Arbitrum's ARB Token Trades at $3.99 as 625,143 Wallets Receive Airdrop

The long-awaited Arbitrum token (ARB) made its market debut Thursday, trading at $3.99 on Uniswap as volatility spiked on decentralized exchanges.

The official claim for the token went live at the Ethereum block height of 16,890,400 at 13:05 UTC. The claim website went down under heavy traffic, as did the blockchain's block explorer. Arbitrum, which started operating in 2021, is the largest layer 2 blockchain on Ethereum, achieving scalability by using a technique called transaction rollups, which sends batches of transactions to the Ethereum mainnet.

It's worth noting that ARB prices across all exchanges varied massively following the airdrop, with prices reaching as high as $14 on Bybit.

Activity on Arbitrum has been increasing since November, when Delphi Digital a report suggested investors were interacting with the blockchain to boost their chances of receiving an airdrop. Arbitrum's total value locked (TVL) is at $2 billion, double that of rival layer 2 chain Optimism, according to Defillama.

Arbitrum-based decentralized exchange GMX became the largest single holder of ARB, receiving 8 million tokens in the airdrop, spurring discussion about the use of tokens on the GMX governance forum.

Binance, the largest crypto exchange by trading volume, will list ARB at 17:00 UTC, with perpetual futures being rolled out about15 minutes later.