GMX to receive largest share of Arbitrum's $40 million grant, Lido misses out.

Arbitrum’s decentralized autonomous organization has completed voting for its Short-Term Incentive Program (STIP), directing roughly 50 million ARB (about $40 million) in grants to 29 projects building on the Layer 2 network. The perpetual futures protocol GMX emerged as the largest recipient, securing 12 million ARB (around $10 million), the biggest single allocation in the program. Other leveraged trading and DeFi projects, including MUX Protocol, Gains Network and Camelot DEX, received smaller but still significant grants, while the overall distribution heavily favored perpetual trading platforms and DEXs as key growth drivers on Arbitrum. The STIP grants are non-recurring incentives meant to accelerate user growth, trading activity, and liquidity on Arbitrum, with recipients restricted from using ARB rewards for governance participation or converting them into other governance-related assets. GMX has framed its grant usage around liquidity incentives, trader rewards, and support for projects building on GMX v2, aiming to deepen on-chain liquidity and composability in the Arbitrum DeFi ecosystem. In contrast, liquid staking giant Lido Finance received no grant after Arbitrum governance participants voted against its proposal, citing concerns about its non-native status and concentration risks in Ethereum staking. The outcome underscores Arbitrum’s strategic focus on native DeFi protocols—especially derivatives and trading venues—as well as the community’s growing sensitivity to protocol centralization and ecosystem alignment.

✨ AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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• Arbitrum
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