PancakeSwap have established themselves as pioneers in the DeFi space with their V3. Given their multichain presence, and overall protocol level TVL, I think their request for 500k ARB is reasonable. Especially since they intend to match it with CAKE emission worth 43% of the grant size. We at Stella support this proposal!
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We are reducing our grant request amount to 200,000 ARB tokens in response to the 2.5x oversubscription rate for the grant. This change is mainly due to our observation that there are many homegrown projects applying for the grant (we see you Sanko 
) and our belief that these projects are critical to ecosystem growth.
In light of this reduction, we will be applying under the Beacon Grant category.
Hello @chefmaroon ,
Now that your application has been marked eligible, please be advised of the remaining steps in the application process to be completed prior to the Review Period Deadline:
Please complete the following steps required for your application to proceed to Snapshot:
To change your proposal to final, please tag an Arbitrum Foundation Forum Moderator (@ stonecoldpat @ cliffton.eth @ eli_defi) by the Review Period deadline to notify them of your proposal’s readiness to proceed from [Draft] to [Final] status.
Once notified, the Arbitrum Foundation Forum Moderator will adjust your title from [Draft] to [Final] status. Once marked as [FInal], your application post will be locked by moderators and you will no longer be able to edit your proposal.
Firstly, thank you for your proposal and your evident enthusiasm for the Arbitrum ecosystem.
Introduction and Rationale
PancakeSwap is requesting a grant of 500k ARB to boost liquidity on both core and non-core pairs on Arbitrum. This equates to 1% of the 50M ARB available for the program. PancakeSwap is a dominant force in the BNB Chain with impressive metrics in total value locked (TVL) and revenue, and their recent move to Arbitrum is noteworthy. The protocol’s established reputation, creative strategies, and gamified incentives have already won them a leading role in the DeFi world. While we appreciate their potential, we still have concerns about their relatively recent migration to Arbitrum and whether this grant would truly benefit our ecosystem.
Major Concerns
Effectiveness and Timing of Migration to Arbitrum
- PancakeSwap is still a newcomer to the Arbitrum ecosystem
- The long-term impact of their protocol on Arbitrum is not yet clear
- Our recommendation for change: Given the protocol’s new presence on Arbitrum, we suggest starting with a smaller grant focused more specifically on ARB-native pairs.
Alignment of Grant Size and Protocol Maturity on Arbitrum
- The requested grant size seems disproportionate considering PancakeSwap’s short time on Arbitrum
- Liquidity might be heavily skewed towards already well-established pools
- Our recommendation for change: Reevaluate the grant size and focus on fostering liquidity in pairs that would benefit Arbitrum’s ecosystem most.
Summary
Castle Capital acknowledges the significant impact PancakeSwap has had in the DeFi space and appreciates its intention to contribute to Arbitrum. However, in its current form, we do not support the proposal moving forward. We believe that a more nuanced approach is required, particularly focused on benefiting Arbitrum-native pairs and other key pairs within our ecosystem.
Our recommendations can be summarized as follows:
- Start with a smaller grant focused on ARB-native pairs
- Reevaluate the grant size and its allocation
We trust that our comments are seen as constructive and beneficial for both PancakeSwap and the broader Arbitrum community. Your initiative is highly valued, and we look forward to seeing how PancakeSwap evolves within the Arbitrum ecosystem.
Hey flindly! Icy here, BD Lead at PancakeSwap – really appreciate your contributions to the discussion so far and I’ll be super brief and prioritise clarity:
There are many DEXs building on Arbitrum that will be emitting tokens over 12 months, if they were to include a ‘grant matching 12 month period’ it would be significantly higher compared to what PancakeSwap will commit.
100%, especially since they have larger footprints too. In light of our reduced grant ask of 200,000 ARB, our grant matching would be 100% annualised or 25% if over the grant period
This can be perceived as you will also not increase emissions if you see no growth on Arbitrum and equally, you may look to reduce presence if that aligns with your multi-chain first approach.
Ah, this is not our intention – the 156K is the minimal emissions (of course, barring any security/safety issues with the chain) we’re looking to commit.
As the PancakeSwap platform matures, we increasingly have to work on improving both our governance and innovation (not just in-house, but also working with compostable DeFi protocols), of which we do have to look towards communities such as Arbitrum. At this point in time and for the foreseeable future, there is alignment in terms of our vision and the Arbitrum community’s.
There are many DEXs using Uniswapv3 or Algebra or even novel AMMs. Why should the Arbitrum DAO provide incentives for another Uniswapv3 fork? There is no value return to incentivize core pairs for a new to Arbitrum DEX. It would be better spent direclty on Uniswapv3, SushiSwap with their v3 fork, even Camelot, Ramses, TraderJoe or KyberSwap. All of these DEXs have been committed to Arbitrum for far longer.
True. We’re not trying to be the Uniswap on Arbitrum. I would just note that our users are super sticky to our platform, and are chain-agnostic, and to encourage them to come over to Arbitrum would mean having healthy APRs for core pairs, since these users are unlikely to use other dexes, at least when they are first starting out.
I do believe that there should be more ARB pairs since more protocol tokens should benefit from any positive appreciation of the token; a rising tide should lift all ships – and we would look to do this.
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Hey!
So we’re lowering our grant ask to 200,000 ARB, instead of our original 500,000 ARB.
We’ll also focus on ARB-native pairs (in addition to having sufficient depth of pairs like ARB-USDC, ARB-ETH) in our final proposal.
- The long-term impact of their protocol on Arbitrum is not yet clear
I think in terms our impact, our efficacy across our different chain deployments has been fairly positive – we bring significant users and activity over to chains.
Besides our dex, we’ve been working with ApolloX (which have applied for a separate grant) on perps, which is currently Top 10 in volume on Arbitrum, despite having ~ 1 month of deployment.
So while the long-term impact may not be 100% clear, we do believe that we’re off to a strong start!
Over the next few hours we’ll refine our proposal – we look forward to your comments!
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We have made some key changes to our proposal, as detailed below:
- We reduced our grant request amount to 200,000 ARB tokens in response to the 2.5x oversubscription rate and the high number of homegrown projects that applied
- We kept our KPIs (volume, TVL, DAU, and efficiency) unchanged
- We maintained our grant matching amount of 156k CAKE over the next year, whose dollar value now represents >100% of our requested grant amount
As highlighted in our revised proposal, we qualify for the grant amount of 200k ARB in all categories:
We are very grateful to community members who have commented on our proposal so far - we take your feedback seriously and have incorporated some of them in our revised proposal.
We welcome more delegates to leave their feedback, before we finalize the proposal by 4 Oct, 11.59pm EST.
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We’ve worked with PancakeSwap quite a lot recently for Angle and Merkl. I must say that they are one of the most reliable, diligent and nice teams I’ve got to work with in the space.
They have a very good understanding of what it takes to grow and maintain liquidity on an AMM, and they’ve proven their ability to do so on the BNB Chain notably.
So even if they’re quite new to Arbitrum, I think this grant, which size is also super decent, would be very efficiently used. They’re quite committed to their cross chain expansion and from my understanding, Arbitrum is key in their growth, so I have no doubt that the grant will pave the way for a bigger and sustainable PCS integration on the chain
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Very much appreciate your replies and your flexibility and understanding of our community values despite such a short time on the chain.
We are willing to support the proposal in its new form.
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Super excited to see PancakeSwap expanding onto Arbitrum! Pretty impressed with the amount of growth PCS has been able to achieve in a short time and have had an excellent experience working with them to grow unshETH and USH liquidity on other chains as one of our core DEX partners for unshETH. We fully support this new proposal!
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Pancakeswap has been instrumental to growth unshETH and USH liquidity on BNB Chain, and I’m excited to see them on Arbitrum fostering healthy competition among dex. In particular, with their v3 (concentrated liquidity) product, the core team at PCS helped run various experiments to help analytically determine the optimal pairs, fee tiers, etc for our tokens.
Another thing I’d like to highlight is PCS is uniquely community focused and always latches on to the latest narrative to drive viral user growth - the best example of this is during the PEPE craze PCS launched a very successful incentivized 1% fee tier pool for PEPE on both BSC and Arbitrum.
Think 200K ARB grant is a very reasonable request for such an established brand, especially given the commitment to matching in CAKE terms.
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@chefmaroon Friendly reminder to complete the following:
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Thanks for the reminder @Matt_StableLab!
@stonecoldpat @cliffton.eth @eli_defi
We are ready for submission, please help to adjust our status to [Final], thank you!
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Post has been marked FINAL and locked.
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PancakeSwap: @chefmaroon
From @Seedgov led by the @cattin delegation, we want to convey our support to this proposal. The reasons why we agree are as follows:
- While we recognize that PancakeSwap recently joined the Arbitrum ecosystem, we recognize that Pacake is the most popular and widely used DEX in the Latam region (Binance has a strong presence in Latin America).
- We believe that many Latin American users could enter the Arbitrum ecosystem through PancakeSwap.
We want to clarify that this is not the final vote, since as we clarify in this release, the final vote is defined by our community. We also want to invite you to attend our Governance Call that will be held tomorrow in our discord.
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Thank you for your support @SEEDGov !
One of our Chefs attended the governance call yesterday and was heartened to hear the overall supportive comments for PancakeSwap, attributed to our user base, sizable reach in LATAM, as well as being able to add healthy competition to the Arbitrum ecosystem.
Michigan Blockchain supports this proposal with the requested amount being justified given the sustainable benefits to the Arbitrum ecosystem and having conducted an in-depth reviewal process of all submitted STIP proposals. We appreciate PancakeSwap’s effort in delivering a promising proposal and working with the community throughout the process.
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As ITU Blockchain delegation team, we appreciate Pancake Swap’s application, as it has an excellent graph that facilitates reviewing the application. We believe that PancakeSwap’s TVL and trading volume will make the liquidity incentives successful. Furthermore, it’s evident that this grant will serve as a strategic tool to accelerate Arbitrum’s growth.
For all these reasons, we support this grant application and voted in favor it.
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