Monthly Recap: September 2026 – Confidential Incentives with Zama, Arc Mainnet, and More

September brought a new chain and a new kind of campaign to Merkl. Arc launched its mainnet with Merkl supported from day one, and incentive campaigns went confidential with Zama's ERC7984 standard. On top of that, Compound now distributes COMP through Merkl across 6 chains.

In total, 1,726 new campaigns launched and over $19M in rewards were distributed during the month.

Here is everything that shipped and happened in September.

Incentives campaigns

• Concrete CT airdrop
  Concrete launched its CT token at its TGE on September 30, and its airdrop was distributed through Merkl. Over $2M in CT went out on launch day, the largest single distribution on Merkl this month.
• Compound
  Compound now distributes COMP through Merkl. Over $2M in accrued COMP across 6 chains (Ethereum, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, Polygon and Unichain) became claimable on Merkl in September. Users connect the same wallet they use on Compound and claim what they already earned: nothing to migrate, positions unchanged. Rewards have a claim window, and seasonal campaigns will follow.
• Ethena Liquid Leverage on Aave V4
  USDe rewards went live in the dedicated Ethena ecosystem market on Aave V4, on Ethereum. Users supply USDe, borrow stablecoins against it, and claim USDe from Ethena's Liquid Leverage program, distributed through Merkl.
• Coinbase Tokenized Stocks cashback, epochs 2 and 3
  The Coinbase Tokenized Stocks cashback program kept rolling on Base. Epoch 2 brought higher caps and new eligible cStocks, including TSLAc and AMZNc, and wrapped with 15K USDC in cashback distributed through Merkl. Epoch 3 is live: buy eligible cStocks on Base and hold them until October 5 to earn up to 5% back in USDC.
• ETH lending in Trezor Suite
  Trezor users can now lend ETH directly from the Earn tab of Trezor Suite. Deposits are routed to a Morpho vault curated by Steakhouse, and on top of the vault's native yield, users earn MORPHO rewards distributed through Merkl. No lockup, withdraw anytime.
• Bitwise Premium RWA vault on Morpho
  A new vault went live on Ethereum: supply AUSD to the Bitwise Premium RWA vault on Morpho and earn AUSD rewards, distributed through Merkl.

Chains supported

Arc went live on Merkl from day one. Arc mainnet launched on September 16: an open, EVM compatible Layer 1 that uses stablecoins as gas, starting with USDC, with sub-second finality. Any team building on Arc can now distribute incentives through Merkl.

Users could start earning the next day. Aero kicked off the first incentive campaigns on Arc with USDC rewards on 6 pools, from WETH-USDC and cirBTC-USDC to stablecoin FX pairs like USDC-MXNB. Provide liquidity on Aero, then track and claim your rewards on Merkl.

Protocols integrated

• Shift DeFi on Ethereum: Merkl incentives are live on the Shift Liquid USDC vault, currently in public beta. Users deposit USDC, earn the vault's underlying yield, and accrue USDC rewards distributed through Merkl.
• Alchemix on Optimism: Alchemix is streaming its OP grant from the Optimism Grants Council directly to alETH and alUSD borrowers through Merkl, for the next 6 months.
• StablePair on Uniswap: the new StablePair hook launched on Uniswap with incentives live from day one. Its fee scales with how far a stable pair drifts off its rate and goes to LPs instead of arbitrage bots. LPs on USDC-USDT and USDC-USDG earn USDC, distributed through Merkl.

New features

For users

Rewards filter in the Uniswap pool explorer

Finding incentivized pools on Uniswap just got easier. Toggle the new Rewards filter in the Uniswap pool explorer to see every pool with live incentives distributed through Merkl, whatever its size.

Confidential incentives

You can now earn rewards without exposing your position. On confidential vaults, rewards are computed on encrypted balances: you see an APR and earn, while your position, your rewards and the leaderboard never appear publicly. The first campaigns are live on confidential vaults on Morpho, with ZAMA rewards.

Rewards and TVL charts on every opportunity

Every opportunity page in the Merkl App now charts rewards against TVL, so you can follow each campaign's impact over time. Select a campaign in the timeline to highlight it on the chart, hover any day to see TVL and the split between Merkl APR and protocol APR, and switch between 7 days, 30 days or all time.

Reward alerts with Otomato

Otomato, the onchain alerts app, now tracks your Merkl rewards. Once you have $50+ waiting, you get an alert on Telegram, through a mobile push, or in your browser. It is fully read-only: no wallet connection, no signatures.

For companies

Confidential campaigns with ERC7984

Merkl now supports ERC7984, Zama's confidential token standard. Teams can run incentive campaigns on confidential assets, with rewards computed on encrypted balances so positions and payouts stay private. This launched alongside Zama's expansion of confidential access to 16 curated yield vaults across 5 institutional curators.

Analytics in Merkl Studio

Merkl Studio now has an Analytics page with the stats that matter when planning a campaign: rewards vs. active campaigns by chain, protocol, token and action, daily reward distribution, TVL breakdown, a calendar heatmap of campaign starts, and a Sankey diagram of daily rewards flowing from each reward token to the chains where they are distributed.

Faster campaign renewals

Renewing a campaign is now a prominent, one-click action. Dates are pre-filled so the new campaign starts exactly when the old one ends, with the same duration: you confirm instead of re-entering. You can also select several campaigns in the cockpit and renew them in bulk, which creates a batch for you to review. Fewer steps means less risk of a reward gap between campaigns, which protects TVL during renewal windows.

Token wrapper creation and monitoring

Token wrappers let you distribute rewards without pre-funding a campaign: your tokens stay in your wallet until someone claims. Creating and minting a wrapper is now a guided multistep flow that preselects the right wrappers for you. Merkl Studio also tells you when a wrapper can't cover its pending claims, with a banner listing the missing amount and a warning on each affected campaign, so you can top it up before users hit a failed claim.

Edit campaigns as JSON

You can now edit a campaign's configuration directly as JSON from the edit interface, for full control over its parameters.

Conclusion

A new chain from day one, confidential incentives, and Compound distributing COMP through Merkl: September set a fast pace for the fall. 1,726 campaigns were created in September, distributing over $19M in rewards. Don't miss next month's recap!