First published 27 March 2023, the week the token could be claimed. Expanded in October 2026 so ARB is not described as the gas, and so the airdrop is not described as still open. Arbitrum One is an optimistic rollup. Transactions execute there. Ethereum is where the record is anchored, and where a disputed result can be challenged. Offchain Labs built the software. Steven Goldfeder, Harry Kalodner, and Ed Felten are the founders people name. ARB is the governance token of that system. It does not pay the fee. ETH does.
Ethereum without the jargon is the chain underneath. A bridge is extra software, not a tunnel. What is Polygon (POL)? is a different scaling network with its own coin. This page is ARB.
The token arrived years after the chain
The rollup had been open since 2021. You could already bridge ETH and pay fees in it. On 16 March 2023 the Arbitrum Foundation described the token. Claiming started on 23 March 2023, on Arbitrum One, not on Ethereum. The initial supply was 10 billion. About 12.75 percent was the airdrop to users and to app treasuries. The rest was allocated to a DAO treasury, the team, investors, and the foundation, with multi-year locks on the insider portions. The contract can mint more, up to about 2 percent a year, if governance turns that mint on. Ten billion is the starting supply. It is not a promise the mint stays at zero.
The claim ended on 24 September 2023. Unclaimed coins were swept toward the treasury. A website that says you can still claim the 2023 airdrop is not the airdrop. A wallet signature is not a handshake. There is no presale hidden behind a form that asks for a recovery phrase.
Two chains, and a week to leave
Arbitrum One uses chain id 42161. Arbitrum Nova is a second chain in the same brand, with the same 0x addresses and a different id. Orbit is the name for still more chains built with the same software. ETH on one of them is not ETH on Ethereum, and ARB on one of them is not ARB on another, until a bridge says so. The wrong network is still the wrong city.
A withdrawal through the official bridge from Arbitrum One back to Ethereum waits about a week, the challenge window, and then someone has to claim it on Ethereum. That claim costs ETH. A faster bridge is a different company. A bridge is extra software, not a tunnel. Nothing here is an instruction to bridge, vote, or buy ARB.
