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Last week, we caught up with two key members of the Arbitrum Gaming Catalyst Program (GCP) at the Game Developer Conference. Founder partner Daniel Peng and founding partner and VP Rick Johanson.
During the interview, they shared a shining vision of the future focused on Arbitrum’s game. They said they are talking with 100 different game projects to see which ones will be built on the chain.
“I think where we are in the gaming and Web3 lifecycle is trying to figure out what the greatest value we can provide to our resources in order to be successful in the industry,” Penn told me.
“(It’s) still very early, and at the same time I think it offers a fairly mature toolkit compared to many other networks,” he added.
Arbitrum has the largest (and therefore the most expensive) crypto booth in gaming conferences, featuring about half a dozen different titles using Arbitrum at various development stages, and had the challenge of being able to play those games to win Arbitrum Merch.
But things got cold this week. In the first place, Arbitrum Dao, who lit GCP green, is considering a proposal to cover all unused ARB tokens allocated to fund GCP ambitions. The program was previously granted 200 million ARB tokens last year, and was worth around $215 million at the time.
ARB has exceeded 76% in the past year.
“GCP has repeatedly resisted documenting activities and performance properly. Instead of accepting transparency, the program has recently sought to increase contributor compensation and reduce its own reporting requirements,” reads some of the proposal.
“Given these failures, the risks associated with allocating funding blocks, and the increased concerns raised by the community, it’s time to reduce our losses.”
Nathan van der Heyden, a member of Arbitrum Dao, shared the proposal to kill GCP funds.
“GCP was created in an age of overly optimism. With the keybacker gone, it’s clear that the program doesn’t offer that promise,” Hayden argued.
“The GCP was a failure,” writes DAO participant Argonaut, agreeing to the proposal.
“I fully agree with this clawback,” another participant wrote. “As for the amount allocated, what did it get from us? The arbitrum game grows, but this amount of ARB was always outrageous when defi earned where this l2 is.”
Although some DAO participants agreed to the proposal, others believe the program is worth savings, including GCP councillors and David Bolger, head of off-chain lab gaming and consumer partnerships.
“The chain cannot remain competitive without allocating financial resources to attract and support builders,” Bolger writes. “The industry is fiercely competitive, with rival chains offering grants ranging from $5 million to $100 million on a daily basis.”
Certainly he’s not wrong about that – I’ve recently heard that other game-focused chains are paying game developers between $10 million and $30 million just to be “partners” with them to build games in the ecosystem.
“We have so far proposed over 50 transactions in GCP, but under 5% have reached the final stage, indicating a clear commitment to due diligence,” Bolger added.
After the clawback was proposed, GCP hired Castle Lab as a “DAO relationship partner” to see if more communication could change minds and minds.
At the Arbitrum Foundation forum, Johansson said the team is taking action to improve communication between the GCP and DAO.
I contacted Penn and Johansson for their thoughts on this proposal.
Johansson said: “There’s currently nothing to share about this topic, but if that changes, I’ll definitely update it.”
Overall, I don’t know if juice from every chain we deem necessary to need a gaming ecosystem is worth squeezing.
