Arbitrum, the most important Ethereum layer-2 protocol, has launched a brand new initiative designed to channel liquidity into decentralized finance.
The DeFi Renaissance Incentive Program (DRIP), announced on Sept. 3, will allocate as much as $40 million in rewards to customers performing focused on-chain actions relatively than merely producing consideration.
This system, structured by Entropy and powered by Merkl, shall be managed by Entropy Advisors underneath the course of ArbitrumDAO. In accordance with the blockchain community, roughly 80 million ARB tokens have been earmarked for incentives throughout 4 distinct “seasons,” every specializing in a unique nook of DeFi.
The primary season, which runs from Sept. 3, 2025, by Jan. 20, 2026, prioritizes looping leverage on lending markets.
Throughout this section, customers can earn as much as 24 million ARB in rewards by borrowing in opposition to yield-bearing ETH and stablecoin property on authorised platforms.
In accordance with Arbitrum, the construction is performance-based and protocol-agnostic, that means it’s going to reward borrowing demand throughout a number of markets relatively than focus liquidity in a single venue. Taking part platforms embrace Aave, Morpho, Fluid, Euler, Dolomite, and Silo, with collateral choices comparable to wstETH, eUSDC, and USDe.
Ethereum L2 ecosystem
The motivation scheme arrives at a time when competitors amongst Ethereum scaling options is accelerating.
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Data from analytics platform Growthepie exhibits that almost 13% of Ethereum’s software income now originates on layer-2 networks.
On this area, Arbitrum retains a commanding lead inside the ecosystem. Data from L2beat locations its whole worth secured at greater than $19.1 billion, outpacing Coinbase’s Base at $14.7 billion and OP Mainnet at $3.6 billion.
These numbers mirror how Ethereum’s broader layer-2 ecosystem is maturing rapidly, with networks competing to draw builders, customers, and liquidity at scale.
Contemplating this, the Ethereum Foundation has moved to cut back fragmentation throughout these networks.
In an Aug. 29 update, it introduced the Ethereum Interoperability Layer (EIL) as a trustless framework that allows transactions throughout completely different layer-2s.
The Basis described EIL as a technique to give customers the expertise of “one Ethereum” whereas preserving its core rules, together with censorship resistance, privateness, and open-source improvement.
