ARB claims are open: breaking down the criteria behind 625,000 wallets, and how to play the next one

Yesterday, 23 March, claims opened for ARB, the governance token of Arbitrum​. The point of this article is not to report the result. The published criteria are a strategy guide for the next one​, so let us take them apart.

Item	Detail
Distributed	1.162 billion ARB (11.62% of total supply)
Recipients	625,143 wallets
Method	Usage turned into points (up to 15)
Claiming	There is a deadline. Eligible users should claim early from the official site

Breaking down the criteria

Your allocation came from the total points across these behaviours.

Axis	Detail
Bridging	Deposits into Arbitrum
Duration	Extra points for 2, 6 or 9+ months of use
Frequency	Tiers from 4 transactions to over 100
Value	Trading volume and liquidity provided
Nova	Extra points for using Arbitrum Nova

The essence is a three-axis score: duration × frequency × value​. A wallet that used the chain steadily for nine months beat a wallet that moved a large sum once.

Sybil filtering: the deductions that were actually applied

The published measures were not blanket exclusions but point deductions​.

• If all of a wallet''s transactions fell inside a 48-hour window​, one point was deducted
• If the balance was under 0.005 ETH and the wallet had interacted with no more than one contract, one point was deducted
• Addresses identified through the Hop Protocol bounty were disqualified

What got targeted was wallets worked through in one short burst, and wallets with nothing in them. Put the other way: a wallet spread over time that you genuinely use loses no points. Here too, what works is spreading activity out.

How to play the next ARB

The takeaway: treat these criteria as a template and start on candidate chains today.

• Candidates: infrastructure with a large raise and no token yet — zkSync, StarkNet, LayerZero and similar
• What to do: bridge, then put it in your calendar on the assumption that you will transact a few times a month for nine months
• Small amounts are fine. Duration and frequency cannot be bought later​, so the only thing that matters is the day you start
• The day these criteria came out, I built regular transactions on candidate chains into my routine

Risks and caveats

• Always claim from the official site. Fake claim sites are appearing in bulk
• The next campaign will not necessarily use the same criteria, though it is natural to expect the direction to carry over
• Gas and bridging costs are money spent up front, with no guarantee of return

Summary

There is one thing to do. Pick one candidate chain, bridge today and get your first transaction done. The you of nine months from now will be grateful.

⚠️ This is not investment advice. Only ever claim from the official site.

Sources

• $ARB airdrop eligibility and distribution specifications (Arbitrum DAO docs)