Arbitrum

Status

ended

Outcome

Distributed — verifiable on-chain

Window

March 23, 2023 – September 23, 2023

Last checked

August 2, 2026

Our assessment

Worth it — opinion, see below

Arbitrum distributed ARB to addresses meeting a points-based eligibility formula across bridging, transaction count, activity spread over time, and volume. The criteria were published at announcement and the claim window ran roughly six months.

What actually happened

Unlike Uniswap’s flat allocation, eligibility was tiered: a scoring system awarded points for distinct behaviours, with explicit anti-sybil filtering that excluded addresses whose pattern suggested a single operator running many wallets.

Two details worth carrying forward:

• The criteria were retroactive but multi-dimensional. Simply transacting was not enough; the formula rewarded activity spread across months, which cannot be manufactured after an announcement.
• Sybil filtering removed a meaningful share of claimants. Addresses identified as part of a cluster were excluded, and the exclusion lists were published.

Our assessment

Worth it for genuine users of the network, who were rewarded for activity undertaken before any programme existed.

The more useful lesson is about the filtering. Arbitrum demonstrated that a large distribution can exclude farmed addresses at scale and publish its reasoning — which is why later programmes citing “sybil resistance” should be read as a claim to check rather than a reassurance. The relevant question for any open programme is not whether it says it filters, but whether it has ever published who it excluded and why.