Arbitrum DAO Advances Real-World Asset Strategy with $11.6M Treasury Investment
Arbitrum Foundation announced the next phase of its Stable Treasury Endowment Program (STEP) following a successful on-chain vote. The decentralized autonomous organization will allocate 35 million ARB tokens, valued at approximately $11.6 million, to tokenized U.S. Treasury investments through Franklin Templeton, Spiko, and WisdomTree.
The allocation will distribute funds across three institutional issuers with 35% going to Franklin Templeton's FOBXX (tokenized as BENJI), 35% to Spiko's USTBL, and 30% to WisdomTree's WTGXX. This decision came after the STEP committee evaluated over 50 submissions from potential partners.
Community support for the initiative was strong, with nearly 89% of participants voting in favor of the proposed allocations. Only 0.01% voted against the measure, while about 11% abstained. The voting period ran from May 1 until Thursday morning at 9 a.m. ET.
The STEP committee, composed of community-elected members, selected these partners based on a balanced assessment of fees, total value locked, risk-adjusted setups, and community engagement. Applicants not selected in this round will have opportunities to reapply in future rounds.
Roger Bayston, Head of Digital Assets at Franklin Templeton, expressed enthusiasm about the partnership: "We are thrilled to be selected as a manager for the STEP 2 program, deepening our already strong connection with the Arbitrum user base." He noted how Arbitrum's Layer 2 technology enables faster, more scalable, and cost-efficient solutions.
The STEP initiative represents Arbitrum's strategy to attract institutional participation in its ecosystem. Matthew Fiebach of Entropy Advisors, which serves as strategic consultant to the DAO, called the public interaction between major financial institutions and a DAO "an unbelievable accomplishment for the whole crypto space."
The program has already generated over $650,000 in interest for the DAO since launching six months ago. By partnering with established financial firms that have decades of asset management experience, Arbitrum aims to position itself as a secure platform for tokenizing and managing real-world assets.
This investment comes amid growing adoption of DAOs as alternative work structures, with over 3.4 million participants worldwide according to recent data. As traditional banking proves inadequate for 58% of international freelancers, blockchain-based organizations like Arbitrum are developing financial solutions that bypass conventional systems while creating new professional opportunities in the digital asset economy.
