What is this about?

Lodestar Finance DAO, a native Arbitrum-centric money market, has requested a grant of 750,000 $ARB tokens from the Short-Term Incentive Program. The grant aims to incentivize depositing and borrowing activity in the Lodestar Markets and participation in their emission gauge to shape the protocol. The team expects this will improve the general available liquidity in the lending markets. The grant will be distributed among all market participants and emission gauge participants, with the ARB incentives distributed weekly as an airdrop. The grant timeline is planned to deploy the incentives over a period of 16 epochs until the end of the campaign in January 2024. The protocol's roadmap includes the introduction of a weekly gauge system to the staking module, which will allow stakers to shape the money market.

How is the community reacting?

The community has expressed strong support for Lodestar Finance's proposal. Users have praised the team's integrity, work ethic, and commitment to its users. They have also highlighted Lodestar's focus on security and community input. The Lodestar team's proposal for the grants program is supported by several users, including Romang86, an Arbitrum native protocol founder and builder. The team's application for the grants program has been marked as eligible, with further steps in the application process to be completed.

Why this is positive?

The grant will enable Lodestar Finance to foster growth or innovation within the Arbitrum ecosystem by offering an alternative destination for tokenholders to deploy their native application tokens. They believe these incentives will introduce users to their unique emission gauge system that empowers users and DAOs to shape the money market. The protocol's roadmap includes the introduction of a weekly gauge system to the staking module, which will allow stakers to shape the money market.

Why this is negative?

There are some concerns about the amount of the grant requested by Lodestar Finance. BlockworksResearch suggested reducing the requested amount from 750,000 ARB to 300,000 ARB based on several factors including the anticipated sustainable impact on the ecosystem and a comparative analysis of all submitted STIP proposals. However, this is not a major concern and does not detract from the overall positive reception of the proposal.