Arbitrum Adoption Grows Ahead of ARB Token

Arbitrum has taken the Ethereum landscape by storm, as one of the leading players in the Layer-2 narrative alongside Optimism and others. The anticipation for a native Arbitrum token (ARB) really took off on June 21, 2022 when Arbitrum Odyssey was first announced.

Since then, major projects on Arbitrum recorded sustained growth despite facing industry meltdowns such as the Terra implosion and FTX collapse. Besides increasing market capitalization, Arbitrum also saw more protocols building on its network with new Arbitrum-native protocols such as Radiant Capital (RDNT), Vela Exchange (VELA), Camelot DEX (GRAIL) and TridentDAO (PSI) launching in recent months.

GMX leads the pack with the highest market cap on Arbitrum

GMX (GMX), the pioneer decentralized perpetual exchange on Arbitrum, recorded a 409.8% increase in market cap from June 21, 2022 to March 21, 2023. In absolute terms, Its market cap grew from $134.92 million to $687.83 million over the period.

Over the same period, Treasure DAO’s MAGIC token actually recorded the highest growth in market cap among Arbitrum tokens with 2423.0% gain. It is the second largest Arbitrum-native dapp by market cap, having grown from $14.71 million to $371.24 million.

Other Arbitrum-native protocols are Gains Network (GNS), Dopex (DPX) and Camelot DEX with $244.78 million, $86.06 million and $40.09 million in market cap respectively.

Anticipation for $ARB is also reflected in TVL growth and futures market

Community members have been actively participating in these protocols with the cumulative total volume locked (TVL) on Arbitrum increasing from $0.70 billion in June 21, 2022 to $1.79 billion in March 21, 2023. This represents a 153.7% growth in TVL over 9 months.

Additionally, the community has already begun speculating on the unreleased ARB tokens on the futures markets, with the futures price on Bitmex ranging from $1.25 and $1.50. Traders have looked to benchmark $ARB against $OP, which is a similar Layer 2 governance token for Optimism. 

Methodology

The study looked at nine Arbitrum-native tokens (GMX, MAGIC, GNS, DPX, VSTA, RDNT, VELA, PSI, GRAIL) by market capitalization from June 21, 2022 to March 21, 2023, based on CoinGecko data.

This study was co-written by Haziq Darwisy. Follow them on Twitter here.

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Curious to find out more about our previous research studies? Check out this one we did on the most damaging methods of crypto hacks and exploits in 2022.