Arbitrum’s First Grant Application Round
Arbitrum‘s Short-Term Incentive Program (STIP) has completed its first round of grant voting. A total of 29 projects are set to share approximately $40 million worth of 49.6 million ARB tokens in an effort further to develop their applications on the Ethereum Layer 2 network.
GMX, a perpetual trading protocol, is the primary recipient of the STIP, set to receive 12 million ARB tokens (equivalent to $15 million). Camelot, a decentralized exchange, received the most votes during the process. Notably, Lido Finance, a liquid staking solution, was one of the prominent projects that didn’t secure a grant.
In this round of grant distribution, perpetual protocols accounted for the largest share, with 44% of the total grants allocated to GMX, MUX Protocol, Vertex Protocol, and Perennial. Perpetual protocols enable traders to speculate on the future prices of cryptocurrencies through non-expiring contracts.
Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) were the second-largest recipient category, claiming 15% of the grants. Notable DEX projects include Camelot, Kyber Network, Trader Joe, and Balancer.
Close Calls and Missed Opportunities
In total, nearly 100 projects submitted funding proposals. Of these, 29 projects successfully received grants, while 28 achieved the required quorum with over 50% of votes but fell short of the 50 million ARB funding cut-off. These 28 projects, including PancakeSwap, Wormhole, Gains Network, and Synapse Protocol, had collectively requested around $19.6 million.
Unfortunately, the remaining project proposals failed to secure enough votes to receive grants. The prominent liquid staking protocol, Lido Finance, did not secure funding. This outcome has raised speculation that voters may have been hesitant to provide incentives to Lido due to concerns about its perceived centralizing influence on the Ethereum staking ecosystem. Similarly, Curve Finance, a major DeFi platform, did not receive a grant.
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