Arbitrum Foundation to Receive $1 Billion if Proposal Passes

Days after Arbitrum’s ARB governance token airdrop, the voting on a proposal to introduce a governing body for the freshly formed decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) has begun.

The proposal, named Arbitrum Improvement Proposal 1 (AIP-1), outlines steps to create what it calls The Arbitrum Foundation, a company that would be responsible for growing the Arbitrum ecosystem.

The foundation would be based in the Cayman Islands and would require $3.5 million — set to cover legal fees, as well as administrative and registration expenses.

Roughly 3.5 billion $ARB tokens — worth roughly $4.8 billion — have so far been transferred to an address named “Arbitrum DAO Treasury1,” making it the largest $ARB token holder.

“The ArbitrumDAO will have direct on-chain governance powers over the DAO Treasury in accordance with the AIP process as delineated in the ArbitrumDAO Constitution,” according to Lemma, the entity behind the proposal.

A representative of the Arbitrum Foundation told Blockworks that Lemma is a service provider to the Arbitrum Foundation and is primarily focused on governance components of operations.

Lemma has also asked for an additional 750 million in $ARB tokens (roughly over $1 billion) to go to a secondary Administrative Budget Wallet, which The Arbitrum Foundation would control.

The proposal has so far named three initial directors for the would-be foundation: Campbell Law, Edward Noyons, and Ani Banerjee. There would also be a 12-member Security Council Committee.

Law appears to be the co-founder of digital assets compliance firm Provenance, while Noyons is a director at Marfire, a consultancy firm that works with DAOs. Banerjee’s background is unclear.

Although the proposal has not yet been approved, a multi-signature wallet with an address named “Arbitrum DAO Treasury2” was created and has since received nearly 700 million $ARB tokens.

A representative for the Arbitrum Foundation confirmed to Blockworks this address is the Administrative Budget Wallet.

The proposal opened for votes on Snapshot on Monday. Voting is set to end on April 3 before being finalized on-chain. At the time of writing, almost 90% of votes are in favor of the proposal, with 10% against.

The Arbitrum Foundation did not immediately return a request for further comment.

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