Salt Awarded Arbitrum DAO Grant to launch DeFi Earn page Direct from Wallet

Arbitrum holds a special role in Salt’s omni-chain wallet architecture. Every Salt policy-enabled account uses an Arbitrum smart contract as a communication hub between cosigners, unlocking a new paradigm of decentralised MPC. For the first time in the history of crypto, MPC wallets are available to everyone, without expensive contracts or KYC. Even AI agents can permissionlessly use Salt.

With this grant, Salt will deliver live integrations with two compelling DeFi players, Gauntlet and Ostium, delivering deployments directly on Arbitrum, thereby enabling deposits, yield generation, and liquidity management directly from Salt self-custodied wallets. Alongside these integrations, Salt is committing to meaningful TVS and TVL targets on Arbitrum, backed by a public Dune dashboard and a DAO impact report.

Grant funding will unlock new DeFi TVS on Arbitrum

Arbitrum’s DeFi ecosystem is the deepest and most composable in the L2 landscape, home to hundreds of protocols, billions in TVL, and a governance community that is serious about building long-term value.

Salt leverages open, self-custodial wallet infrastructure to activate capital, with Arbitrum providing the core DeFi platform for directing idle assets. The $50,000 Arbitrum DAO grant will fund two key integrations designed to boost capital productivity and Total Value Secured (TVS) on Arbitrum.

• Gauntlet USDC Vaults: Connect self-custodied Salt wallets to Gauntlet Vaults, offering users direct access to policy-controlled yield opportunities for idle USDC.
• Ostium LP Infrastructure: Provides access to Ostium’s native liquidity provider infrastructure, allowing users to interact with one of the hottest RWA trading venues.

These integrations deliver compelling yield opportunities on Arbitrum without requiring users to surrender custody or rely on manual workflows, meeting the needs of institutional treasury teams and strategy providers.

The grant is structured across five milestones, with commitments including TVS and TVL growth targets ($8M TVS and $5M TVL), and enablement initiatives. A public Dune dashboard and a DAO impact report will be delivered, aligning with the spirit of transparency and demonstrating immediate, measurable ecosystem impact.

Gauntlet + Salt: idle capital, activated

Over $46 billion in USDC sits idle across major chains, with only around 10% of USDC actively deployed in DeFi, according to a recent Gauntlet research report. USDC is also the dominant stablecoin on Arbitrum, representing approximately 58% of on-chain stablecoins. That’s an enormous amount of capital doing nothing.

One of the reasons for this is quite simply operational overhead. Best practices in portfolio management include establishing threshold signing wallets (MPC), setting granular policies on vault interactions and monitoring positions with automated rebalancing and exits. This has historically been an expensive undertaking.

Salt’s integration with Gauntlet USDC Vaults democratises access to sophisticated portfolio management workflows. Anyone can set up decentralised MPC wallets on Salt and easily identify the earning potential of their idle USDC. Supplying to Gauntlet Vaults is intuitive and policy protected.

For dynamic position management, the Salt SDK unlocks automated rebalancing and scheduled yield sweeps, guarded by the customisable permissions layer. Our fintech community is harnessing this infra to offer high yield accounts to their customers. The combination of Salt’s infrastructure and Gauntlet’s Arbitrum Vaults is strongly positioned to boost the productivity of previously idle capital.

And as the era of machine-led finance emerges, Salt users can also delegate portfolio management to AI agents to sweep into Gauntlet Vaults on their behalf, according to defined rules and without taking custody of the assets. We have created this useful step by step guide to help capital owners connect their AI agents to Salt.

Salt + Ostium: self-custody meets real trading infrastructure

Ostium is one of Arbitrum’s most compelling DeFi protocols, a perps DEX purpose-built for trading real-world assets on-chain. Commodities, forex pairs, global indices, crypto: all accessible with up to 200x leverage, no custodial intermediaries, built natively on Arbitrum. It has $23.7B in cumulative volume and $100M TVL, all on Arbitrum, according to data on DeFiLlama.

For asset managers, Ostium’s LP vault is an attractive proposition: a way to offer clients exposure to a deep derivatives market without requiring them to trade actively. Currently, managing LP positions on behalf of clients means taking custody of the underlying assets, introducing a licensing burden, a liability question, and a trust barrier all at once. With Salt, asset managers can provide services without taking asset custody.

Using Salt’s policy-controlled wallet layer, asset managers can manage OLP positions on Ostium programmatically, on behalf of clients, with full on-chain visibility — without ever holding the underlying capital. The client retains custody, and the asset manager operates within policy guardrails the client defines.

This is a new business model that lets asset managers grow AUM without taking on custody risk, and lets clients access sophisticated Arbitrum-native strategies without giving up control of their keys.

Salt x Arbitrum: a shared vision of openness

Arbitrum’s DAO has consistently backed composable, open DeFi, funding 276+ projects across verticals and allocating 250M ARB to strategic ecosystem partnerships. Salt is built in the same spirit, and this grant reflects that alignment. A special thanks to the Castle Labs team for their support throughout the process.

Salt’s SDK requires no API keys and no KYC. Any builder, agent, or fintech authenticates with their own EOA, plugging directly into Salt’s execution layer. Gauntlet and Ostium are the first to connect to Salt’s self-custodied capital layer but the architecture is designed to grow further. The same integration pattern extends across Arbitrum’s DeFi stack: lending protocols, staking infrastructure, RWA vaults, liquidity pools. Every integration that follows deepens the connection between Salt users and the Arbitrum ecosystem, compounding TVS and TVL organically.

The grant milestones of $8M TVS and $5M TVL are a starting point, not a ceiling. The real opportunity is a shared, open infrastructure layer that any Arbitrum builder can extend, without anyone needing to ask permission.

About Salt

Salt is the world’s first open, permissionless dMPC platform. Organisations use Salt to secure digital assets, automate treasury workflows, and safely delegate execution to teams, agents, and third-party strategy providers — without ever giving up custody of their keys.

Salt is live in open beta. Security audits are in progress, pending an imminent mainnet launch. For builders and treasury teams ready to explore: the infrastructure is here.

• Explore the platform: app.salt.space
• Build with the SDK: developer.salt.space
• Follow us on X: @SaltSovereignty
• Read the Arbitrum DAO grant proposal: Questbook

The future of finance is on-chain, self-sovereign, and open by default. Let’s build it together.