Exclusive: Nansen report showing surge in Arbitrum transactions after ARB Airdrop

Invezz can exclusively report that industry-leading blockchain data analytics platform Nansen has released its Q1 2023 report on the performance of Ethereum-based blockchain Arbitrum.

The report shows that, despite the collapse of FTX and the ensuing crypto contagion, Arbitrum experienced increased user activity with a “surge” in transaction volume driven by the ARB token airdrop, whose popularity has surged.

159k to over 1 million Arbitrum transactions

According to the report, Arbitrum’s daily transactions experienced a surge over the last quarter of 2022 and the trend continued throughout Q1, 2023. Specifically, the transactions on Arbitrum rose from 159,000 to over 1 million with a similar trend witnessed on Arbitrum gas.

Interestingly, the highly-anticipated release of Arbitrum’s native token, ARB, on March 23 coincided with a significant spike in daily transaction activity. Daily transactions surged to 2.7 million from 300k at the start of the quarter.

The report notes that, while Arbitrum showed robust growth in daily transactions, Ethereum remained consistent at roughly 1 million daily transactions throughout Q1.

According to Douglas Chia, a research analyst at Nansen:

“Arbitrum has continued the strong growth it exhibited at the end of 2022 into the first quarter of 2023, even after FTX’s collapse and the ensuing contagion. With new infrastructure improvements on the way, Arbitrum’s drive to help developers transition to Web3 and create a thriving ecosystem of DeFi and NFTs remains steady. With the continued rise of their transaction volume, combined with its numerous infrastructure improvements, Arbitrum is exhibiting zero signs of decline in 2023.”

Arbitrum’s ARB token airdrop

Arbitrum announced the highly anticipated ARB token airdrop amid the market volatility of Q1, 2023 in an attempt to power decentralization and reward genuine users of the ecosystem. Even in a crypto market still recovering from several black swan events, the launch of the ARB token was considered a success and was generally well-received by the Arbitrum community.

While the majority of the supply would be community-owed at 56%, over 12% of that supply would be airdropped to eligible users. Offchain Labs partnered with Nansen to design the eligibility criteria for the airdrop. 

The drop also included several Arbitrum projects with DAO treasuries to further engage with smaller sub-communities within the Arbitrum ecosystem.

Additionally, the Arbitrum team released key infrastructure improvements in the first quarter to expand options for builders to develop the ecosystem. These improvements include Orbit, which enables developers to build their own Layer 3 blockchain on top of the ecosystem, and Stylus, which allows developers to deploy programs written in other popular programming languages like Rust and C++.