Offchain Labs, the developer behind the Arbitrum ecosystem, announced on Wednesday that it will launch, or release for free to select individuals, $ARB, a new token designed to manage both Arbitrum blocks.
The new cryptocurrency will be released on March 23 and delivered to users of Arbitrum One, the larger of the two blockchains, and Arbitrum Nova, which is designed specifically for Web3 games and social media applications.
As part of the token offering, Offchain Labs, whose founder is a Princeton University professor and two Ph.D. students, will establish the Arbitrum Foundation and the associated DAO, or decentralized autonomous organization, to manage the management and development of the Arbitrum ecosystem. $ARB holders will be allowed to vote on proposals submitted to the DAO, further decentralizing control of Arbitrum.
“Looking forward, we are moving closer to a decentralized financial system, with Arbitrum technology at the very forefront,” said Steven Goldfeder, CEO and founder of Offchain Labs, in a statement.
The announcement follows Aribtrum’s sudden rise in less than two years as one of Ethereum’s most popular layer-2 blockchains. With a total of $1.6 billion in assets locked in the chain, according to DeFi Llama, Arbitrum is twice over its closest competitor Optimism, another layer-2 blockchain that also makes Ethereum transactions faster and cheaper. Optimism already has a token, OP, with a current market capitalization of about $750 million, according to CoinMarketCap.
Goldfeder told fortune who planned the $ARB airdrop as a means of decentralizing Arbitrum further, not taking cash. “I don’t care about tokens for the sake of tokens. Absolutely not,” he added. “Tokens are a tool for decentralization and a tool for giving government power to users.”
He said $ARB would only be used for governance, or to provide voting power to individuals in Arbitrum’s new DAO. Ether, the native currency in Ethereum, will still be used for transaction fees.
In addition to the announced release of $ARB and the Arbitrum DAO foundation, Offchain Labs also announced on Wednesday the unveiling of Arbitrum Orbit, a tool for developers to build a 3-layer blockchain on top of the Arbitrum block.
“There is a growing trend in the community where projects not only want to launch their own apps, but also want to launch their own chains,” Goldfeder said. fortune.
He said that Offchain Labs, which announced that it raised $120 million in funding in 2021 at a cost of $1.2 billion, relinquishing control of Arbitrum, will spend the next few months focusing on onboarding developers who want to create their own layer-3 blockchain on top of the Arbitrum network.