Arbitrum [ARB] AirDrop grabs attention: Decoding the token’s reaction

• Arbitrum released over 12% of its ARB supply through an AirDrop. 
• Arbiturm continued to outperform its competitors, but ARB fell victim to a scam.

Arbitrum [ARB] completed its latest AirDrop on 23 March, increasing the network’s newly launched token’s circulating supply. As per Delphi Digital’s Twitter thread, Arbitrum AirDropped over 12% of its supply, which accounted for 1.275 billion ARB tokens.

1/ In less than 24 hours, @arbitrum may inject billions of dollars into the crypto ecosystem:

🔹625,000 wallets are eligible
🔹Transactions + TVL are at all time highs
🔹It’s closest competitor is valued at $11B

Arbitrum’s airdrop is a case study in how to decentralize: 🧵⬇️ pic.twitter.com/7iEhfNSGpC

— Delphi Digital (@Delphi_Digital) March 22, 2023

Realistic or not, here’s ARB market cap in BTC’s terms

ARB token allocation 

As the tokens were AirDropped, they were then allocated to others in different ratios. The majority share, which accounted for 43%, was allocated to the DAO Treasury, which was followed by 27% allocated to the team and advisors. ARBs were also sent to Arbitrum DAOs, individual wallets, and investors.

2/ Arbitrum is decentralizing by launching its governance token $ARB to transition towards self-executing DAO governance.

12.75% of its supply, or 1.275 billion tokens will be distributed to Arbitrum community members and DAOs in the Arbitrum ecosystem. pic.twitter.com/FqVkx5FQ7H

— Delphi Digital (@Delphi_Digital) March 22, 2023

Arbitrum outperforming its competitors? 

Delphi Digital’s tweet also mentioned the state of Arbitrum compared to its competitors, such as GMX and Optimism [OP]. GMX has processed over $93 billion in volume since its inception on Arbitrum and has recently hit all-time highs in TVL.

However, for GMX, the TVL growth came to a halt over the last few days as DeFiLlama’s data revealed that the graph moved sideways. While GMX’s gaining spree stopped, the opposite was true for Arbitrum, as its TVL gained upward momentum.

Source: DeFiLlama

Arbiturm also outperformed Optimism in several key metrics, that too by a large margin. 

6/ Arbitrum’s closest competitor is Optimism, an L2 that also settles transactions to Ethereum. $OP is currently valued at $11B FDV.

If we were to use Optimism as a benchmark for Arbitrum, we see Arbitrum leads in nearly all metrics: pic.twitter.com/ZMGbjeUXmK

— Delphi Digital (@Delphi_Digital) March 22, 2023

How much are 1,10,100 ARBs worth today?

The current state of ARB

As ARB tokens entered circulation, their value dropped by an astounding 88%. The hype around ARB and its massive price decline might have played a role in making the token trend on CoinMarketCap. At press time, ARB was valued at $1.47 with a market capitalization of over $1.8 billion, making it the 34th largest token.

However, despite the drop in price, investors’ and whales’ interest in ARB remained unaffected. Lookonchain’s data revealed the list of the top five buyers of ARB. A whale bought 4.94 million ARB with 3,700 ETH, which is worth over $6.7 million. 

Are there whales buying $ARB?

1.🧵
Share the top 5 buyers of $ARB with you.

A whale bought 4.94M $ARB with 3,700 $ETH ($6.79M)! pic.twitter.com/lSdVzenlxp

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) March 24, 2023

ARB’s market maker, Wintermute Trading, also received 40 million tokens and transferred a small amount of ARB to exchanges for testing. Investors’ interest was also proven by checking Santiment’s chart, which showed a massive hike in the token’s volume.

However, positive sentiments around ARB declined heavily, which could cause trouble in the coming days.

Source: Santiment

Investors should be cautious

As the hype around ARB continued to grow, fraud regarding the token has already begun. A scammer created fake tokens of the same name as ARB and generated $24,480 in volume on Uniswap [UNI]. Initial reports revealed that the fake ETH/ARB had over 95 million fake ARB and over 400 WETH on Uniswap V3. Therefore, caution is advised. 

Please confirm whether the contract address is correct before trading $ARB!

A scammer created fake tokens of the same name as $ARB and generated $24.48k in volume on #Uniswap.

The correct address of $ARB: 0x912CE59144191C1204E64559FE8253a0e49E6548https://t.co/qvmcEz82Oh pic.twitter.com/47qvaePkXQ

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) March 23, 2023