentralized governance should go about this exercise.

Call to Action

The Arbitrum DAO’s Guiding Principles are as Follows:

Purpose (Meaning): Defend and guide the Arbitrum ecosystem.

Mission (Action): Empower people with the freedom to build their best onchain world.

Vision (Aspiration): Arbitrum is home to the universal shift onchain.

Motivation + Rationale

The current lack of defined mission, vision, purpose, and strategic objectives today has created a notable, twofold inefficiency in the DAO:

1. Each organization operating in the DAO must extrapolate for itself what it should work towards that contributes the most value to Arbitrum. Questions arise such as:

• Should my organization work toward enabling operational sustainability and painting a picture of ARB as a productive asset?
• Growth of the technology stack: i. Orbit? ii. Stylus? iii. Arbitrum One?
• What role should public goods have within Arbitrum?

With a lack of clear strategic focus areas, being an effective DAO operator becomes difficult. Redundant and conflicting work turn into a reality due to a lack of alignment and organizational structure.

2. The absence of concrete goals has made it challenging for the DAO to judge the effectiveness of initiatives. A system has been created where all the DAO can effectively do is judge “Did this organization work hard” but lacks the ability to judge “Did this organization do a good job moving Arbitrum forward towards its end state goals.”

Additionally, a clear vision is required for the DAO to pursue its own brand and marketing strategies. It is time to align on this vision. If Arbitrum DAO executes its mission successfully, what does Arbitrum’s place in the world look like? What are the ecosystem and its numerous contributors (the DAO and its programs, the Foundation, and development teams) working towards? What sets Arbitrum apart from competitors?

The goal of the MVP proposal is to align the DAO on the highest level of purpose, enabling the subsequent SOS to build on top of it and function as a framework through which delegates and key stakeholders can propose and choose a set of concrete short- and mid-term goals for Arbitrum DAO. This approach helps ease Entropy's concerns with our initial approach, where the proposal promised everything under the sun as it continually expanded with more (and sometimes conflicting) opinions into the mix. Additionally, we believe our original desire to set out on a 5-year plan left too much room for ambiguity without tangible steps to be taken.

Thus, the scope has been reduced. Even within the objectively high-level MVP proposal herein, there are still likely to be areas of contention, such as whether Arbitrum should align with Ethereum more closely, whether the DAO should put a greater emphasis on its flagship Arbitrum One product, and whether the delegates will actually feel empowered to use the MVP as a driving force for their actions.

The MVP will be the foundation for most actions taken by the Arbitrum DAO going forward, especially when it comes to short- to medium-term strategy setting and budgeting. It is a document that will help drive the DAO, protocol, token, and ecosystem into the foreseeable future and directly inform decisions surrounding new proposals and initiatives.

Diving In

Purpose (Meaning): Defend and guide the Arbitrum Ecosystem.

Driving Question: Why does Arbitrum DAO exist?

• Why is Arbitrum DAO developing all of the products and initiatives with the design decisions it is?

Answer: Arbitrum DAO’s purpose is to Defend and guide the Arbitrum Ecosystem.

Arbitrum is not just scaling tech, it scales L1s without concessions to censorship resistance, accessibility, decentralization, or security. A crucial component of the DAO’s existence is to defend these ideals. For its governed chains, Arbitrum DAO ensures that there is no single point of control, can eliminate rent-seeking intermediaries, and most importantly, users maintain control of their assets without trusting an entity. In order to defend Arbitrum into perpetuity, the DAO requires sustainable operations and funding mechanisms, which will be further expanded on in the Vision section below.

According to the blockchain trilemma, to scale and accommodate more throughput and users, L1s require trade-offs in terms of either security or decentralization. Making concessions to decentralization or security is not an option for Ethereum mainnet, leading to a chain that even with today’s limited number of onchain participants becomes prohibitively expensive for most users. Arbitrum DAO’s purpose, true to Vitalik’s [ro

... please visit link below to view full proposal

https://snapshot.org/#/arbitrumfoundation.eth/proposal/0xf5fdce242b85134153397754d25a43a49611a3e8a1c73b2e11a67e864c56e022