According to blockchain statistics, Ethereum scaling blockchain Arbitrum finished distributing its arb (ARB) tokens to projects developed on the network on Tuesday for a total value of more than $120 million.
Based on their network activity and the number of wallets they had at the time, Arbitrum released and airdropped its tokens to specific users in March in amounts ranging from 625 arb to over 10,000 arb.
In an effort to promote acceptance, cryptocurrency projects will sometimes “airdrop” free tokens to their communities. Users of cryptocurrencies who frequently engage with both new and established platforms are probably going to get an airdrop at some point. The idea of “airdrop farming” has been inspired by the fact that big airdrops can be worth thousands of dollars.
The airdrop was open to projects developed on the Arbitrum network, including the perpetual trading protocol GMX and the token launchpad Camelot. Tokens were distributed in accordance with the number of deployed smart contracts, users, and trading volumes, among other criteria.
For some, like Vesta Finance, the airdrop served as a multimillion dollar stimulus: despite having only $3 million in its treasury, the project qualified for 2.7 million arb tokens, worth just under $6 million. As a result, the project may eventually be able to sell the tokens to fund its own growth or even offer token incentives to users to boost participation.
Projects that are yield rewards-focused, like PlutusDAO, have stated that they will use their airdrop allocation in “multiple ways to make the project stronger,” without going into detail.
However, some projects made the decision to sell as soon as they received the tokens. TridentDAO, a company engaged on the gaming industry, sold $175,000 in aRB through three addresses, or half of the amount it was paid. The action drew criticism from the locals for it.
According to on-chain data provided by Lookonchain, around 131 decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, received about 90 million ARB tokens, or $120 million at the time of writing. TreasureDAO and GMX, two NFT marketplaces, received the most with 8 million arb, or $12 million.
Decentralized exchanges SushiSwap, Balance, Uniswap, Curve, and Dopex were the next to receive ARB tokens; each will receive between 3 million and 5 million of them.
