Arbitrum is a Layer-2 blockchain designed to scale Ethereum.

Arbitrum is one of many blockchains to offer a ‘rollup solution’ - this refers to when transactions are batched off-chain to reduce congestion on the mainnet. Once settled, these multiple transactions are compressed into a single transaction on the underlying blockchain (in Arbitrum’s case, Ethereum). Batching transactions off-chain makes for faster, scalable, and much cheaper transactions.

As of March 2023, it has a 55% market share of TVL (total value locked) on Layer-2s.

Arbitrum was founded by Ed Felten, formerly President Obama’s deputy Chief Technology Officer, Steven Goldfeder (CEO) and Harry Kalodner (CTO). The three co-founders met at Princeton University.

Arbitrum’s journey to decentralization

On Mar 16, 2023, approximately eighteen months after the launch of their mainnet, Arbitrum officially announced the launch of ARB, their new governance token.

12.5% of the ARB token supply is set to be airdropped to the Arbitrum community on Mar 23, 2023.

Arbitrum worked closely with nansen.ai to identify which users should qualify for their airdrop.

Arbitrum - in their own words

Arbitrum has frequently stated that their ‘guiding mission when building Arbitrum has always been to securely scale Ethereum’. This ‘security-first’ mindset is stressed in their marketing materials. 

Their slogan is: “Secure scaling for Ethereum’. 

ARB token utility?

ARB will be the network’s governance token.

All voting will be conducted on-chain with successful proposals being automatically executed without the reliance of the core team or any intermediaries.