• Arbitrum announced the launch of its native token called ARB last week
• IOU markets have launched, giving some indication of how much the token may be worth
• ARB claiming begins March 23 and when people get their coins on exchanges, the token’s value may turn out to be a whole lot different
Arbitrum Launches Native Token
Last week, Ethereum layer two scaling solution Arbitrum announced the launch of its native token called ARB. The highly anticipated airdrop will begin on March 23rd and people are already trading IOU tokens to get an idea of what the market value for ARB could look like.
IOU Markets Show Market Value Estimate
Since the announcement of ARB’s launch, several centralized cryptocurrency exchanges have launched IOU markets that represent an estimated market value for ARB before its launch. On these platforms, ARB has been exchanging hands for $5.41 to $7.92 per unit over the past 24 hours and reached an all-time high of $14.02 per unit on March 19th before dropping 51.43%. Global trades for these IOU tokens have reached $8.7 million in the last day, but this could change significantly when real tokens start trading after March 23rd.
Airdrop Tracking Tools Ready To Launch
The cryptocurrency analytics platform Dune Analytics is ready to go live with several airdrop tracking tools on March 23rd that will feature counters highlighting total ARB claimed, number of unique holders, and other allocation data. This data can give insight into what kind of impact launching real tokens might have on their value once they hit exchanges later this month.
Comparison With Optimism’s Token
The current IOU value of ARB is higher than Optimism’s native governance token OP which currently sits at about $2.53 per unit with a circulating supply of 314,844,141 OP tokens at present time. This comparison indicates that there is potential for significant shifts in market values once claims begin later this month.
Conclusion
The anticipation around Arbitrum’s native token is high and there are expectations that it will do well considering existing metrics from IOU markets as well as comparisons with other tokens like Optimism’s OP coin which have seen much success in recent months due to increased user adoption and demand across crypto networks worldwide