In the Arbitrum DAO launched a vote on a proposal to create a backstop fund of 21.4 million ARB (~$24 million) for projects that missed the initial round of funding.
The one-off ‘backstop fund’ will also invest in 26 protocols in addition to the initial 29.
Proposal for the short-term incentive program is aimed at supporting ‘new developers with high potential’.
As of writing, 93% of votes are in favour of the initiative, 5.7% against. The final decision will be made on November 14.
Although the grant budget was 50 million ARB, the initial working group proposed increasing it to 75 million ARB. If the initiative is adopted, the new funding will be distributed by January 31, 2024.
Among potential applicants for support:
- the decentralized trading platform Gains Network — 4.5 million ARB;
- cross-chain-project Synapse — 2 million ARB;
- DeFi bridge Wormhole — 1.8 million ARB.
Notably, DEX PancakeSwap withdrew its request for 2 million ARB, citing KYC requirements.
Under STIP rules, teams cannot convert the allocated tokens into other assets or participate in governing the L2-network with coins.
In October, as part of the first wave of funding, support went to the derivatives platform GMX (12 million ARB) and DEX Camelot (3 million ARB). The largest share of grants totaling 21.75 million tokens went to protocols trading perpetual swaps such as GMX, MUX Protocol, Vertex Protocol, and Perennial.
In July, the Arbitrum DAO blocked 700 million ARB to fund the project’s treasury.