The Arbitrum Foundation, responsible for developing the Arbitrum blockchain, announced the transfer of 69 million unclaimed ARB tokens to the network’s treasury. This move came after the claim period for these tokens ended over the weekend.
According to technical documents, these unclaimed rewards make up 0.69% of ARB’s total supply of 10 billion. Current market prices value these tokens at over $59 million.
Data from Dune Analytics reveals that 93% of eligible users claimed their tokens. The ARB tokens were initially airdropped to eligible users in late March, generating a massive community response. More than 42 million tokens were claimed by 23,000 unique users within hours of the airdrop going live.
Moreover, a governance vote in August led to the decision to transfer these unclaimed tokens to the Arbitrum treasury rather than placing them in a time-locked smart contract. The vote garnered a staggering 99.96% approval from token holders.
Arbitrum treasury now holds nearly $3 billion in ARB tokens
Following the transfer, the Arbitrum treasury’s holdings have swelled to nearly $3 billion in ARB tokens, according to blockchain data. The decision to move the unclaimed tokens to the treasury was part of the Arbitrum Improvement Proposal AIP-7.
The Arbitrum Foundation took to X (formerly Twitter) to confirm the transfer, cautioning users that these tokens are now unclaimable. The original airdrop in March made 1.16 billion tokens available as rewards for early Ethereum Layer 2 network users.
These tokens also granted governance powers to the DAO controlling the Arbitrum One and Nova networks. Despite a six-month claim period, 69 million ARB tokens remained unclaimed, prompting the recent transfer to the treasury.
In contrast to Arbitrum’s approach, Optimism, an Ethereum Layer 2 rival, chose to directly distribute unclaimed funds from its first airdrop in June 2022 to eligible users. It is important to know that about 49 million of its OP tokens remained unclaimed from an initial airdrop of 215 million tokens.
Optimism made an announcement last week regarding its third OP airdrop. The company allocated 19.4 million OP tokens to over 31,000 addresses.
Both Arbitrum and Optimism have experienced a decline in their daily average transactions since the launch of Coinbase-incubated Layer 2 network Base in August. Data from The Block dashboard shows that Base’s seven-day moving average daily transaction count reached 921,000 on September 24, compared to Arbitrum’s 603,000 and Optimism’s 334,000.
The price of Arbitrum’s governance token also experienced a slight dip following the announcement but has since recovered. It currently trades at $0.82, according to CoinGecko data.
