“Non-dilutive support for Arbitrum One, Nova and Orbit-chain builders, delivered mostly as in-kind credits (audits, gas, infrastructure) rather than cash, plus DAO-run milestone grants through Questbook.”
Arbitrum Foundation cash and credit programs in 2026 are mostly instrument-specific rather than sector-specific: ArbiFuel targets consumer/payments UX, the Audit Program is sector-agnostic for teams with product-market fit, Gaming Ventures is gaming-specific, and the Alchemy program targets Orbit-chain infrastructure builders.
Arbitrum's founder-facing money in 2026 is split across several distinct instruments rather than one grant program, and most of it is in-kind rather than cash. The Arbitrum Foundation's grants page lists four currently active programs: the Audit Program, offering $10M in ARB over 12 months to subsidise third-party smart contract audits for early-stage teams with product-market fit and growth potential; ArbiFuel, a gas-fee sponsorship program giving early teams up to 1,000,000 free transactions in their first year, capped at $10,000 in credits per team, delivered through Pimlico ERC-20 paymasters; Arbitrum Gaming Ventures, a DAO-managed gaming-specific fund taking submissions of interest; and the Alchemy-Arbitrum Grant Program, offering up to $500,000 per team in infrastructure credits for teams building or migrating to Orbit rollups.
A number of older Foundation programs, Trailblazer 2.0, Trailblazer AI, Stylus Sprint, the Uniswap-Arbitrum program, the Pluralistic Program and STIP, have completed and are not currently accepting applications; do not treat these as open.
Cash grants on Arbitrum now flow mostly through the DAO rather than the Foundation directly, via the Questbook Domain Allocator (DDA) Program, where elected domain allocators in four domains, gaming, developer tooling, new protocol ideas, and education/community, review and pay milestone-based proposals from domain-specific multisigs. This runs on a seasonal cycle voted on by the DAO, and the current intake status should be checked directly on the Questbook dashboard rather than assumed open.
Robinhood Chain, an Arbitrum Orbit L2 that launched public testnet in February 2026, has no standalone grant program of its own. Its nearest formal funding path is these same Arbitrum Foundation programs, plus the $1M Robinhood committed to sponsor the Arbitrum Open House 2026 buildathon series.
Key stats:
| Person or team | Role | Where to find them |
|---|---|---|
| Arbitrum Foundation | Runs the Audit Program, ArbiFuel and publishes Builder's Block updates | arbitrum.foundation/grants |
| Alchemy | Co-runs the $10M Orbit-chain infrastructure credit program | alchemyapi.typeform.com |
| Arbitrum DAO Domain Allocators | Elected reviewers who approve Questbook milestone grants per domain | arbitrum.questbook.app |
| Robinhood | Committed $1M to sponsor Arbitrum Open House 2026, backing teams building on Robinhood Chain testnet | blog.arbitrum.io |
The Foundation does not publish individual program-manager names, and we have not guessed.