Layer2 Airdrop Competition: Who is more generous, Arbitrum or Optimism?

Recently, the Arbitrum airdrop has once again sparked a wealth creation frenzy in the cryptocurrency circle. Compared to the first airdrop conducted by Optimism at the end of May last year, what is the impact of this airdrop by Arbitrum? Currently, among the four major star projects in Layer 2, two have already completed their airdrops, which has also led to strong expectations from users regarding the potential airdrops from ZkSync and Starknet in the future. So, what are the similarities and differences in the airdrop rules between Optimism and Arbitrum? What insights do these rules provide for users? In addition, how will airdrops affect the network fundamentals and ecosystem?

After a comprehensive analysis of the airdrop data and on-chain data, we have drawn the following conclusions:

1. The Arbitrum airdrop this time surpassed Optimism's first airdrop in both funding scale and user coverage.

2. Arbitrum's Airdrop strategy seems to be more geared towards ordinary users, while Optimism's first round Airdrop favored highly active users. Based on estimated average profits, most addresses in Optimism's first round Airdrop can earn about $700; if calculated based on the maximum airdrop amount, a single address can earn up to $45,000. In comparison, in this Airdrop from Arbitrum, most addresses can earn about $1,350; a single address can earn up to $13,800.

3. The scale of the second round Airdrop for Optimism is approximately 0.27% of the initial supply ( 11,742,277.10 OP ), meaning that there is still 13.73% ( 589,553,144.34 OP ) that has not been distributed. This portion may be used for future third rounds and subsequent Airdrops.

4. Some decentralized autonomous organizations that received the Arbitrum Airdrop (DAO) are considering redistributing the obtained tokens to users, which may constitute a de facto "second round" airdrop. 137 DAOs received Airdrops ranging from 75,000 to 8 million ARB, with 19 DAOs receiving over 2 million ARB, including GMX, Uniswap, and DOPEX.

5. After the Arbitrum Airdrop, the activity on the Nova chain has increased, with daily trading volume and the number of new addresses both rising by over 196%. This may be related to rumors that Arbitrum may incentivize Nova users in the future, but this information has not yet been officially confirmed.

6. After the Airdrop of Optimism and Arbitrum, the total locked value in DeFi on both chains has increased. Specifically, within one month after two rounds of Airdrop for Optimism, the total locked value increased by 101% and 10%, respectively. Since the Airdrop of Arbitrum, the total locked value has increased by 7.97%.

Airdrop is an important means for Layer 2 projects to attract users and promote ecological development, and its impact is profound and complex. Although it may bring fluctuations in on-chain activity in the short term, in the long run, it plays a key role in the healthy development of the ecosystem. When users participate in Airdrop, they should not only focus on immediate benefits but also pay attention to the long-term development prospects of the project and their own value contribution within the ecosystem.