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ArbitrumDAO | Grants - Questbook
Recorded: Oct. 10, 2023 Duration: 0:53:49Space Recording
Full Transcription
Awesome.
So, yeah, I'd love to just get the grants program started.
So, Eli or Anna, whoever is hosting this, do you guys want to just get us started now?
Hello.
Yeah, for sure.
I'm Anna, by the way.
I'm very excited to be hosting this AMA with you guys.
The Arbitrum DAO has been doing the Arbitrum DAO has been doing the Arbitrum DAO and we'd love to see this growth and all the initiatives that have been made in the Arbitrum DAO in general and for the community and for the growth in general for Arbitrum.
So, yeah, so, yeah, very cool to see.
And maybe we can start with you, Srinivas, and maybe we can start with you, Srinivas, and maybe we can start with you, Srinivas.
Yeah, for sure. Hey, guys. Hey, everyone. Thanks, everyone for coming. Thank you, Anna and the Arbitrum Foundation for hosting us in this space.
So, I'm Srinivas. I am the program manager for the grants program on Questbook and with me are the four domain allocators who were elected by the DAO members, the delegates.
So, yeah, and I'll let them introduce themselves. So, maybe we can get started with Jojo.
Yeah, sure. Thank you, everybody, for being here and Jojo. I work full-time at John's DAO, which is an active Arbitrum protocol and also contribute to Aura Finance.
And I was elected for the domain new protocol ideas for the Questbook grant program.
Awesome. Now, Katen, if you can take it up.
Yeah. Hey, everyone. Some of you might know me already from the DAO's governance. I'm the represent for CITLATAM, which is basically a platform of delegates from Latin America, the one representing Arbitrum.
Apart from that, I also do legal stuff for Kali. And currently, I'm doing the education, community growth, and events domain for Questbook.
Awesome. Adam?
Hey, everyone. Glad to be here. Hype that everyone's here to listen in.
So, my name's Fluke, or Adam. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Knights of the Ether.
We're a Web3 gaming ecosystem that's been building on Arbitrum specifically since April of last year.
So, really excited that I was elected to be the gaming domain allocator for this project and working with Questbook.
I think we've got some really cool applications already in the first, like, you know, four or five days.
It's been pretty amazing to see so far.
So, I think it just goes to show that there's a lot of interest and excitement around the Arbitrum DAO right now.
I'm just happy to be playing a part in that.
Awesome. And Juwandi?
Hi, guys. I was at the elevator, so my signal just cut off for a sec.
Hey, guys. My name is Juan Diego. You guys can call me Juwandi for short.
I co-founded, and I still am on an operating role at Alcancía.
Alcancía is a be-your-own-bank infrastructure for the 300 million under-banked Latin Americans.
We did not build it on top of Arbitrum. We actually used Polygon.
And I've also worked with other Layer 2 projects, such as WorldCoin.
I currently lead the developer tooling domain allocator on Arbitrum.
And, yeah, I'm just excited to be here with you guys and discuss anything regarding the domain allocation and the Questbook grants program.
So, yes.
Fantastic. I think we are all on.
And, yeah, it's very cool to get to know more about you, for sure, who's behind the Arbitrum DAO building, building Arbitrum in general.
So, cool. Thank you for your intros.
And maybe we can start, like, giving a brief intro about the Arbitrum grants program on Questbook.
I'm wondering, like, if you can share to the community a short recall about what is this grant program on Questbook?
Like, what is it? And also, what is the difference to other programs?
Yep. Awesome. Thank you, Anna.
So, to end short, the Arbitrum grants program on Questbook, we call it the Domain Delegated Allocation Program.
So, that's where you've seen our four.
We initially started out with these four domains, gaming, education, dev tooling, and new protocol ideas.
And we felt that these were, like, four important domains for Arbitrum in general.
And if we could do a specific grants program that's surrounded around each of these domains.
So, what we did then is get the Arbitrum DAO to vote on their domain allocators for each of these domains.
So, you know, these are, like, experts in their domains who got allocated to take responsibility for the entire program, for the entirety of the six-month program.
And that's who you see with us here, JoJo, Kat, and Juan D, and Fluke.
And that's, in essence, so each domain has around 200K ARB ready for getting funded for, you know, any number of projects that do apply.
So, for reference to the six-month program, so no rush.
You guys do have a lot of time to apply.
It's nothing to rush immediately by.
There's no – I've been seeing a lot of questions around deadlines.
So, there's no rush there.
So, we all have time.
But, yeah, the overall expectation is we'd get – each domain has around 200K ARB.
So, on average, we might see some 20, 25 projects that get accepted through each domain.
And, yeah, the way we kind of differentiate it is, yeah, we kind of elect these experts, basically, these domain allocators that we have to lead it.
And we think that is the most efficient and most – the most easiest way to run a grants program with the highest impact.
Because, you know, these folks know what they're leading, and they've done this already themselves.
So, this is the best way to go about it.
So, yeah, I would love to know if you have any more questions.
Yeah, for sure.
I want to highlight that everything started with a proposal in the Arbitrum DAO forum.
So, yeah, I would like to know, like, what steps have been completed so far, and what are the milestones that you have reached with this grant program?
Yeah, for sure.
So, we started out with asking for this grants program, and that got voted in by the delegates.
Next step was to get the voting done for the – get the nominations done for the domain allocators.
So, we had a lot of applicants, around some – I think 30 applicants overall for – together for all the four domains.
Then we had our domain allocator voting sessions going on, which got completed two weeks ago, with the resulting in Jojo, Kat, and Hwandi, and Adam voted in.
And then we launched last week on Questbook.
We went live, and in an amazing turn of events, we've already seen 40 – almost 40 – proposals posted for Arbitrum across the four domains, which is quite a big number.
And the quality of these projects that I've posted so far that I've seen are absolutely amazing.
But I think, you know, the domain allocators are better folks to talk about this when we get to the domain insights section of this call.
Yeah, for sure. It's been great to see, like – and as you mentioned, like, here with us, there are the representatives of each domain, which is education, community and events, gaming, dev tooling on Arbitrum 1 and Nova, and new protocols ideas.
Yes. I would like to ask you, Sergit, like, what's next now? What are the following steps to –
Yeah. So, it's pretty – the first step for anyone who's interested in applying is to put your proposal up on Questbook under the preferred domain.
But before you do, just put your proposal in, I would ask everyone to read the RFPs that have been carefully curated by the domain allocators.
It took them quite a while to, you know, construct what a good request for grants would look like.
So, it'd be amazing if everyone, before you apply, look into it and apply based on what you see.
And because that is what will help you get the best chances of, you know, getting the grants directly.
So, yeah, that's pretty much it. Next step is just folks go in, apply.
And if you have any doubts, of course, shoot me a DM or shoot any of the domain allocators a DM.
We're all open for our conversations, and we have pretty good turnaround times, if I'd say so.
Great. Yeah. Thank you so much for putting this information together.
And, yeah, here you have it, Arbinauts.
This is a call to action for you if you are building something related to education or gaming or dev tooling or new protocols, ideas.
You have to go to the link that I just pinned here in this AMA.
And then go to the RFPs that the team has been putting together for you to have a great application.
And, yeah, maybe it's time to go and talk about each domain.
So, yeah, maybe we can start talking about the gaming domain.
Here we have Adam that is going to give us an overlook about this domain.
So, yeah, Adam, I would like to ask you, like, if you can help us to understand the specific domain better and what type of projects or initiatives should apply to the gaming domain.
Yeah, for sure. Thank you.
So, I think gaming is an interesting spot for Arbitrum, you know, Web3 Gaming right now.
I think there's a lot of maybe chains that have attracted larger gaming user bases, the Immutables, the Polygons, the Ronins, the Avalanches.
And there's more of kind of a gaming culture on those chains.
And I think Arbitrum, you know, initially over the past two years, just under two years, has attracted more of kind of a DeFi-centric user base because of just, you know, such the obvious benefits of being on an L2 and working in Arbitrum.
So, I think we're at this interesting spot where there's less than 50 games building on Arbitrum right now.
And so, it's still nascent, but there's a very active core community.
You know, shout out TreasureDAO, the kind of decentralized publisher that Knights of the Ether, my gaming ecosystem, is built on top of.
They've done a lot to kind of foster this NFT and gaming ecosystem on Arbitrum.
And now it's really kind of blooming out of that seed that they've planted.
So, at the moment, it's kind of a chicken or the egg situation where do we go towards more infrastructure to attract more games?
Or do we go towards more games to maybe attract more infrastructure builders and get the flywheel turning either way?
And I chose specifically to open up the Gaming Domain Grants program for mostly indie games.
And I did this because I felt like we could go either way, infrastructure or game apps.
But my expertise is in games and working with games and seeing indie studios and how they can progress and bring on users and grow their market share.
And so, I felt I would be best suited to make decisions in my specific area of expertise there because I'm not as connected to kind of the gaming infrastructure business side of things.
So, that was my reasoning as why I think indie games are kind of the move here.
And I've got a pretty long tweet on my profile somewhere.
But also, if you were to read through my RFP, which is linked up at the top, I go into this into great detail.
But there are some amazing breakout indie games in Web2 Gaming, you know, that were built by teams of one, two, three, five people on small budgets, you know, in a year or two years.
The kind of ROI on, like, time and money invested on indie games has, like, a really high ceiling.
And so, being able to spread this 200,000 Arbitrum across, you know, 10, 15, maybe 20 indie studios or single indie developers, I think gets us a lot of bang for our buck.
Because it is kind of a small grant allocation size in the, you know, in the kind of context of things, you know, with a 50 million stip up right now at the moment.
So, I wanted to see how we could get the most bang for our buck there and incentivize incubating indie studios and indie games on Arbitrum.
Because I think if we get a more and more inclusive space of all sorts of genres, you know, from dating sims to first-person shooters, whatever it may be that fits.
And is, you know, aligned with building something that makes sense in Web3.
Maybe a dating sim isn't that. I don't know. Who am I to say?
But I think there's a lot of opportunity there to kind of foster this culture of indie gaming on Arbitrum.
We don't need to compete with a AAA shooter on Avalanche.
We can create this really cool culture and community-driven aspect of indie gaming with all these genres.
And I think that's so in line with the ethos of Arbitrum, right?
It's like we're all building it together.
The DAO is in charge of, like, this huge, you know, vault of Arbitrum tokens.
And there's just been this kind of groundswell of the community coming together, whether it's around DeFi protocols, NFT projects, games, and doing it in this kind of community-transparent, co-creative manner.
And so, I felt like indie games was such an important and, like, great fit for that ethos on Arbitrum.
And it was also something that I could really, I feel like I could dig into, work with these indie studios and devs really closely and choose kind of the best options to bring more and more gamers over to Arbitrum and hopefully, you know, just be a small part of watering that plant that is Web3 Gaming on Arbitrum.
Thank you, Adam.
Those were great insights about the gaming domain and the other, yeah, what's the philosophy behind it.
So, yeah, thank you for sharing it.
And, as well, so you was telling us that there were more than 40 applications in general in just a week.
So, I'm wondering, like, based on the application so far, what do you see that's interesting?
Like, what's the thing that is exciting you?
Yeah, that's a good question.
So, we have 10 proposals so far in the gaming domain specifically.
And I hesitate to speak on any of them individually yet because I need to kind of dive into each of them deeper, that each of them has gotten kind of initial response with some extra questions based off of their initial proposal just to give me kind of a more full view of what they're proposing, you know, how the money might be spent.
I think on-chain gaming is really kind of, you know, starting to have a moment.
I think it's really new, though, and I think it's early in that overall industry.
But I think it's also quite aligned with the more kind of, like, on-chain culture that we find on Arbitrum.
Like, I feel like there's, like, a lot of DGens.
There's a lot of people who are, like, you know, live on-chain and do a lot of DeFi protocols, and so there might be a good overlap there.
I see some really interesting proposals that feel very, like, in-depth aesthetically and style-wise and have that kind of indie ethos that attracts players to those games.
Because I think, you know, visuals are probably, like, 90% of the battle of getting somebody in to play your game, right?
If they like the way it looks, they're going to dig in deeper.
They're going to double-click on it.
So, I think that's really important.
We're seeing some really cool aesthetics pop up.
We're seeing some stuff around UGC and modding content, some kind of more, like, DGEN betting mechanics around kind of, you know, some 1v1 matches.
So, all of it is looking really interesting.
I'm excited to dive in and kind of work with these studios or devs and chat more back and forth in these public forums where anybody can come in and see the proposals, right on Questbook's website.
They can see my responses.
They can see, they can add comments themselves of, like, oh, I like this, oh, I don't like this, or I'd like to learn more about that.
So, I'd, you know, I'd recommend anybody who's interested in this to come in and kind of be a part of that process.
And I'm looking forward to seeing more proposals and getting some of these proposals that are up here passed as well in a good manner with kind of the right allocation.
And I will just say real quick to finish that we're mostly looking for games that have some sort of demo or vertical slice already available.
It doesn't necessarily need to be totally playable, but I'd like to see some video, ideally, of the game in its current state.
We're not funding anything that's still in kind of the concept or white paper phase.
Just because it is a short kind of time, we have six months, I'd like to make an impact in my time here.
And I think funding things that are a little, you know, further along the development cycle is kind of a better focus here.
And I know there are a lot of games that are maybe halfway through development or, you know, in the last quarter of development and need that extra push that would benefit them.
And it would benefit the Arbitrum community as well because we get to see an impact, you know, more quickly.
So, yeah.
Great. Thank you.
Yeah, those are great things to keep in mind when applying for the gaming domain.
So, yeah, thank you.
That was an incredible explanation.
And now it's time to talk with Jojo to get to know more about the domain called New Protocol Ideas.
So, Jojo, I would love to hear more about it.
Like, if you can share a brief intro about this domain and what is exactly like that.
Like, how can we define New Protocol Ideas?
Sure, sure.
Okay.
So, New Protocols and Ideas.
This is probably, I think, the broader domain that we have in this grant.
Grant, just because the other have a more precise definition, you know, gaming education is educational content to help users understand or learn about new stuff.
The one from Yohandi, which is Arbitrum Nova, is quite specific to pushing in technology.
New Protocols and Ideas can technically be everything, right?
And this translates to the fact that, so far, I have had a lot of applications that go in very different directions.
Now, what do I see as the main, not the main issue here, but the thing is that we want, as Adam said, to make an impact, okay?
In the next six months that we have this program.
This means that you can present an idea here.
It can be whatever, okay?
I've talked to protocols that are doing some novel stuff regarding verbs and other teams that want to integrate artificial intelligence to create paths that are easily,
more easily usable for users to deploy a contract or even to just access knowledge.
So, NFT teams and so on.
So, it's kind of broad, okay?
On one side, this is quite exciting, okay?
I've had, I think, 15 calls in the last two weeks, okay?
And I have heard about ideas that I never thought about, okay?
And that's always awesome, especially if you're a builder.
It's awesome to hear new stuff.
But it also requires to have some sort of focus on what is Arbitrum now and where does it want to go.
So, one thing that I'm seeing is that thanks to my application, I really pounded the hammer in my application regarding Arbitrum being the home for the derivatives in crypto.
I really think Arbitrum will be the go-to place for this.
And thanks to this, I've been approached by several protocols that are building volatility surface tools and new type of derivatives and so on.
And this is, in my opinion, a very specific field in which Arbitrum can grow a lot, okay?
On the other hand, obviously, again, not to steal what Adam just said, but we kind of need in the application to have something, quote-unquote, concrete already to work on.
Because the average grant, why can vary depending on the situation, it's probably not enough to build the protocol from the grant, okay?
So, you need to either have that on testnet or to have a product that is functioning in which you want to expand.
And this is what I'm working on because I meet with these teams, with these protocols, I talk with them, I ask them what they have, where they want to go, okay?
And then we try to see if there is something that was maybe deprioritized because they don't have the funding or they just didn't at the time.
And we try to work on them in the way that we can create the maximum value possible, okay?
This also implies that, in my opinion, to present a grant request, you need to have already a complete team, okay?
Assigning a grant to a team that lacks a back-end developer or lacks the UE because the front-end developer is not there and so on,
it's just a risk that the grant is not going to be impactful enough, right?
So, this is, you know, another requirement that I usually set with the people I spoke with.
But in general, new protocols and ideas can literally be anything, okay?
So, you know, if you have something novel, something that you think it can create value, please just come to me, you know?
Thank you, Jojo, Jojo, for sure.
And, by the way, you already mentioned some advices to the upcoming applicants for this domain.
Like, you mentioned that they should share information about who is their developer
and also if they have any MVP to share it.
But what are these other advices that you could share to the community to apply it to this domain?
Sure.
So, first, as I said, some key requirements is to have a complete team, okay?
And to have, I wouldn't say directly a functioning product because it's a case-by-case analysis, okay?
But you have to have something concrete already in your hand.
One thing that you also need to have, to me, is a breakdown of the cost of economics, okay?
Yes, you can ask money for a grant, but if you don't know how you're going to spend this money
or how much you're spending right now, okay?
What is going to be your runaway, what will be your cost for the next month, three months, quarter, and so on,
it's going to be difficult to assign the right size to the grant.
So, this other thing, having a breakdown of the cost is key.
Then, what I usually do is, you know, I directly brainstorm, okay, with the protocol.
We usually have two trickles, okay?
First call, we meet each other, okay, and we start to bring some stuff.
Then, we meet again when maybe the team has done an internal meeting, okay,
about what they want to do based on my suggestion.
And then, we go down with the milestone, with the grant size, and so on,
because we literally need to narrow the scope to have an impact for grant, okay?
So, the tool on the need is having a complete team, having either a beta product or something
that is already working in testnet or something like that, and knowing the economics of your team,
your cost, infrastructure, fixed costs, salaries, and so on.
And then, we can work together.
Fantastic.
Those were great advices.
Thank you, Jojo.
And, as well, if someone has a question in the community, please feel free to comment in the comments here in this AMA,
and we'll try to answer your questions.
And, as well, wondering about the applications that you already have, Jojo.
Like, what are some cool ideas that you have been receiving?
Jojo.
Okay.
Without disclosing the names for now, because I want to first assign the grant and then make the name public,
I had a cool application from protocol, which is producing perps on different pairs.
What does it mean?
That you can, for example, long your platform in which you can long your uni,
and against that, short link, for example.
This is something that is, you do this a lot in traditional finance with stocks, okay?
It's called pair trading.
It's something that is not easily accessible yet in crypto.
So, it's something that I'm excited for.
Another interesting application that I literally finished the call with the team, like, one hour ago,
is artificial intelligence pilot that can help you navigate in Arbitrum,
in which you can ask either question that might just be basic, you know,
how do I buy a coin, how do I do certain stuff, or even more complex, how do I deploy a certain type of contracts,
and so on.
This is something more novel, right?
But looking at the trend of artificial intelligence, I mean, I think we're going to have EA assistant even in our fridge, right?
It's something that can make sense if the team focuses the development and the direction of the marketing of the product in a certain way,
which is something that, by the way, I try to advise, because besides the grant, per se,
I always try to advise to the protocols how they could focus their product in the right way to have a good product market fit.
I see, totally makes sense.
Thank you, Jojo.
Thank you for sharing more about these new protocols ideas.
And if you didn't listen a part of it or anything, don't worry, because this AMA is going to be recorded.
So you can listen it again, over and over again, if you need it.
So now it's time to get to know more about the domain called DevTooling on Arbitrum 1 and Nova.
And we have Joandi that is the domain allocator representative.
So yeah, Joandi, thank you so much for joining us today.
I would like to know more about this DevTooling domain.
So can you explain more about what are the, like, how can a project qualify here specifically?
Yeah, sure.
So I do appreciate the time and the space.
Some of the things that I've seen with the Arbitrum community before I head into my job session about developer tooling is that
it's the whole governance and the forum process makes you meet every single interested party stakeholder or person.
And they are probably the most cozy people in the ecosystem right now.
So I have to be super thankful about it.
But yes.
So at first, developer tooling on Arbitrum was actually going to focus, was going to be focused on Nova.
Just because we've seen recently that Arbitrum 1 has found some sort of market fit into DeFi,
same as other layer 2, such as Polygon or Optimism.
One of the things that I personally love about Arbitrum is that they are building their thing on top of their thing.
And they don't go into horizontals.
They go strictly into vertical building.
One of the things that is a common misconception in crypto is that we tend to measure chains or layer 2s of layer 2s
in terms of how much total value locked you have inside the chain.
I would rather recognize Arbitrum Nova as a platform or as a blockchain where you can build some sort of graph
or some sort of way to interact with smart contracts that do not exactly need to be paying a gas fee
or just smart contracts that you can write on top of it.
So something like an equivalent of Lens Protocol is a perfect fit for what people are building on top of Arbitrum Nova.
Maybe it could also fall into the whole domain of gaming.
So one of the cool things about developer tooling is that it raises the foundation to build on top of a chain
that has lacked some sort of activity or value proposition
and also is able to participate into some sort of symbiotic funding between the other domain allocators.
So just to cover some things about the whole developer tooling,
we have to focus first on what's the biggest problem that's happening right now inside Arbitrum
is that we have to go back to basics.
There is infrastructure to write, redeploy and inject smart contracts
that has not been done inside the Arbitrum blockchain ecosystem such as Arbitrum 1 or Nova.
So these things to raise RPCs, build stuff on top of alchemy infrastructure,
everything that is necessary to bring an essential infrastructure
to facilitate this kind of asset visualization or to further improve the development of these dApps
must need a robust foundation towards development.
So developer tooling focuses on four key topics,
which is building basic infrastructure back to the Arbitrum chain, both 1 and Nova.
I would love for people to build on top of Arbitrum Nova
because it feels like an underdog story where you make this epic comeback
and there's this killer dApp that brings activity back to the chain.
So that is a life mission that we are taking right now at the developer tooling domain.
Something also is that, hey, there's nothing bad in copying and pasting.
Every idea copies from another one and they just make it better.
So if you can tinker around and you can bring something cool from another chain back to Arbitrum,
this is something that this domain is also willing to fund.
Mostly if it's regarding libraries with open SDKs, APIs, or IDEs that you can use these libraries to build this MVP
or this minimum buy all product and you can deploy it faster.
That is something that we are willing to fund inside the developer tooling domain allocation.
And it's something that we've seen in the eight grand proposals that we've covered in actually more than half.
One of them, which we are in pretty advanced talks and we're hyped to show the product
and finally announcing that it is possible for them to get the grant accepted,
which we had a call with the team yesterday and what they're building is actually amazing.
But aside from that is to address the current challenges inside Arbitrum,
which is mostly centralization, ecosystem development, and security.
And most importantly, the part of centralization, we've seen applications from people like ShapeShift DAO,
which is kind of imposed by people like Eric Borges, I think I said the name right.
And we've had previous talks before about building decentralized nodes or building decentralized RPCs
while also translating documentation that needs to be addressed inside other main languages,
such as Spanish, French, Mandarin, Japanese, Arabic, et cetera.
So they have this pretty cool all-grounds-covered proposal where it focuses on pushing documentation
to get easier access to deploy and inject smart contracts into the ecosystem.
And finally, which may fall specifically into the community growth and education domain allocation,
we've been focusing a lot on Tefrel.
So I am looking specifically for somebody who can impulse developer-first communities.
The thing with community and growth is that it falls into a matter of abstraction.
It's into making topics easier.
But Tefrel falls into streamlining this communication between developers and the relevant ecosystem stakeholders,
rather in a key governance role or in a foundation role or in a venture capitalist slash angel investor role,
and find a way to push this project forward towards having more valuable metrics,
first of all, with the community, find a way to address impact,
and find a way to also measure activity to see if it's fit towards other activities afterwards
or after they finish the grants program, which would be venture funding.
I would love for a product that is building infrastructure inside our domain
during a six-month period to establish a solid roadmap for them to become not only as an open source product
or as an open source library, but converting this into a product and service
that could easily get funding without depending on a grants program
to further sustain the lifecycle of the project,
which at the end of the day becomes being unsustainable.
I am sorry if I'm heading into a lot of things, but developer tooling covers a lot of grants,
and it's pretty much symbiotic with what other people are building.
And without these foundations, I do believe that certain proposals will lack
or certain dabs will lack the product roadmap or the development roadmap
to implement those cool features they want in a leaner amount of time
and in a faster and more streamlined way.
So, yes, that's what mostly the whole developer tooling domain allocation covers.
Nice one.
I think you gave a great explanation about what domain allocation is covering.
So, I just want to ask you, do you have any projects that have already applied
that maybe you can give as an example for the community
to know more about what kind of applications they should propose here
or any new proposals that you would like to see?
Yes. So, aside from the domain allocators,
I am actually just going to recommend a couple of projects that I've seen first
in the Gitcoin quadratic funding round
and also inside the Questbook developer tooling domain allocation application.
So, the first one, inside the dev tooling domain applications, we've seen Laika.
So, first of all, Laika is the name of my dog.
So, that's why I had like a direct approach to them
to get like going to call ASAP to understand what they are building.
So, they're basically building a postman for Web3.
This is like the first, the third grant proposal we've gotten inside the same field,
but they actually raised the MVP of the product at the start of the bull market.
So, they've gotten some traction to further solidify their grant application.
So, they mostly have around 600 monthly active users
and they are not developers that are afraid to not put the product in front of people.
Actually, if you use their front end, for me, it's better to interact with smart contracts
than the current Remix IDE or to download a VS code library
to further deploy and inject smart contracts into the chain.
So, that's a project that it's worth looking into their application
and their turnaround team and their turnaround time as a team has been amazing.
We're talking about, I answered them in a 24-hour period
and they resubmit the grant with a more streamlined scope and funding disbursement.
So, that's amazing to see.
And it's one of those projects that you see on the energy of the team on a call
that they can build this product, they can show you a demo
and they can finally also, if things are done right
and they do not give up along the way,
they can surely become a venture-funded project
that is for infrastructure and infrastructure is the base of everything.
So, it's easily scalable.
On top of that, I've seen, I think it was that view.
So, they basically make a view.js front-end framework.
There's like a lot of technical terms here,
but they basically enable you to interact with the blockchain faster
for front-end development.
So, you can grab the balance of a specific wallet
or from a specific group of wallets.
And it lets you deploy these kinds of products faster.
I'm a big mobile guy.
So, I know that something that is built on top of a .js framework,
rather front or back-end,
needs these kinds of products to further push this agenda
to bring the next billion users into crypto forward.
And I know that that view is just one of those ones
that applied into Quadratic Funding
who had an amazing product to show.
And I know that if they put a lot more effort
and dedication into it,
and if they apply into the grant program,
I know that it's going to be like an interesting conversation
because I'm a mobile first founder.
So, yes, those are the two themes
I actually am extremely passionate about.
Yeah, that'll be super exciting to see more mobile applications for sure.
I guess everyone has, well, not everyone,
but we are using a mobile right now.
So, yeah, it makes sense.
So, yeah, maybe now it's time to talk about the domain
called Education, Community, Growth, and Events.
Here we have Katyn with us,
so it's going to be super cool to get to know more about this domain.
So, Katyn, maybe can you help us
with a short explanation about this domain
and what it represents?
Yeah, thank you so much for the intro.
So, just before I get started,
I just wanted to point out that we've created a Notion document
that you can find it at the program's details
in our Questbook page
with all the information that I'm going to talk about right now
regarding our domain.
So, basically,
the way we are working this domain
is we have three different communities
or, well, groups, actually,
that are helping us review each independent proposal.
We have CIDLATAM that's going to be mostly focused
on reviewing community-oriented proposals,
then Layer 2 en Español,
which is going to be focused more on, like, educational part,
and then Layer X,
which is going to be helping us with the hackathons.
Basically, as we mentioned to the DAO
when we were making our application,
the three things that, obviously,
like, our domain is super broad.
So, we've tried to prioritize three things,
specifically, that we have included in our RPF,
which you can also find in our Notion document.
Starting off by that we would really like to see people,
like, applicants trying to help host hackathons,
specifically, obviously,
hackathons oriented towards development on Arbitrum,
but obviously not narrowed down only to Arbitrum 1,
but Arbitrum Nova or those building with Arbitrum Orbit.
And also, we would really like to see hackathons
that promote the use of Arbitrum stylus in a creative way.
So, that's kind of, like, our first pillar.
Then, we would also like to see a lot of,
we would like to see proposals
that try to increment Arbitrum's reach
into institutions, like universities.
So, we can also,
but not only, like, for example,
engineering universities or whatever,
we would also like to see Arbitrum get a bit more involved,
like, get more reach into economics,
law, or even political science,
because I think, like, a lot of, like, I'm a lawyer,
like, well, not yet, but I studied law.
So, I think I still have to do my bar exam.
So, even myself, like,
I don't have a technical background,
but I'm still here.
And I think there's a lot of potential there.
I think there's a lot of people
that we could tap into if we have this outreach.
Basically, that,
towards, like, community growth,
so going beyond our space.
And then, on educational material,
basically, we would like to see top-notch material,
very technical stuff,
not sensationalist material,
you know, like, not about how to farm airdrops
in Arbitrum or whatever.
No, we would like to see good quality material
about Arbitrum 1, Nova, Arbit, Stylus,
and the whole tech stack.
So, basically, that,
I think that's a good summary
of the three things we would really like to see.
Obviously,
these are, like, three things we would like to see,
but we are always open to see
more stuff that goes beyond this.
And, yeah, basically that.
But, apart from this,
as we also have in our notion,
we are handling comms through our Discord,
through C.Dams Discord server.
So, if you are an applicant,
you can obviously,
you're always encouraged
to just, like, post your proposal
on our Questbook dashboard.
But, I do suggest
just go to our Discord,
and we can just create a topic
on our domain allocator forum
so that our team can just, like,
give you constant feedback
and just go back and forth
to see how we can improve your proposal
and make it more suitable for our domain.
But, yeah, basically that.
I don't know if I rushed a bit
or left anything.
But, yeah.
Yeah, thank you, Captain.
I think you really explained it very well.
And, also, you mentioned the main criterias
you are looking for these applications.
So, yeah, maybe I would like to ask you, like,
there is anything that you will consider, like,
would be cool for communities
or applicants to submit as a project?
Yeah, so, again, like, since it's super broad,
I don't have, like, one specific thing.
But, I don't know, like,
I really think having, like, right in Arbitrum,
I think we would really benefit a lot
from onboarding more developers.
Since, especially since we've just, like,
like, since Arbitrum has just launched Stylus,
I think that's a pretty cool stuff
that should get a bit more of a push.
So, I'm very inclined towards seeing
more support to our hackathons.
I think it's something pretty cool.
But, again, anything within the domain,
I think, is pretty interesting.
We're also very excited towards seeing
such a diversity, like, regional diversity
within the proposals we've received so far.
We have proposals from Africa,
from Brazil, from Mexico, from India as well.
So, that's something we love to see, for example.
We do want to see Arbitrum grow
in every region as possible.
And we're down to support that,
obviously, within the parameters of our domain,
following our rubric and our template, as always.
But, yeah, basically that.
Thank you, Cathy.
Yeah, for sure.
That's something very cool to hear
that people from all over the world
are applying to this opportunity,
to this program.
So, yeah, congratulations for that.
And we are almost about to finish this AMA.
So, wondering if you would like to share
something else to the community,
maybe a call to action.
The call to action is you apply
if you have a project
or you are building something
related to education
or gaming
or a dev tooling
or if you have new protocols ideas,
I think you should apply here
in the Arbitrum Grants program here.
The links to apply
are linked here in this AMA.
And, yeah, if you just joined the AMA,
don't worry,
because this AMA is recorded.
So, yeah,
you'll be able to find
all the advices
and tips
from the domain allocators.
So, yeah,
leaving the mic
to all of you guys
if you want to share something else.
Yep.
So, if anybody has any questions
and you're kind of shy
to ask it
in this Twitter space,
feel free to DM me
or any of the domain allocators.
We're really happy
to take up any questions.
And if you've already noticed,
like, we really respond fast.
Give us a day or two at best
and we'd be
helping you guys
as much as possible.
So, as you've already heard,
you know,
our domain allocators
are working really hard
getting on as many different calls.
You've got one person,
like, you know,
Jojo has been
on 15 calls.
Katn is, you know,
getting,
mobilizing three different communities
to get reviews
on this.
So, like,
we're really excited
for this grants program
and really excited
to see so many
different projects.
And the fact that
we already have 40 applications
almost 40 applications
is amazing
and I love the quality
I've seen so far,
but I think we can get
a lot more.
It is, of course,
a six-month program.
So, I'm just waiting in
to see, you know,
how many more interesting projects
we see over the months.
But, yeah,
I would really encourage
as many folks here
to apply,
you know,
shoot your shot,
put your application
on Questbook
and, you know,
at least,
at the least,
you'd get some really
insightful feedback
from the domain allocators
and if at best
you'd get your grants
approved.
So, I think
there's only a win-win
situation here
for you to apply.
So, yeah,
I'd really ask everyone
to apply
and let's make Arbitrum
a better ecosystem
through this grants program.
Thank you, everyone.
Thank you,
Arbitrum Foundation.
Thank you, Anna,
for hosting this call.
Thank you for,
thank you, Jojo,
Kaden,
Adam,
and Hwandi
for taking your time
as domain allocators
and having this call.
And thank you,
of course,
for all the folks
listening in.
Really appreciate
taking your time
from whichever time zone
you're in.
I know it could be
really late for some,
it could be really early
for some,
so it's really appreciated
how you guys
are taking your time
to listen in
and I would love
to get in touch
if anyone's interested.
Thank you, everyone,
once again.
Have a great,
have a great day.
Have a great Tuesday,
everyone,
and yeah,
share this grants program
with everyone you know.
And yeah,
let's get building
Arbitrum together.
Have a great day.
Bye-bye.
Take care, everybody.
See you all.
Take care.
