Executive Summary
Arbitrum Growth Circles (AGC) is Arbitrum’s first dedicated go-to-market bootcamp designed to make Arbitrum’s leading DeFi teams legible and investable for banks, custodians, and other institutional capital providers.
In a competitive L2 landscape, with zkSync and others pushing hard on institutional narratives, Arbitrum has historically had limited visibility with traditional financial institutions. Cohort 1 directly addressed this gap by connecting DeFi builders on Arbitrum with global banks, custodians, and venture partners, while testing repeatable GTM strategies around custodians as distribution channels for DeFi protocols.
Through this structured, deal-oriented GTM program, AGC positions Arbitrum as a credible home for real-world financial applications and institutional-grade products. This report outlines the AGC strategy, its demonstrated value, and early results from cohort engagement, mentorship activity, and market-facing outcomes.
What we succeeded at:
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Successfully launched and delivered the first AGC cohort with active participation from startups and mentors.
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Established a shared GTM hypothesis around custodians as distribution channels for DeFi protocols.
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Opened direct dialogues with leading TradFi institutions, including, Citi, Zodia (Standard Chartered), Julius Baer, BNY Mellon, and others, in markets where Arbitrum previously had limited name recognition.
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Onboarded mentors and partners from Fabric Ventures, Offchain Labs, Greengage, JST, Across, L2Beat, and Protocol Labs.
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Produced tangible deliverables including market positioning frameworks, product stack decks, and refined GTM narratives per team.
This first cohort lays the groundwork for future institution-grade deals that can be advanced in collaboration with Offchain Labs and other ecosystem partners.
Program Overview
Arbitrum Growth Circles (AGC) creates alignment between early-stage builders and institutional stakeholders, translating protocol-level innovation into credible, investable opportunities that expand Arbitrum’s presence in real-world financial applications.
AGC is a go-to-market bootcamp designed to accelerate early-stage DeFi startups. The program helps founders refine market positioning, package solutions, and test GTM hypotheses for DeFi protocols focused on viable distribution channels for institutional capital allocators and enterprises.
Each AGC cohort follows a structured pathway that includes:
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Workshops: Focused on market understanding, product packaging, and GTM alignment.
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Clinics & Check-ins: Targeted mentoring and peer-learning formats to track measurable outcomes.
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Hands-on Mentorship: Expert support from DeFi builders, TradFi specialists, and ecosystem partners including representatives from Fabric Ventures, Offchain Labs, Greengage, JST, Across, L2Beat, Protocol Labs, and others.
Value to the ecosystem:
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Generated $250M in TVL commitments, with $40-120M earmarked to be deployed on Arbitrum One as the direct result of AGC-support.
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Positioned Arbitrum as a credible hub for institutional DeFi and financial innovation in new communities.
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Opened institutional dialogues with Zodia (Standard Chartered), BNY Mellon, Citi, Julius Baer, and more.
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Expanded ecosystem dealflow, with three new investments under review by Tandem.
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Activated a cross-sector mentor network spanning DeFi, TradFi, and venture.
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Created a scalable, repeatable framework for future Arbitrum growth circles.
What we Delivered
We have delivered 20 sessions, with more scheduled through December. The Kickoff event and workshops were mandatory, with additional optional work sessions and clinics throughout the program. In addition to the sessions, we provided 1:1 mentoring with private channels for every team; ongoing deck reviews, BD and sales support, and investor prep.
Participation remained strong with an overall average of ~80% workshop attendance and ~50% attendance in optional events. Full attendance information can be found here.
Session Overview
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Workshops: High engagement on positioning, packaging, interviews, and product‑stack articulation.
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Optional Workshop Work Sessions: Used for additional guidance, expert-led mentorship, and accountability for the asynchronous tasks.
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Optional Sprint Work Sessions: Used to surface team requests (intros, partner validation, investor targeting) and share cross‑team tactics.
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Optional GTM Labs and Clinics: Helped converge on a realistic custodian/TVL motion (vault infra + wrapped assets) and align investment‑readiness work.
Ramp-Up to Kickoff Series
Workshop Sprint
Sprints 2-5
Clinics:
Bi-Weekly Work Sessions:
Mentorship Efforts
The mentorship layer continues to be a key differentiator for AGC. Using multiple tracks for mentorship, we built a mentor pool spanning DeFi builders and TradFi operators.
Key Outcomes:
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1:1 mentor-team channels established for every startup, resulting in:
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Unblocking BD deals
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Active capital formation
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Insights compiled for cohort-wide sharing
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Active mentor involvement in deck reviews
Core mentor profiles
High-engagement contributors aligned with the program’s pedagogy and outcomes, who focus on program-wide accountability and alignment, lead check-ins, support deliverables, and ensure participants stay on track.
Social Media & Community Engagement
AGC’s launch and progress have been shared through targeted LinkedIn updates, cohort announcements, and mentor calls, driving awareness and credibility within Arbitrum’s professional and founder communities.
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Marketing campaign to recruit the remaining participants:
A Few Highlights:
Deals & Case Studies
AGC’s ultimate success metric is the creation of investable, ecosystem-aligned opportunities. Early examples and case studies are being developed to demonstrate traction.
Early case studies are being developed to showcase these results, highlighting how AGC’s GTM focus translates directly into liquidity, partnerships, and investor readiness across the Arbitrum ecosystem.
Caddy
Caddy represents a strong proof point of AGC’s ability to convert GTM strategy into measurable liquidity outcomes. Through a clear repeatable model built around a wrapped BTC vendor, Caddy secured $205M in total value locked (TVL) with ~$40-100M specifically earmarked to Arbitrum, achieved as a direct result of the support of AGC.
This case provides a clear precedent for how Arbitrum and AGC can collaborate to attract additional institutional liquidity to the ecosystem. A detailed case study is being prepared to document the model’s structure and reproducibility across other custodians and ecosystem partners.
Dealflow for Tandem
Mentorship facilitated by AGC directly contributed to three new investment opportunities currently under review or due diligence by Tandem.
This demonstrates the downstream value of AGC’s network effects: connecting credible founders to aligned capital within and beyond the Arbitrum ecosystem.
Pivots and Market Positioning
AGC actively supported multiple teams through strategic pivots and refined market positioning efforts, helping them adapt to evolving institutional and technical conditions. Through guided mentor engagement and product feedback loops, two companies successfully realigned their market focus toward higher-value opportunities and partnership readiness.
These pivots highlight AGC’s role as an adaptive accelerator helping teams find fit in new or adjacent market categories, and thus expanding Arbitrum’s reach into those markets.
Partner Pipeline Mapping
AGC’s mentorship network and program visibility have opened exploratory dialogues between cohort teams and institutional players (including custodians, exchanges, and banks) expressing active interest in the Arbitrum ecosystem.
Engaged Institutions & Custodians:
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Julius Baer
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CME Group
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Citibank (through Chirdeep, former Head of Digital Assets; now advisor to Caddy)
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Signum
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Deribit
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Canary Capital
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7RCC
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Zodia / Standard Chartered
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BNY Mellon
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Aegis
These early connections reflect growing confidence among TradFi participants in Arbitrum’s institutional potential.
Performance Against KPIs
Milestone 1: Pre-Launch advance payment (Weeks 0)
KPI: Covering costs associated with paying external contractors critical for the program launch
Milestone 2: Pre-Launch (Weeks 1-3) Preparation, marketing and kick-off up to program launch
KPIs:
Marketing campaign prepared kicked off to recruit the rest of the participants and mentors
Marketing and kick-off
5+ mentors secured and onboarded
10+ startups secured
Program design completed
Details:
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Launched the AGC website: https://agc.farstar.co
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Recruited 10 participating teams and secured 5 core mentors across custody, global payments, alt lending, and DeFi-native strategies: AGC Onboarded Team and Mentor Database (private - please request access)
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Kicked off a marketing campaign to recruit the remaining participants
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Finalized the program design: Program Schedule
Milestone 3: Launch (Week 3) and Execution of Structured Workshop Phase (Weeks 4-8)
KPIs:
60+ protocols and 20+ domain experts with high touch interactions at the top of the funnel or joined in the community
15+ startups enrolled
20+ participants and mentors with 75%+ attendance
Social media posts after the workshops.
Details:
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60+ protocols and 20+ domain experts
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16 teams with over 33 collective participants and mentors
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1 kickoff, 3 workshops, 3 work sessions, 6 bonus events (Program schedule available here)
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Workshop Attendance %: >80%
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Social Media Posts after the sessions:
Milestone 4: Execution phase (Weeks 8-12) Initial GTM activities and experiments executed
KPIs:
Preliminary report on impact metrics
3+ events attended by relevant AF stakeholders throughout the duration of the program
50%+ completion rate
overall NPS >70
Details:
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Preliminary report posted on forum
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2 clinics facilitated by OCL and 1clinic facilitated by AF
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Completion rate on track and program running through December
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~75% NPS score
Testimonials Section
Cormac Daly (Nashpoint):
“On day one I told Lino and Ana that I needed this program because I’d spent two years heads-down coding and now had to learn the other side of the business: understanding customers, validating a product, building a GTM plan, and communicating clearly. I came in with a very limited grasp of all of that.
By the end of the customer-discovery workshops, I had completely reframed my assumptions and identified a far more relevant and realistic customer segment. Weekly sessions with my mentor were equally valuable—they helped me focus on the single most important task each week and avoid wasting time on the wrong things. The feedback on my deck and pitching was sharp, practical, and immediately improved how I communicate the product and company.
Today, as the program wraps up, I’m only a few weeks from launch. I have strong product partnerships in place, a validated customer focus, and clear messaging for both fundraising and GTM. The AGC was instrumental in getting me to this point.”
Morten Rongaard (PixelPai):
“Being part of this program has been one of the most valuable learning experiences of my entrepreneurial journey. The depth of insight from the experts, the hands-on guidance from the mentors, and the structure of the assignments created a learning environment that genuinely moved my business forward in ways I did not anticipate.
A special thanks to Lino and Ana, whose expertise, clarity, and support made a remarkable difference throughout the program. Their ability to challenge thinking while offering practical direction elevated the entire experience.
I can wholeheartedly recommend this program to any founder who wants to grow, sharpen their strategy, and build with confidence.”
Simon Chadwick (Orbit Earn):
Abhishek (Caddy):
“The Arbitrum Growth Circle has been one of the most valuable programs I’ve participated in. High-caliber speakers, practical insights, and great networking opportunities with experienced builders within the ecosystem. Extremely curated builders/founders and well organised, and genuinely enjoyable. Highly recommended for anyone looking to level up in the Arbitrum space.”
James (Fairblock):
Manny (Blend):
“More than anything, this program was practical. The sessions and mentor support were relevant, and the team consistently helped unblock real problems from narrative and product decisions to go-to-market and partnerships. If you’re building in Web3 and want a structured push to ship, it’s worth it.”
What We Learned
AGC surfaced strategically significant founder personas around Arbitrum that are currently underserved. These are high-capacity, mostly non-US founders at the intersection of TradFi, Web2 and crypto infrastructure. They can move substantial capital and enterprise relationships, but consistently report that they “can’t reach” Arbitrum through any clear, credible path.
Persona 1: TradFi / Web2 exited founders (Caddy)
Caddy is representative of one core persona:
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Founders with TradFi and Web2 backgrounds, often with prior exits.
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New to Web3 culture and norms, but not new to capital or execution.
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Capable of mobilising hundreds of millions in TVL within months of launch.
Despite this capacity, they find it extremely difficult to:
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Navigate Web3 culture and its “unwritten rules”.
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Understand how Arbitrum works as an ecosystem (who to talk to, where decisions are made).
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Engage via existing channels in a way that feels structured, high-signal and culturally legible.
Their constraint is not interest or resources; it is the absence of an obvious on-ramp into the culture and institutions of the ecosystem.
Persona 2: Enterprise and gaming-native Web3 teams (PixelPai / R+)
PixelPai / R+ illustrates a complementary persona:
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Deep traditional gaming pedigree, used to dealing with major organisations (e.g. the BBC) and high-profile IP (Doctor Who, Star Trek, Top Gear).
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Experienced in Web3, but largely outside the DeFi “degen” bubble.
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Parallel experience in TradFi, compliance and regulation (e.g. MiCA), and licensed to work with institutions such as BNY Mellon.
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Strong presence with enterprise clients across EU++ markets, positioned to influence early infrastructure choices.
These teams are exactly the type of partners who can bring Arbitrum into institutional and enterprise conversations, but they currently lack a straightforward pathway into the ecosystem and into its decision-making forums.
Geographic Concentration and the Need for Local Presence
Most of these founders are not US-based. They operate from financial and enterprise hubs such as:
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London
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Amsterdam
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Paris
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Dublin
In these locations, organisations are exploring “crypto rails” and making early, path-dependent decisions on which stack to build on. Today, their default exposure is to:
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Avalanche
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Solana
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Ripple
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Ethereum mainnet and, increasingly, L2s like Base
Arbitrum is often unknown or under-represented in these conversations. We frequently meet TradFi stakeholders who have never heard of Arbitrum (or any L2s), even as they seriously evaluate Ethereum alongside better-known brands like Avalanche, Aptos, Solana and Ripple. Once Arbitrum is explained, it is relatively easy to generate interest and establish credibility; the bottleneck is awareness and presence, not story quality.
At the same time, there is a strong perception that “everything is happening in New York” for Web3 deals and business roles. While NYC is clearly a concentration point, AGC’s work highlights meaningful growth and deal flow in other hubs. Without region-specific channels and culturally adjusted engagement, this global growth risks becoming siloed and fragmented. Maintaining a visible, on-the-ground Arbitrum presence in these hubs, particularly in and around the venture arms of major banks and financial institutions, consistently produces a high-quality pipeline with a strong TradFi footprint.
Benchmarking Ecosystem Support Models
AGC also highlighted how differently ecosystems support founders. When we benchmarked against programmes from Base, Uniswap and others, several gaps became clear:
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Base not only runs an ecosystem fund; it also partners with local VCs on accelerator-style programmes and has directly covered travel costs for some AGC teams to attend events like DevConnect.
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These interventions create a tight loop between capital, GTM support and physical presence in key hubs, and they materially change where founders choose to focus.
This comparison reinforces the rationale behind our EFP/AVI strategy: combining an ecosystem fund with structured GTM support, local partners and targeted travel/activation budgets is now table stakes for competing effectively for high-potential founders.
Enterprise Requirements: Privacy, Identity and Compliance
For enterprise and institutional builders, privacy and confidentiality are recurring themes. Many of the teams we engaged described a “compliance win” as the ability to:
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Keep relevant identity and KYC/AML data accessible in a compliant way,
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While still operating on public, permissionless infrastructure to reduce operational and reporting overhead.
How to achieve this on Ethereum and Arbitrum is not obvious to most of them. When we can outline credible patterns (e.g. selective disclosure, onchain–offchain data splits, or reference architectures that have passed institutional scrutiny), engagement increases significantly. There is an opportunity for Arbitrum to position itself further not just as a performant L2, but as a place where privacy, compliance and public infrastructure can be reconciled in a practical way for enterprises.
Structural Channel and Relationship Gaps
Across these cases, the barrier is largely relational and informational:
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It is hard for founders around Arbitrum to meet ecosystem participants, understand how decisions are made, or see where they fit.
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From their perspective, the main way to understand “what’s going on” is to follow a small set of key Arbitrum accounts on X.
This channel is valuable, but:
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It skews towards a degen audience.
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Many enterprise, institutional and TradFi stakeholders are not active on X at all.
What works better is staying close to the relationship nodes they already trust: venture arms of banks, local VC funds, and established enterprise partners. When these nodes are connected to Arbitrum and can confidently advocate for deploying on Ethereum and scaling via Arbitrum (including L2/L3 architectures), they become an efficient distribution channel for the ecosystem.
As a result, a high-leverage, institutionally connected founder segment, capable of bringing significant, regulated TVL and high-quality integrations, currently remains under-exposed to Arbitrum. The limitingfactor is not demand, but the absence of fit-for-purpose, locally grounded engagement pathways.