Using the Arbitrum airdrop as an example, this article explores the impact of "metagame" airdrops on ecosystem development.

Original Title: Exploring the Impact of "Metagame" Airdrops on Ecosystem Construction Using the Arbitrum Airdrop as an Example

Original Author: Delphi Digital

Translated by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Within 24 hours, Arbitrum may inject billions of dollars into the cryptocurrency ecosystem:

625,000 wallets are eligible to participate;

The trading volume and total locked value have reached a new historical high.

Its closest competitor has a valuation of $11 billion.

Arbitrum's airdrop is a decentralized case study:

Arbitrum achieves decentralization by introducing its governance token $ARB, in order to transition to self-executing DAO governance. 12.75% of its supply, which is 1.275 billion tokens, will be allocated to Arbitrum community members and DAOs within the Arbitrum ecosystem.

It is crucial to decentralize the governance of Arbitrum to ensure that as the underlying layer upgrades, transactions will always aggregate onto the standard Ethereum. Giving governance decision-making power to holders ensures that there are no centralized failure points.

L2 unlocks the following practicality:

Fast block time can effectively settle transactions and provide users with higher leverage limits; cheaper computing enables wider activities and user participation. Decentralized perpetual exchanges utilize these features.

An example of an L2 unlock is GMX, a decentralized perpetual and spot exchange. Since launching on Arbitrum, GMX has processed over $93 billion in trading volume and recently hit an all-time high in TVL.

$GMX's strong performance in this bear market environment is a rare achievement.

Arbitrum's closest competitor is Optimism, which is also an L2 and can settle transactions on Ethereum.

Currently, the value of $OP is 11 billion US dollars FDV. If we use Optimism as a benchmark to measure Arbitrum, we will find that Arbitrum is leading in almost all indicators:

Both Arbitrum and Optimism have used Quest activities to incentivize users to use their platforms by rewarding them with NFTs. While many tokens use direct token incentives to attract users to their chains, Arbitrum is able to guide liquidity without distributing tokens.

Airdrops are often manipulated, and more than 135,000 wallets have been identified as witches in Arbitrum's distribution model. When Optimism's Quests officially ended on January 17th, the daily trading volume of Optimism dropped by 72.5% from 602,000 to 165,000 in just 2 days.

Although the airdrop snapshot has passed, speculators who participated in the airdrop may soon be replaced by actual users due to the injection of liquidity. This could potentially trigger a frenzy in the on-chain ecosystem.

Today, despite the end of the airdrop, the total locked value and daily trading volume of Arbitrum still reached a historic high.

Arbitrum has accepted the system's "players" to coordinate incentives and create true network effects.

With the rapid growth of the ecosystem, Arbitrum has the opportunity to onboard speculators into the ecosystem and inject their liquidity back in.

Last summer, in a report on the cryptocurrency gaming industry, we explored the model of "metagaming".

With the improvement of skill level, experience becomes scarce, competition becomes meaningful, and the surface area of monetization other than core games increases.

The monetization of games began with people's attention to activities, and then playing "meta-games" around them.

Similarly, fundamentally speaking, the launch of a project can be seen as a liquidity "game".

Its monetization path begins with people's attention to liquidity itself, and then playing "meta-games" using the most meaningful liquidity metadata.

Therefore, there are huge opportunities beyond core game participation. Airdrops are a "meta-game" that can be designed by all projects to attract more users and initiate liquidity.

There is no better case study for game design than Arbitrum.

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