Lobby Finance — a decentralized organization priding itself on “binging lobbyism to DAO governance” — just became the top Arbitrum (ARB) delegate.
Arbitrum delegate Paulo Fonseca, who described himself on X (formerly Twitter) as “the biggest governance move to date,” Lobby Finance became arbitrum’s top delegate with a single on-chain transaction. Lobby Finance acquired the power to vote for 20.54 millions ARB tokens with just one on-chain transaction.
Arbitrum’s data on governance shows that the DAO’s delegated lobby is now the leader in the DAO. This organization controls 20,65 million ARB or 0.2 percent of the total number of votes.
ok… story time… a story about what I believe to be the biggest governance move to date. https://t.co/8BESsnhAyE
— Paulo Fonseca (@paulofonseca__) January 25, 2025
Put this in context: the two most recent proposals, 210.65 and 193.44 millions, received respectively 210.65 and 193.44million votes. Lobby Finance has a voting power equivalent to 9,8% of last year’s vote, and 10,67% from the previous one.
Arbitrum has to be considered one of Ethereum’s (ETH), top L2 protocols. The system processes over 1.5 million transactions a day on average, with a maximum of 5.1 millions reported by the end of 2023. The Arbitrum DAO – a decentralized, non-centralised organization allowing ARB holders the right to vote – decides on changes made to protocol. DAO defines one ARB as one vote.
Arbitrum DAO is no different from other DAOs in that it does not assume token holders will be able to comprehend or keep track of the votes. The system lets users pledge their votes for delegates that are being paid to understand and vote on behalf of them.
Lobby Finance, a company that acts as one of these delegates was created. It has gone one step further and created a website where users can buy votes to influence the odds in favour of the preferred proposal. Users are paid for transferring their tokens.
The system has been implemented in other DAOs as well. Lobby Finance also holds over 2.3 millions votes in Blast DAO. It is clear that layer two protocols are preferred, and the Manta Decentralized Finance (DeFi) Protocol was the only protocol not selected.
Lobby Finance’s sales pitch for potential delegators stated that the tokens are not locked and that they can be used to generate yield. They also promised higher token prices if more people participate in governance. This organization describes how voting works. Customers have the option to buy votes instantly, which means that votes will be cast right away, or participate in an online auction.
After the end of the auction, the customer votes for the pool that wins. You can have multiple users in each pool.
Stacy Elliott edited this article.