Arbitrum Token: What to Expect

The Arbitrum Foundation has announced that its new token, ARB, will be airdropped to community members on 23 March. This crypto project is considered one of the most significant players in Ethereum's layer 2 scaling ecosystem. With the introduction of ARB, the foundation aims to establish itself as a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO).

Arbitrum token holders will be empowered to vote in crucial decision-making processes governing Arbitrum One and Nova, which are networks that enable users to carry out transactions on the Ethereum blockchain with reduced fees and increased speed.

The foundation also launched Arbitrum Orbit, a user-friendly and decentralised platform allowing developers to create their own layer 3 (L3) blockchains without permission. This platform is equipped with Arbitrum Stylus, which supports multiple programming languages, including C, C++, Rust, and Solidity, for building L3 chains.

$ARB token distribution

There will be 10 billion $ARB tokens in circulation. Of these, 56% will be under the control of the community. Within this, 11.5% will be distributed to the community and 1.1% to DAOs that operate within the ecosystem. DAO will manage the distribution of the remaining community tokens through a treasury.

The remaining 44% of tokens will be owned by Offchain Labs, the company responsible for developing the network. The tokens allocated to investors and team members will be locked up for four years, with the first unlocking scheduled for after one year and periodic unlocking occurring throughout the following three years.

Arbitrum token eligibility

Arbitrum Foundation and Offchain Labs collaborated with Nansen to create a set of eligibility criteria for an ARB token airdrop in the past few months. They established a point system based on different network usage metrics, which included users of both Arbitrum One and Nova.

Early users of Arbitrum One (before Nitro) received more points. Users with three or more points are qualified for the airdrop, but points were deducted from users who participated in Sybil-linked usage patterns. The point system and eligibility criteria can be found.

For those wanting to be part of the network's governance without actively voting on-chain, delegation is a passive participation option.

The foundation introduced a second mechanism called DAO airdrops to extend token distribution to new and infrequent users.

Only projects built on this platform with DAO treasuries are eligible for this airdrop. The Protocol Guild, which represents Ethereum's core developers and contributors, was among the exceptions to the DAO airdrop.