The Arbitrum community has demanded that the Arbitrum Foundation return 700 million $ARB tokens to its DAO Treasury. As per the proposal, the Foundation should proceed with its budget plan only after returning the tokens.
"This is a symbolic gesture to demonstrate that the governance holders ultimately control the DAO, not the Arbitrum service provider nor the Foundation," said a community member.
Voting will end on April 14. At the time of writing, 51% of voters supported the proposal, 46% opposed it, and 2% abstained.
The dispute between Arbitrum's Foundation and its community started at the end of March, following the Foundation's first governance proposal (AIP-1) which called for funding its operations with 750 million $ARB tokens — worth nearly $1 billion.
The Arbitrum Foundation has released a set of new improvement proposals aimed at restoring community dialogue, including AIP-1.1, which covers a smart contract lockup schedule, spending, budget, and transparency. AIP-1.2 tackles amendments to current founding documents and lowers the proposal threshold from 5 million $ARB tokens to 1 million $ARB to make governance more accessible. However, it remains to be seen if these efforts will resolve the issue with the community.