Arbitrum: Crypto airdrop did not go as planned

After several delays and problems, Arbitrum’s native token, ARB, has finally been launched on the crypto market via an airdrop.

However, the price of Arbitrum (ARB) has fallen 90% from the original IOU price and is currently trading around $1. Only 16% of the ARB airdrop has been claimed, according to data provided by Nansen analytics.

The performance related to Arbitrum’s airdrop has not pleased the crypto world

The token’s official claim was started at 13:05 (UTC), at the block height of 16,890,400 on Ethereum.

Due to overwhelming demand, both the network block explorer and the claim site crashed. Despite this, users still got tokens from the smart contract independently.

Additionally, 1.16 billion ARB tokens were part of the airdrop, representing 11.6% of the total supply of 10 billion tokens. Additionally, an additional 113 million tokens are available for distribution to certain Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) on the Arbitrum network.

Since only 16% of the total Arbitrum Supply (ARB) has been claimed and only a small number of crypto exchanges are responsible for most of the daily trading volume, the ARB price has been subject to significant volatility.

On March 19, the price of the IOU token peaked at $14, with a 24-hour trading volume of around $8 million. However, after the initial airfall, ARB was subjected to a massive selloff, resulting in a 90% price drop that brought the current value to today’s low of $1.07 and is currently trading down 77% to $1.32.

Hundreds of phishing scams were discovered before the ARB crypto airdrop

The airdrop of Arbitrum’s “ARB” token, a layer-2 solution for scaling Ethereum, appears to have been a popular target for scammers.

The community has reported hundreds of phishing scams aimed at deceiving crypto users. Airdrop sent 10 billion governance tokens via an airdrop to allow holders to vote on changes to the code, launched on March 23.

However, several fraudsters created fake airdrops with the aim of stealing funds from victims before the official event.

In a post on March 19, Redefine, a blockchain security company, said it had found a fake website pretending to be the official Arbitrum airdrop site. Screenshots show the site asking the user to authorize access to their money, which allegedly results in scammers emptying their wallets.

The Arbitrum Foundation used a points system to determine who could claim Airdrop tokens and how many they could get, including completing at least four transactions or interacting with at least four smart contracts, transferring funds to the Arbitrum One chain, and depositing more than $50,000 in liquidity to Arbitrum.

Scam Sniffer has already identified more than 273 phishing sites linked to Arbitrum, and the number appears to have increased well before the official launch on March 23rd.

Only 625,143 wallets out of more than 2.3 million linked to the Arbitrum One chain were found to be eligible for the airdrop, according to Nansen, a blockchain analytics company that helped develop the criteria with Arbitrum.

How the world of web3 is changing with Arbitrum

Arbitrum’s token distribution will not only be limited to users, but also to decentralized applications (dApps) that have been most successful in the ecosystem.

These dApps largely originated in Ethereum and have moved to Arbitrum in recent months, including Uniswap, Aave, Sushi and OpenSea. These popular Web3 companies decided to integrate Arbitrum’s blockchain, facilitated by the great similarity between Ethereum’s blockchain architecture and Layer 2.

One of the most successful projects on Arbitrum is the decentralized exchange (DEX) GMX, which was born on this blockchain and Avalanche. GMX allows its users to engage in leveraged trading through financial instruments called perpetual futures.

However, the Arbitrum blockchain is not only populated by decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, but also by dApps dedicated to games and NFTs.

One of the most famous in this regard is Treasure, a Metaverse dedicated to games that calls itself the “Nintendo of the Web3”. At Treasure, it is possible to play a variety of games to earn video games, whose ecosystem works thanks to the MAGIC token.

This token allows players to obtain the non-fungible tokens required to play and is distributed to players as a reward.

We can thus say that Arbitrum is proving to be one of the most promising scalability solutions for Ethereum.

In the near future, the Airdrop of Arbitrum and the ARB token could help take the ultimate leap forward for a blockchain that will most likely continue to make waves in the cryptocurrency world.

And despite the popularity of the Arbitrum blockchain, it is important that users maintain caution and caution to avoid falling victim to phishing scams and other scams.

Conclusions

Despite the disappointing performance of Arbitrum’s ARB token in its debut, the importance of this layer-2 solution to scaling Ethereum cannot be ignored.

Due to its Ethereum-like architecture, Arbitrum has attracted the attention of many decentralized finance, gaming and NFT projects, and has proven to be one of the most promising solutions for scaling the Ethereum blockchain.

Despite initial difficulties, it is possible that the ARB token could achieve better performance in the future, helping to strengthen Arbitrum’s position as an important solution for the future of cryptocurrencies.

Furthermore, the fact that many successful dApps have already chosen to integrate with Arbitrum is a positive sign indicating confidence in the platform and its ability to effectively scale transactions.

There are also interesting projects such as GMX and Treasure that utilize the potential of Arbitrum to offer innovative services in decentralized finance and NFT gaming.

Despite the recent underperformance of the ARB token, there are still many reasons to be optimistic about the future of Arbitrum as a scalability solution for Ethereum.

As the DeFi and NFT ecosystem grows, the demand for efficient scalability solutions will only increase, and Arbitrum has proven to be a robust solution well positioned to meet this demand.

At the same time, it is important to remember that the cryptocurrency market is very volatile and the value of tokens can fluctuate significantly in the short term.

In the long term, however, Arbitrum’s technical robustness and adaptability could make the difference in positioning it as a leading scaling solution for Ethereum and the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem.