Arbitrum distributes $120M worth of ARB tokens to DAOs

The popular Layer 2 Ethereum scaling solution has begun distributing ARB allocations to various decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Several crypto analytics firms confirmed that Arbitrum fully distributed over 90 million ARB tokens to 125 DAOs on Monday night.

The airdropped tokens are part of Arbitrum’s initial ARB allocation of 1.13% to DAOs. Although the protocol officially earmarked approximately 112 million ARB tokens for 137 decentralized organizations, only 90.15 million tokens have so far been disbursed.

Collectively, these DAOs will receive around $120 million worth of tokens at current market prices. Treasure DAO got the highest allocation of 8 million ARB tokens. Other top recipients include SushiSwap (4.2 million ARBs), Dopex (3.8 million ARBs), Radiant (3.3 million ARBs), and Balancer DAO (3 million ARBs). Based on the initial allocation GMX will also receive 8 million tokens.

Given the structure of DAOs, each organization will have the freedom to decide how to spend their allocation. Some DAOs are already discussing how to spend their allocation while others have pledged to use the funds to make their ecosystem stronger.

Meanwhile, on-chain data analyst The Data Nerd opined that DAOs with smaller market caps would likely gain the most from the airdrop since the incentives are multiple times more than their current market cap.

Prior to the distribution, the Arbitrum DAO was engulfed in its own internal reforms in the aftermath of its failed AIP-1. Moving forward, the DAO will implement AIPs 1.1 and 1.2, which address issues such as the lockup period for ARB tokens, operation budget, transparency, and the threshold number of votable tokens.