Arbitrum Watchdog Targets Three Grant Recipients With Permanent Bans
Arbitrum's Watchdog Committee has proposed permanent bans for three DeFi projects - Good Entry, Limitless, and APX Finance (formerly ApolloX) - after finding they misused grants from the DAO's legacy incentive rounds.
The committee found that Good Entry allocated $200,000 in ARB to 1,032 ineligible users during and after the Short-Term Incentive Program (STIP), with evidence of self-farming by wallets connected to the team's own addresses. The team 'refused to cooperate' when asked for clarification.
Limitless swapped its entire $75,000 ARB LTIPP allocation into USDC and bridged the proceeds to Base, removing grant funds from the Arbitrum ecosystem entirely, classifying it as suspected theft. The protocol launched on Aug. 6, 2024, but is now deprecated with about $2,300 left across Arbitrum and Base.
APX Finance was approved for $525,000 ARB in LTIPP to grow its perpetuals DEX on Arbitrum, but the committee found $239,714 of that spread across three overlapping problems: unspent funds in team treasury addresses, late distributions to distributor contracts, and a sybil cluster traced on-chain to team addresses.
The proposal gives ARB holders until Sept. 10 to argue their case as replies on the forum thread. If the explanations do not satisfy the committee and the funds are not returned within the same week, three separate Snapshot votes will go up, one per project, asking whether the project 'including all founders, current team members, and affiliated contributors' should be permanently banned from all future ArbitrumDAO programs.