The Arbitrum DAO has recently approved an exceptional support fund, or “backfund“, worth $23.54 million.
Individual Grants Over $4.5 Million
This initiative aims to support 26 innovative projects that, although previously approved to receive grants under Ethereum Layer 2’s Short-Term Incentive Program (STIP), were unable to access funds due to an initial budget limitation set at 50 million tokens.
The relief fund, which received the support of two-thirds of the voters, will unlock 21.1 million ARB tokens (equivalent to $23.5 million) for these projects. Among the beneficiaries, Gains Network stands out with a grant of 4.5 million tokens ($5 million).
Other significant projects such as Stargate Finance and Synapse will each receive 2 million tokens ($2.2 million), while Wormhole will benefit from 1.8 million tokens ($2 million).
However, this decision did not gain unanimous approval. Projects that had already received funds in the first round, such as Camelot and MUX, opposed this additional proposal. Camelot advocated for a second series of proposals rather than a backfunding event, while MUX criticized the uneven quality of the grouped proposals, advocating for support to projects with strong fundamentals and reasonable incentive execution strategies.
With this approval, the total budget of the STIP program now stands at 71.1 million ARB tokens, with the additional funds to be dispersed after a three-day waiting period.
