- Amidst allegations of LayerZero tokens, Arbitrum declared $3.4 million in sales on June 20, up from just $20,000 the day before.
The Ethereum Layer 2 network Arbitrum had a record-breaking jump in daily revenue to $3.4 million (in ETH) on Thursday since it was the coordinating chain for LayerZero’s ZRO token claims, which opened on Thursday.
On June 19, Arbitrum had received just $20,000. In contrast, the daily revenue on Thursday increased by over 16,500%, as per a Dune dashboard compiled by datawarlock.
Austin Marrazza, product manager at Offchain Labs, the company that develops Arbitrum, stated that Arbitrum is one of the main beneficiaries of the LayerZero airdrop. Congestion fees collected today brought in $3 million for DAO.
The cross-chain interoperability platform LayerZero’s supporting organization, the LayerZero Foundation, launched airdrop claims for its native ZRO token on Thursday at 7 a.m. ET. The claims period will run through September 20.
A total of 85 million ZRO tokens, or 8.5% of the 1 billion token supply, are available to enrolled participants.The remaining tokens are held in reserve for future distribution programs, ecosystem expansion, key partners, and core contributors.
Bryan Pellegrino, CEO of LayerZero Labs, previously determined that 1.28 million wallets were qualified for the airdrop.
To claim an airdrop, LayerZero requires eligible users to pay 10 cents each ZRO
The foundation later revealed, though, that in order to obtain ZRO, users must contribute $0.10 in USDC, USDT, or ETH for each ZRO token in order to assist Protocol Guild, a nonprofit organization that provides money to Ethereum core developers and researchers.
Up to $18.5 million can be raised for Protocol Guild through the new Proof-of-Donation claims method, with donations up to $10 million matched by LayerZero Foundation and vested over four years.
Some in the crypto community criticized the new claim process, seeing the required payments as a covert tax or financing source rather than a genuine airdrop, which is usually meant to reward user contributions and decentralize the system.
Donations are not required; if you choose not to contribute, just do not submit a claim. Pellegrino answered on Thursday, saying, “This is not something you own; it’s something being offered.”
Arbitrage fees increase
Because Arbitrum processes claims atomically and eliminates the need for extra LayerZero messages, it benefits from serving as the coordination chain for the LayerZero token claims contract.
Additionally, eligible users can claim ZRO from Avalanche, BNB Chain, Ethereum, Optimism, Base, Polygon, and a few other networks; however, in order to do so, a LayerZero cross-chain communication is needed.
The outcome was a rise in median gas prices on Arbitrum, which went from 0.01 gwei to 34.7 gwei before leveling down as the activity decreased.
Due to the increase in petrol prices, Thursday’s average daily transaction fees on Arbitrum increased to $0.89 from the usual fee of only a pennies. Since then, they’ve gone back to that baseline.
The current price of LayerZero’s ZRO currency is $3.15, according to CoinGecko data. Its market cap is $796 million, with a fully diluted valuation of $3.2 billion, and its trading volume during the last day was about $1 billion.
Disclaimer : This article was created for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. An asset’s past performance does not predict its future returns. Before making an investment, please conduct your own research, as digital assets like cryptocurrencies are highly risky and volatile financial instruments.