Summary

This proposal seeks DAO approval for John Kennedy, one of the two candidates nominated by the existing council to sit in the 2026 term. As a reminder, the existing AGV Council’s nominations are Tim Chang, with core competency in Venture Capital and Investments, and John Kennedy, with core Competency in Game Development and Go-To-Market Leader

Rationale

Building on the governance practice established with AGV and subsequently OpCo, which combined appointed and elected positions, this election proposes a hybrid approach for filling council seats.

Ensuring continuity of institutional knowledge across our oversight, advisory, and investment programs is critical for effective governance. Having experienced DAO representatives who understand our historical context and strategic direction, independent of the operational team hired to lead these initiatives, helps maintain stability during transitions and preserves organizational memory that might otherwise be lost.

To address this need, the existing AGV council has voted to nominate two candidates for continuity seats, subject to DAO reconfirmation prior to the election, with three additional seats open for a DAO-wide election.

Council Nomination: John Kennedy

Below are the extended details of the nominee for reconfirmation:

Role / Expertise

Game Development / Go-To-Market Leader

Bio

John, formerly Head of Product at AWS GameTech, left in 2023 to launch Actual AI—an engineering manager agent for software teams that provides guardrails for AI-powered software development. Actual AI has received venture funding from AlleyCorp, G2C ventures, OrangeDAO, Alchemist Accelerator, and Irregular Expressions.

At AWS, John successfully pitched the CEO on transforming Amazon’s Lumberyard into a cutting-edge open-source 3D game engine. He secured a team of over 100 top game engine developers to build Open 3D Engine (o3de.org), a modular, extensible, and high-performance 3D engine featuring a new renderer, visual scripting tool, and physics engine. Additionally, John launched and grew several high-revenue AWS services, enabling game developers to seamlessly serve hundreds of millions of players with capabilities for streaming, multiplayer servers, and cloud storage.

As a Core Partner at Underscore VC, John has advised numerous early-stage startups on product development and go-to-market strategies. His executive experience spans multiple high-growth startups, including Platform.sh and Acquia. John continues to mentor Series A-C startups, sharing his expertise in scaling businesses.

In 2024, John co-facilitated Arbitrum’s two GovHack events in collaboration with Hack Humanity at EthDenver and EthCC. Each event drew over 200 participants and resulted in the creation of 48 new governance proposals.

Major AGV Accomplishments

• Worked with the team extensively on the formation of the investment thesis, bringing deep gaming industry experience and over 20 years of experience building and marketing digital products.
• Guided the hiring process, including working on the evaluation rubrics, working with the team and recruiter on candidate triage, and interviewing most candidates.
• Mentored the team on operations, strategy, and growth, including bi-weekly sessions with the leadership team.
• Deep deal analysis on all deals that passed IC from the gaming and software development perspective.
• Met with candidate portfolio companies to vet leadership and technical expertise.
• Established relationships with partners and portfolio companies.

Why are you interested in serving on the AGV Council again?

“I’m excited about the 2nd gaming revolution that is coming to Arbitrum. We have now established the groundwork to execute on our thesis of building a vibrant gaming ecosystem of service providers, games, and gamers. I think we can build the Steam of web3 backed by Arbitrum.

It has been great to see AGV grow and put down roots. We now have the dream team that is going to blow up the industry. Gaming is in dire need of new channels for user acquisition and monetization. We are in the perfect position to take advantage of this need.

I can’t wait to dive in with the team, guiding portfolio companies on their way to success with GTM and operational expertise, building playbooks, and by connecting the AGV team with new partners who can extend our reach in gaming and AI.”

Timeline

An Introduction and Q&A Call was held via Google Meet on November 13th at 5pm UTC.

Each nominated candidate will undergo a separate confirmation Snapshot vote on Thursday, November 20th (this post).

Voting Options

This proposal will include the following voting options:

• For
• Against
• Abstain

Should FOR be the majority preference, and the combined FOR and ABSTAIN votes meet at least 3% of the total votable ARB supply, the respective candidate will be considered reconfirmed to the AGV council for the 2026 term.

If this nomination is vetoed by the DAO, that seat will then be added to the Election Process, and the nominee will be automatically entered as an applicant for the Election. If a nominee is vetoed and added to the Election, the number of open seats would increase from three (3) to either four (4) or five (5) seats.

https://snapshot.org/#/arbitrumfoundation.eth/proposal/0x0a3a7b84c7c01cc0feb8a7fad662cbf1f5aeb1b089b205ce412e2bc01d99c504