The voting process for the first round of grants within Arbitrum’s Short-Term Incentive Program (STIP) has officially concluded. A total of 29 projects have been selected to collectively receive 49.6 million ARB tokens, valued at around $40 million. These grants are intended to support the development and incentivize the use of their applications on the Ethereum Layer 2 network.
Among the grant recipients, the perpetual trading protocol GMX stands out as the largest recipient, securing 12 million ARB tokens, equivalent to $15 million. Notably, the decentralized exchange Camelot received the highest number of votes during the process. However, liquid staking solution Lido Finance, one of the prominent projects, did not secure a grant in this round.
The distribution of grants generated a significant amount of activity during the final hours of the process, with all proposals successfully reaching the required quorum for approval.
Perpetual protocols, often referred to as “perps,” emerged as the primary beneficiaries of the grant distribution, accounting for 44% of the total grants. GMX, MUX Protocol, Vertex Protocol, and Perennial were leaders in this category, providing traders with the ability to speculate on the future prices of cryptocurrencies through non-expiring contracts.
Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) ranked as the second-largest sector recipient, claiming 15% of the grants. Leading DEXs in this category include Camelot, Kyber Network, Trader Joe, and Balancer.
The grant application process attracted nearly 100 project proposals, with 29 ultimately receiving funding. An additional 28 projects achieved the necessary quorum by garnering over 50% of the votes but fell short of the 50 million ARB tokens total funding cutoff. These 28 projects had collectively requested approximately 24.5 million ARB tokens, equivalent to $19.6 million. Notable projects among this group include PancakeSwap, Wormhole, Gains Network, and Synapse Protocol.
Some project proposals failed to secure enough votes to receive grants. Notably, Lido Finance, the largest liquid staking protocol, was not granted a fund, sparking speculation that voters may have been concerned about its potential centralizing influence over the Ethereum staking ecosystem. Even the prominent DeFi platform Curve Finance failed to secure a grant in this round.
