Arbitrum to airdrop ARB tokens to users on March 23

Ethereum (ETH) layer2 (L2) solution Arbitrum is set to airdrop $ARB tokens to its community members on March 23.

The Arbitrum Foundation said in a March 16 statement that the L2 solution would be pivoting into a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that the $ARB token would govern.

This means that $ARB holders would be allowed to make decisions that impact the operations and governance of the Arbitrum ecosystem.

“The $ARB token will facilitate the decentralization of the Arbirum network, and the $ARB airdrop will place the governance token in the hands of the users who are actively participating in the Arbitrum ecosystem.”

The $ARB token

The $ARB token has a total circulating supply of 10 billion. The developers said the community owns 56% of this supply — of which 12.75% would be airdropped to individual wallets and DAOs operating within the ecosystem on March 23, according to a Medium post.

The airdrop would be shared based on a February 26 snapshot taken by the developers.

“The majority of the $ARB supply will be under the control of the Arbitrum community via The Arbitrum Foundation, accelerating growth of the ecosystem organically. $ARB token holders will govern The Arbitrum Foundation through the Arbitrum DAO.”

The developers wrote that Arbitrum’s DAO governance process is self-executing, meaning the DAO’s votes about on-chain actions would be effected simultaneously. To mitigate against rushed decisions, voting would take a minimum of 21 days.

Meanwhile, the Arbitrum foundation has also set up a 12-man council of highly regarded community representatives tasked with ensuring the chain’s security and acting in the event of a security vulnerability.

Arbitrum’s developer Offchain Labs CEO Steven Goldfeder, said the introduction of the Security Council and other features showed that the project wants to be at the forefront of a decentralized financial system.

Arbitrum is the dominant L2 network. The scaling solution controls over 55% of the total value of assets locked across the layer-2 market. Besides that, the project has seen increased interest recently, processing more transactions than Ethereum’s mainnet twice.

(Updated with more information about $ARB token)