GMX receives largest share of $40M Arbitrum STIP grants, Lido misses out

Arbitrum’s vote on the first round of subsidies for its Short-Term Incentive Program (STIP) has officially been completed. A total of 29 projects will collectively receive 49.6 million ARB tokens, worth approximately $40 million, to further develop and boost the use of their applications on the Ethereum Layer 2 network.

Perpetual trading protocol GMX is STIP’s largest grant recipient, approved to receive 12 million ARB ($15 million). Decentralized exchange Camelot received the most votes, and liquid staking solution Lido Finance was one of the biggest projects we missed.

The distribution of grants saw a flurry of activity in the final hours, with all proposals successfully reaching the required quorum.

Perpetual Protocols, or ‘offenders’, were the biggest beneficiaries in the round, taking in 44% of the total grants, while pointed out by Ouroboros Research – the research arm of crypto hedge fund Ouroboros Capital. GMX, MUX Protocol, Vertex Protocol and Perennial led this category, allowing traders to speculate on the future prices of crypto assets through non-expiring contracts.

DEXs were the second largest recipient in the sector, capturing 15% of subsidies, led by Camelot, Kyber Network, Trader Joe and Balancer.

Close calls and missed opportunities

Nearly 100 projects submitted proposals receive financing. Of these, 29 projects were successful, while another 28 reached the required quorum with more than 50% of votes, but fell short of the total funding limit of ARB 50 million. These 28 projects had requested approximately 24.5 million ARB ($19.6 million), including PancakeSwap, Wormhole, Gains Network and Synapse Protocol.

The other project proposals did not generate enough votes to receive subsidies. Notably, the largest liquid staking protocol that Lido Finance missed was sparking speculation that voters were reluctant to push the project due to its perceived centralizing influence on the Ethereum staking ecosystem. DeFi major Curve Finance also failed to make the cut.