Lido faces skepticism for Arbitrum grant request

The proposal’s opponents say Lido asked for too much money and the staking protocol creates a centralization risk for Ethereum

article-image

Maurice NORBERT/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

Lido hoped to draw Arbitrum grant funding with the allure of bringing its behemoth staked ether product to the layer-2. But so far, the Arbitrum governance community is almost evenly split. 

Five days into voting, Lido’s grant proposal faces an uphill battle, with just 50.2% of votes cast in its favor and 41 proposals earning more yes votes — and therefore passing Lido in the funding tiebreaker. 

At first glance, Lido looks like a promising candidate for Arbitrum incentive funding. The protocol holds almost $14 billion in staked ether, per Token Terminal, and its grant proposal said Lido hopes to make Arbitrum the first layer-2 where users can mint its stETH product natively.

But Lido’s proposal immediately met resistance from DAO members who felt that its roughly $3.5 million grant, fourth-highest among the 97 proposals, wasn’t justified by its importance.

“Simply having a high TVL [total value locked] is not a warrant to take a [lion’s] share of the grant,” one DAO contributor wrote under the proposal. 

Read more: $88M in Arbitrum grant proposals are competing for a $44M pot

Arbitrum DAO’s mixed feelings on Lido also stem from its large share of staked ether. Other DAO contributors expressed centralization concerns with Lido, which currently controls around 32% of all staked ether, expanding its presence on one of Ethereum’s largest layer-2s. 

The proposal’s largest voter deployed their $10.5 million-worth of Arbitrum (ARB) tokens in opposition to Lido, writing: “Can’t create incentives for Lido right now…let’s be real.”

Lido’s Seraphim Czecker told Blockworks in a direct message on X that Arbitrum only stands to gain from the proposal, which he says is likely to bring “mainnet whales” to Arbitrum. But many in the DAO are weighing those potential whales against Lido’s worrisome size.

“As Arbitrum, are we thinking about the security and the decentralization of liquid staking, or are we thinking about growing ourselves where we’re getting more whales, where there’s the minting of staked ETH on Arbitrum? I think that’s the biggest question,” Alex Lumley, product developer at fellow grant applicant Savvy DeFi, said.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (10).png

Research

Innovations on Aptos’ technical design through Raptr, Shardines, and Zaptos approach near-optimal latency and throughput by unlocking 100% utilization of network resources, with the capacity to settle 260k transactions per second with latencies less than 800ms. The original Move language was revamped with the launch of Move 2, supporting more expressivity in smart contract logic and a scalable ability to interact with high volume datasets. The ecosystem has benefitted from strong asset inflows, now hosting over $1.3B in stablecoins, $450M in bridged BTC, and $530M in RWAs. Activity in the Aptos ecosystem has grown notably over the past year, with monthly application revenue reaching ~$835k and monthly DEX volumes growing to over $5B, both at new all time highs.

article-image

Interchain Labs will focus on sovereign L1s and institutional demand, abandoning plans for smart contracts on the Cosmos Hub

article-image

Also, only three tokens have outperformed bitcoin so far this year: XMR, HYPE and SKY

article-image

The fund group has submitted proposals in recent months for other funds that would hold litecoin, solana, XRP, HBAR, Sui and others

article-image

Momentum’s back — BTC leads, risk assets follow

article-image

Ondo Finance’s acquisition of blockchain development company Strangelove follows its buy of Oasis Pro

article-image

Cryptocurrency and stock traders alike had a lot to unpack Wednesday