Rapid Insights: Arbitrum Airdrop

The long-awaited Arbitrum airdrop was announced on March 16, 2023, and commenced seven days after. The first few minutes following the claim of the airdrop saw Arbitrum RPC going down. At the same time, the price of the Arbitrum governance token, ARB, fluctuated significantly across centralized and decentralized exchanges. 

This series of events was similar to that of the Optimism airdrop, albeit on a larger scale, considering how there are over 600,000 eligible addresses for the ARB airdrop as opposed to only 249,000 eligible addresses for the OP airdrop. The airdrop eligibility criteria were partly influenced by Nansen and Hop, though there are certain claims that Arbitrum’s airdrop was not entirely Sybil-resistant.