Arbitrum Airdrop: What you need to know!
Arbitrum Transfers Control to DAO and Prepares for ARB Token Launch
The founders of Arbitrum are set to hand over control of the Layer 2 blockchain next week, accompanied by an airdrop distributing billions of freshly created governance tokens among users, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), investors, and the protocol's development team.
The upcoming launch of Arbitrum's ARB token on March 23 has generated significant anticipation. Tokens on the Arbitrum blockchain outperformed the broader cryptocurrency market on Wednesday.
As a leading Layer 2 blockchain with a 55% market share, Arbitrum plays a crucial role in Ethereum's scaling strategy to support billions of users. The company behind Arbitrum, Offchain Labs, also announced plans to facilitate permissionless development of Layer 3 blockchains on top of Arbitrum.
Out of the total 10 billion ARB tokens, 56% will be allocated to a DAO-controlled foundation, with the Arbitrum DAO managed collectively by token holders. A quarter of the tokens will go to current and future Offchain Labs employees, while investors receive 19%. Eligible users will be airdropped 11.5% of the supply, and the remaining 1.1% will be distributed among DAOs in the Arbitrum ecosystem.
The week-long gap between the token announcement and the airdrop is designed to encourage potential delegates to step forward for the Arbitrum DAO. As individuals claim their tokens, they will have the option to delegate their voting rights immediately. Offchain Labs has partnered with Nansen, a crypto data platform, to determine token eligibility and identify airdrop farming activities.
The Arbitrum DAO will control both the chains and their technology, as well as the underlying technology of Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova. Unlike most DAOs, votes within the Arbitrum DAO will be self-executing, streamlining the decision-making process.
The DAO will also manage the Arbitrum Foundation, which will receive transaction fees generated by Arbitrum and over half of the ARB supply. Arbitrum's transaction fees will continue to be paid in ETH after the airdrop.
Permissionless development of Layer 3 blockchains on Arbitrum will be allowed, but the creation of competing Layer 2 blockchains using Arbitrum technology will require DAO approval. This comes as Coinbase recently revealed plans to develop its own rollup, Base, using technology from Optimism, a competitor in the Layer 2 space.
Offchain Labs CEO Steven Goldfeder clarified that the Layer 3 announcement was not a response to Optimism's partnership with Coinbase, stating that a Layer 3 strategy has been in the works for some time.
An emergency committee consisting of 12 members will be responsible for addressing any urgent, time-sensitive bugs discovered in the software, with a minimum of nine members required to approve changes.
Though Offchain Labs will relinquish control of Arbitrum, the company anticipates remaining involved in the ecosystem as a service provider, contributing to the development of Arbitrum's technology alongside other capable teams.