Offchain Labs Inc., the developer of the Ethereum blockchain scaling solution Arbitrum, announced today that it will airdrop, or give away for free to select people, its new token $ARB, a new cryptocurrency that would be used for voting on two of its blockchain products.

The company also announced the launch of the Arbitrum Foundation and a DAO, or decentralized autonomous organization, to govern the development of Arbitrum One, its main blockchain, and Arbitrum Nova, which was designed for social media and gaming.

Steven Goldfeder, chief executive and co-founder of Offchain Labs said that the launch of the new organizations will lead the blockchains to greater decentralization. “Through the community airdrop, the delegation process, and the introduction of the Security Council, community participation and control is at the forefront of today’s announcement, and the requirements for receiving a share of Arbitrum governance have been crafted meticulously, optimizing for the longevity of the ecosystem and community,” he said.

Decentralization is a fundamental tenet of blockchain technology and what is called Web3, which relies on multiple copies of ledgers to cryptographically protect transactions across its peer-to-peer network from potential tampering. Its use also gives rise to decentralized applications, or dapps, which run using self-executing code across networks without the need for central servers. With cryptocurrencies and tokens, developers have built entire decentralized economies, games, social networks and more using the blockchains as the foundation. 

Holders of the tokens will be able to vote on proposals submitted to the DAO and decide on how development and governance decisions will proceed in the future. According to Goldfeder, this will further decentralize both the development and decision-making for the future of the blockchains. The tokens will be dropped on March 23.

“Looking ahead, we’re moving closer and closer toward a decentralized financial system, with the Arbitrum technology at the very forefront of that,” Goldfeder added.

Offchain Labs Arbitrum builds Layer 2 scaling solutions for Ethereum, which uses “rollups” technology to speed up transactions and lower fees. Layer 2 solutions execute transitions outside of Ethereum on their own blockchain and batch them together so they can be “rolled up” before sending them back to Ethereum so they can all be run at once.

Arbitrum One is the lead Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum with about $1.67 billion in total assets locked in the chain, according to DefiLlama. Offchain Labs raised $120 million in funding in August 2021 to launch its Arbitrium One mainnet, and its scaling solution was chosen by the internet social media giant Reddit for its blockchain-based “Community Points” program.

At the same time as the new foundation and the DAO, Offchain Labs also announced a new technology called Arbitrum Orbit – a Layer 3 scaling solution that will allow developers to build their own scaling chains that will roll onto Arbitrum.

With Orbit, developers will gain access to permissionless scalable rollups blockchains that behave like Arbitrum’s other blockchains. For example, they can build Layer 3 Rollup chains with Ethereum-level security to maximize scalability similar to Arbitrum One, or they could aim for Layer 3 AnyTrust chains using minimal trust to enable high-volume and low transaction costs similar to Arbitrum Nova. All of these solutions run atop the core engine of Arbitrum Nitro, which means developers can customize their own Layer 3 solution for whatever application specific needs they may have.

The new scaling solution fully supports the Ethereum virtual machine, which means that developers can write and execute smart contracts. The company also said it will also support the upcoming release of Arbitrum Stylus, which will allow developers to use programming languages such as C, C++ and Rust for their chains, in addition to the traditional coding language Solidity to write code for dapps.

“The launch of Arbitrum Orbit marks another step in the goal of growth through ecosystem expansion by way of onboarding new developers,” said Goldfeder. “With today’s announcement, developers now have another tool allowing them to not only build their own smart contracts, but to also launch their own L3 chains leveraging the best technology available.”

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