Summary
In line with the RFC and detailed discussion post to form the Treasure Arbitrum Representative Council (ARC), the Treasure core council would like to stand up a community-led group comprising members of the Treasure and Arbitrum community to enable more proactive monitoring, engagement, and participation in Arbitrum governance initiatives. This will allow Treasure core contributors to remain focused on ecosystem growth at Treasure while ensuring Arbitrum and Treasure can both win together.
The shortlist of proposed council members has now been selected by the core council and will now progress through the Treasure DAO governance process, beginning with an informal temperature check and community discussion.
Rationale
Please see this link for detailed rationale as provided in the RFC.
Proposal
First, we were honoured to see over 30 quality applications submitted to join the Treasure ARC. The calibre of the applicants was impressive and they covered a broad spectrum of different experiences and vantage points within gaming, the Arbitrum ecosystem, blockchain/protocol development, DAO governance, and web3 overall. Narrowing down this list to a handful of shortlisted members was a herculean task and not at all personal. It’s important to note that the proposed list of members does not detract from the qualifications of each applicant, and while we would have liked to suggest each and every one of you to join the council, we needed to narrow it down.
Given the difficulty and the desire to allow for greater community involvement and input, we have amended the number of proposed community seats from four (4) to five (5) for a grand total of 8 council members.
Council Composition
- Ali Husain - early and active Treasure community member from September 2021, game developer, technologist, and Founder of Forgotten Machine (Ruffion Reborn and Into the Dungeons) (see application)
- CJ Bzdewka - early and active Treasure community member from January 2022, council member of LifeVerse (see application)
- Smol Phil - early and active Treasure community member from September 2021, highly involved in Treasure DAO governance having led TIP-26, web3 gaming angel investor (see application)
- Jona* - early and active Treasure community member from September 2021, Founder of Realm, 15+ years of software engineering experience working in big tech and startups (see application)
- Pepperoni Jo3 - Co-Founder of r3gen Finance (Treasure’s financial operations service provider), Head of Governance, Community & Change at Index Coop, Advisor to several web3 NFT, DeFi and DAO Tooling organizations (Squid, amberfi, Coordinape) (see application)
- **Karel Vuong **- Co-Founder of Treasure, angel investor, former VC and Chief of Staff, and startup executive
- **John Patten **- Co-Founder of Treasure and Founder of Smol
- **Peita Lin **- Economist at Treasure
** Note: While Jona’s application was a late submission outside of the application window for ARC, the core council has been in frequent contact with him throughout its duration, working together to support Jona and Realm’s Arbitrum Short-Term Incentive Program (STIP) grant proposal. As the vote to form ARC is going to a broader DAO vote by the community, we invite thoughts and feedback from the community. As the Treasure core council, we believe Jona would be a strong addition to the council given his recent experience working directly with the Arbitrum ecosystem and as an upstanding builder within Treasure.*
Council Selection Criteria
As indicated in the RFC, diverse skill sets and experiences were prioritized for members of this council. We valued the following qualifications:
- exposure to both the Treasure and Arbitrum ecosystem (to ensure council members can firmly represent the best interests of Treasure while keeping the broader Arbitrum context in mind),
- strong communication skills and proven stakeholder management ability, and
- a background in one or more relevant areas (governance, developer relations, game development, web3 grants and more).
Without going into each applicant individually, we felt the proposed shortlist of council members covered each of the bases that we were looking for as builders (within and outside of Treasure), active DAO participants (across Treasure and Arbitrum), had a mix of both technical and non-technical profiles, and who could serve as important stewards representing Treasure within Arbitrum alongside the core Treasure team.
Role
The council should take on a more proactive role discussing, designing, implementing, sponsoring, and voting on various Arbitrum DAO initiatives and proposals. Individual council member responsibilities should include monitoring AIPs, engaging with AIP authors, summarizing AIPs for community review, and organizing temperature check votes within the Treasure community to draw consensus opinions from community debate.
The ARC formation process will be informal at first: questions regarding topics such as term limits, election processes, and other parameters will be refined over time with Treasure core contributors on the council retaining final decision-making over proposal voting, council selection, and related processes while we refine this model.
Any comments made by council members represent their personal opinions rather than the official stance of Treasure as a delegate which will be indicated through voting and official statements to the community. Council members will also be expected to refrain from polemics or grandstanding while they serve in their role. Their primary role is to serve as governance liaisons rather than influencers.
Arbitrum Delegation Power
At the time of posting, Treasure has 27.6M voting power within Arbitrum DAO delegated by over 33k ARB holders. This is held within Treasure’s DAO multisig with the address: 0x0eb5b03c0303f2f47cd81d7be4275af8ed347576.
As part of the formation of the council, ARC should have complete oversight over the use of Treasure’s ARB voting power. At the same time though, ARC members should not have access to the DAO treasury and we should not add them as new owners to the DAO treasury multisig for security and treasury management reasons. It is also not recommended that Treasure undergo an exercise of requesting the community to change their delegate from the current address to a new address and multisig owned by ARC.
To resolve this, we have worked with several members of the Arbitrum and DAO tooling community to come up with a solution through the use of the Gnosis Guild Zodiac Roles Module and Hats Protocol that will enable us to maintain everything as is but allow signing rights to make use of the ARB voting power through a newly formed multisig comprised of ARC members.
Compensation
Excluding all Treasure core contributors, each member on the council should be remunerated with 3,000 ARB per month for their efforts. As the role of the council and council members will evolve over time, the Treasure core contributors should retain the right to adjust the compensation structure of council members throughout the six month term. In instances where there is a change in compensation, the Treasure community will be notified of this adjustment. This ARB will be drawn from Treasure’s original DAO airdrop which has a balance of 6M ARB remaining following TIP-28. Should a council member decide to step down from ARC, the sitting Treasure core contributors reserve the right to appoint a replacement.
For the avoidance of doubt, each council member (excluding Treasure core contributors) will have received 18,000 ARB by the end of the initial 6 month period. Accounting for 5 community council members, this will mean a total of 90,000 ARB will be distributed by the end of the 6 months. Payments will be process on a semi-monthly basis in accordance with Treasure’s standard payment schedule and will be managed by the r3gen Finance team, Treasure’s financial operations service provider.
Term
The council should serve an interim term of six (6) months, beginning from the date and time of council establishment. Establishing a framework and structure for future Council elections will be part of the remit of the Treasure Community Council in its first term.
Polling Period
The polling process begins now and will end on October 24, 2023 at 3:48pm EST (see local time). If quorum is reached, a Snapshot vote will be put up shortly thereafter.