Mapping Out Arbitrum's Ecosystem

Offchain Labs was founded in 2018 by founders Ed Felten, Steven Goldfeder, and Harry Kalodner. Ed Felten introduced the concept of Arbitrum in April 2019. On its surface, Arbitrum is an Optimistic Rollup (ORU) solution that is envisioned to scale Ethereum's throughput. An Arbitrum technical overview can be found here.  

Arbitrum competes with Optimism, another ORU solution, and various other scaling solutions. Optimism's OP token launch in May led to many speculations around Arbitrum's token launch and potential qualifications for an airdrop. Arbitrum's Odyssey campaign (which has been paused because of congestion issues) was one of them. Staying up-to-date on Layer-2 protocol updates will be imperative as their successes/failures have the potential to be a significant market force in 2023. Highlights of the most recent developments in Ethereum's scaling ecosystem can be found here.