Will There Be an Arbitrum Airdrop?

Arbitrum has caused ripples amongst the crypto markets and message waves in the past few days. The Ethereum Layer-2 solution notably pushed its Total Volume Locked (TVL) past $4 billion and overtook the daily TVL of BNB Chain.

Abritrum also integrated with Coinbase on February 16, a major step for the validation of the chain. The integration will help the scaling solution network take another step into the deep pockets of one of crypto’s largest centralized exchanges. Coinbase users can now take advantage of the fast and secure speeds from Arbitrum with the seamless Ethereum integration offered through Layer-2.

Is all this hype leading to the airdrop of an Arbitrum token? Crypto fans hold fond memories of the Optimism airdrop in Spring 2022, and hopes are that an equivalent offering from Arbitrum could just as lucrative.

Speculation has been looming around Arbitrum since the Optimism airdrop in 2022 but hype re-emerged in the New Year. In January 2023, speculation of bot farming surfaced on the network to gain leverage on a potential airdrop.

The Coinbase integration and growing TVL have also continued to increase the hype around an airdrop. Type “arbitrum airdrop” on Twitter and there will be a slew of hopium-laden commentary that rains down clamoring about an airdrop.

The Bankless team made a pitch as to why the creators of Arbitrum, Offchain Labs, should pursue a token and how the token is critical to the “long-term success” and competitiveness of the network.

“The Arbitrum token is the elephant in the room, and it is all but certain Offchain Labs will eventually release one to help remain on equal competitive footing with other, tokenized L2s such as Optimism, StarkWare, and eventually zkEVMs such as those from Polygon, zkSync, and Scroll,” wrote the Bankless team in January.

So far, Offchain Labs have been rather coy about deploying their own token. The core idea behind the project is to be the layer-2 solution of Ethereum, and no public commitment to a token has been made.

Arbitrum appears poised to consume market share and liquidity on its network before making any sort of airdrop a priority. The users and TVL are coming, so building and solidifying the network during the first major wave is not a bad priority either.

For now, the Coinbase effect is in full swing and institutional eyes could be next.