Name (organization or individual): Utopia Labs

Wallet Address or ENS: utopiagovernance.eth

Tally Profile URL: Tally | Utopia Labs

What area are you most interested in contributing to?

• Improving Governance participation
• Tooling, Improving protocol decentralization

Please share your stance on overall goals for the DAO:
There are several guidelines to how we think about the overall goals, and operating principles for Arbitrum’s DAO:

• Large capital allocation decisions should run completely on-chain to achieve sufficient decentralization.
• Grants should have an accountability framework.
• There should be minimal liquidity mining unless there are certain benchmarks and stop gaps in place, as the goal of Arbitrum should not be to attract mercenary capital inflows/outflows.
• There should be opportunities for contributors to be able to contribute to Arbitrum’s ecosystem, without needing to necessarily “pay for influence”.
• Arbitrum should be progressive in regards to governance experiments, as the current status quo for governance can be improved.
• Disclosure of conflicts of interests should be frequently stated - amongst contributors, investors, council members, delegates, etc.

Sample Voting Issue 1:
Uniswap planned to use Flipside to attract new users to Uniswap through bounties. Although the program outline and funding was fine, the proposal was contentious because it gave Flipside crypto too much control over allocating UNI to bounties and oversight of the entire program.

Prompts to Answer:

1. How would you vote?
   For

2. What amendments would you make to the proposal if any?
   To mitigate the risks of centralization of power, we would would propose the following amendments to the proposal:

   • Increase the number of seats on the allocation committee and oversight committee to include other reputable analytics service providers, in addition to Flipside.
   • Define clear guidelines for the allocation of UNI to bounties to ensure that there is transparency and fairness in the process.
   • Include a provision that requires regular reporting to the Uniswap community on the progress and outcomes of the bounty program.

By making these amendments, we can ensure that the proposal is more inclusive, transparent, and accountable.

3. How would you approach the tradeoff between centralization of authority and the ability to get things done?

We believe that the tradeoff between centralization of authority and the ability to get things done is an important one that should be carefully considered. While some centralization may be necessary to ensure efficient decision-making and execution, it is important to strike a balance between centralization and decentralization to avoid creating a single point of failure or introducing systemic risks. We tend to prefer, or include a model similar to Nouns, or ENS small grants to encourage an environment of a low consensus, high execution oriented environment.

Sample Voting Issue 2:
FEI RARI Hack Reimbursement: In April 2022 Rari was hacked for 80M, a vote was passed to reimburse those affected. Then in May 2022 another vote to refund the Rari hacked was brought forward this time it was not passed.

Prompts to Answer:

1. Split Reimbursement
2. Utopia Labs believes that parties affected by an exploit should be reimbursed for their losses. However, we also believe that it is important to carefully consider the circumstances of each case to determine the appropriate level of reimbursement. In the case of the Rari hack, we would support a split reimbursement approach that takes into account the extent of the losses incurred and the impact on the overall health and stability of the system (and to distinguish the clear relationship/ownership rights of Rari/FEI at that point in time). We believe that it is right to refund parties affected by an exploit when the exploit is the result of a systemic vulnerability or failure in the system that was beyond their control. However, it is also important to ensure that the refund process is fair, transparent, and does not create moral hazard or encourage risky behavior. One thing that we would also suggest is to ensure that appropriate, pro-active risk management practices are in place, such as receiving insurance with products like Nexus Mutual.

Languages I speak and write:
English

Disclosure of Conflict(s) of Interest:
Utopia Labs is a centralized, venture backed startup that provides payments, bookkeeping, and budgeting software for DAO’s.