[Retroactive Grant Request] - Arbitrum LTIPP Grant

šŸ°Hop Ecosystem
1

Simple Summary

This proposal seeks to obtain a retroactive grant from the HOP DAO. Our team secured a 425,292 ARB grant from the Arbitrum Long Term Incentives Pilot Program (LTIPP) which was used to incentive users and liquidity providers to use the HOP Bridge during the months of June, July and August. This was achieved through boosting the APR of liquidity pools and subsidizing gas & bonder fees. More details on the LTIPP grant can be view here - [HOP Protocol] LTIPP Application - FINAL - Long Term Incentives Pilot Program - Arbitrum

Motivation

Individuals and teams that take an initiative to contribute to the DAO should have an adequate incentive to do so. This proposal serves two functions:

  1. To reward the community members who worked on this project and brought value to the HOP protocol

  2. To set a precedent that the HOP DAO recognizes and is willing to reward community work like this in the future

Timeline

Work on HOPā€™s application to the LTIPP started back in January of 2024, which was shortly after Bob was aware Arbitrum would be voting on another Incentives Program iteration. Bob reached out to members of the DAO and at that time Francom and OxLev1 offered to help spearhead HOPā€™s application. Over the next few months the team worked on preparing an application on behalf of HOP, with the finalized application submitted in early March - [HOP Protocol] LTIPP Application - FINAL - Long Term Incentives Pilot Program - Arbitrum . In Mid-April, the Arbitrum DAO reviewed and voted to approve a 500,000 ARB grant to the HOP protocol (at the time of the vote worth over $500,000) - Arbitrum DAO Proposal: Hop LTIPP Council Recommended Proposal

Achievements

The LTIPP Managers created two separate websites to help track the success of the program, and by extension is a good way to view the HOP results (OpenBlock Labs & Powerhouse Connect). Historical TVL data can be viewed on defillama, as well as additional transactional data on the dune dashboard noted above.

Our team finds it important to note that this project has benefits beyond just the LTIPP period. As mentioned above, our team spent the first few months of this program formulating a grant application for the LTIPP. This will save a lot of time for future grant applications who can use this application as a template for future work. (In fact, I can attest to this fact as Francom and I attempted an additional application under Optimismā€™s grant round - CharmVerse - The Network for Onchain Communities). While our attempts at an OP grant was unsuccessful, the work put into the Arbitrum grant application gave us a huge head-start when applying to the OP grant. It saved us countless hours and made for a somewhat ā€˜modularā€™ approach to grant applicationsā€¦ something that was extremely beneficial at that time because we had only learned about the OP grants round a few weeks before the deadline.

Retroactive Grant Request Amount

While the HOP Protocol was rewarded a 500,000 ARB grant, one of the stipulations of our application was promising to return any unused funds back to the Arbitrum DAO. Fortunately, the grant program was largely successful and was able to use 425,292 ARB tokens within the 3 month LTIPP period. For the retroactive grant request we based our calculations off of the actual used ARB amount (425,292). Also, since the grant program ran for 3 months at a fairly consistent usage rate, we felt the easiest way to value the contribution to the DAO is taking the average price of ARB over that period. This was done by taking a simple average of the closing prices of ARB between 6/3/2024 - 9/6/2024. This resulted in an average price of $0.71 per ARB, or $300,717 of total of value to the HOP protocol at no cost to the DAO.

Based off those amounts, our team is asking for a retroactive grant reward of 15% of the total USD value of the ARB received. We believe this ask is justified for the following reasons:

  • The majority of grant work was handled by community members, freeing up Authereum Labs to focus on improving the protocol without having to worry about diverting resources to grant applications. A lot of other projects will use paid staff to run these types of projects and had Auethereum Labs taken on this task the HOP DAO would have had to essentially pay for this regardless
  • Retroactively paying for a grant application shifts any risk of failure and risk of sunk costs from the DAO to our team. We ran the risk of putting in work for no compensation if the application had failed (as seen for example with OP above). This is in contrast to the Ambassador model which community members were paid up front with no guarantee for success
  • The incentive program doubled as a marketing campaign to attract unique, long-term users to the HOP Protocol. All benefited by the massive reach Arbitrum and itā€™s DAO has compared to HOPs. Providing ā€˜intangibleā€™ value going beyond simply the ARB received
  • The work done with this grant request will save future grant applicants time and resources in the future. Providing ā€˜intangibleā€™ value going beyond simply the ARB received
  • The project was a culmination of work that took many hours over a span of 10 months - I would estimate easily at least over 250 hours combined across the entire team

If funded, our team will be breaking out the retroactive grant payout to the following individuals.

  • Bob-Rossi (45%): Bob discovered the initial grant opportunity for the DAO and headed the team the HOP proposal from start to finish. He was part of preparing HOPā€™s application to the LTIPP, and any communication with the ARB LTIPP managers throughout the entire grant process was handled by Bob. This included any communications with the LTIPP, as well as relaying information from the ARB LTIPP managers to the Team / HOP DAO & vice-versa. He also was in charge of providing the bi-weekly to remain compliant with the ARB LTIPP mandates, as well as any updates to the HOP DAO in bi-weekly calls.

  • Francom (30%): Francom was involved with the project from start to finish. He worked on the application draft and had valuable input at every single step of the process. Francom was extremely helpful with communications with Authereum labs and the HOP DAO itself.

  • Shogun (20%): Shogun joined the team in May and was instrumental in providing help with creating the Dune Dashboard for data reporting purposes. Our initial Dune Dashboard had to be completely reworked due to standardization changes with the LTIPP and Shogun was able to step in on super-short notice, providing high-quality work! Neither Francom nor Bob had the expertise to put together the dashboards and any third-party service price was to expensive to be fronted by our team. Our project would have been non-compliant and funding rescinded had Shogun not been able to help.

  • 0xLev1 (5%): Levi was on the team in the beginning and was able to help with drafting the proposal (especially helpful in the TVL calcs). Even though Levi had to leave the team before the incentive window started, the team believes some reward should be given for his integral work at the start of the process

Additional Links
Dashboard - Hop Protocol LTIPP Arbitrum

Edit: To clarify, the payout would be in HOP token. At current prices of $.02 HOP per token, amounts would be below.

  • 15% ($45,107.55) = 2,255,377 HOP Tokens
  • 10% ($30,071.70) = 1,503,585 HOP Tokens
4 Likes
2

Thanks for posting Bob! I would only add that the retroactive grant request is in HOP tokens just to be clear.

1 Like
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Per weekly call, please vote on which percentages of value brought to the DAO should be rewarded for retroactive grants

  • 10% Immediately
  • 15% Immediately
  • 10% Vesting Schedule
  • 15% Vesting Schedule
  • Other (Reply in comments)
0 voters
4

Iā€™ve edited to more clearly note this would be paid in HOP tokens.