Arbitrum is getting ready to airdrop ARB tokens to users

The Arbitrum Foundation has unveiled a new token, ARB, for one of Ethereum's most extensive layer 2 scaling platforms, marking its shift into a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO).

The holders of ARB will be able to vote on central decisions governing Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova. Community members will receive an airdrop of ARB on March 23, with a total supply of 10 billion tokens. The community will control 56% of the tokens, while the remaining 44% will go to Offchain Labs, the development firm that created Arbitrum, and its investors and employees.

"Arbitrum DAO will have the power to control key decisions at the core protocol level, from how the chain's technology is upgraded to how the revenue from the chain can be used to support the ecosystem," the Arbitrum Foundation wrote in a blog post.

Today The Arbitrum Foundation is extremely excited to announce the launch of DAO governance for the Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova networks, alongside the launch of $ARB. https://t.co/TB3wG0QK0v

— Arbitrum (💙,🧡) (@arbitrum) March 16, 2023

Arbitrum has the majority of its Ethereum rollup network locked, with over $3.69 billion in assets, making it the most substantial market share holder, beating out its main competitor, Optimism. Both Arbitrum One and Optimism are optimistic rollup networks that run in parallel with Ethereum, bundling up several transactions and registering those transactions to the Ethereum ledger in bulk. Unlike Ether, which is used to pay for fees on Ethereum, ARB will only be used for protocol governance.

The introduction of ARB coincides with the launch of Arbitrum Obit, which will enable third-party apps and protocols to create new "layer 3" blockchains based on Arbitrum's low-fee infrastructure.