The idea of a Layer-2 blockchain (L2) sitting on top of the Ethereum network (L1) to boost speed, scalability, and lower transaction costs is a no-brainer. Since the soft launch back in May 2021, Arbitrum has been moving fast. In just a matter of months, they launched the mainnet (Arbitrum One) in Aug 2021. They quickly had about 300 dApps running on testnet and mainnet because not only is Arbitrum compatible with EVM, but it also natively supports all Ethereum development tools without any special add-ons. This makes it very easy to port EVM dApps with little or no coding changes, which is a big plus.
Really the only thing that concerns me is that Arbitrum uses a Multi-Round Interactive version of Optimistic Rollup. While there is still an open debate and many opinions about the best scaling solution (optimistic rollups vs ZK rollups), the consensus is that ZK rollups are a better long-term solution. Also, another of my concerns with optimistic rollups is that they feature a challenging period during which anyone could challenge the authenticity of the transaction batch. So, if you want to move your funds off the L2 back to Ethereum (L1) via the Arbitrum bridge, you need to wait for the challenge period to expire.
On March 23, 2023, they airdropped the ARB native token that rocketed to over $10 on some CEXs (mainly because of liquidity issues), with an average ATH of about $8.60 according to CoinGecko.
I'm not sure if ZK Rollups will replace Optimistic Rollups as the preferred L2 solution, but Arbitrum has already carved out some serious market share. According to DefiLlama, Arbitrum has $2.2B in TVL, which ranks them fourth behind Ethereum ($30B), Tron, and BSC, both with about $5B. However, according to L2Beat, Arbitrum has $6B in TVL, with over 25% of that being the new ARB token. If this is true, then Arbitrum is actually #2 and about $1B ahead of Tron and BSC.
The team building Arbitrum has impressive resumes, the funding was secured from well-known VCs (Lightspeed, Pantera, and Polychain Capital), so this project has some of the tangibles needed to have some sticking power. I give the idea and execution of Arbitrum a solid 5 stars! Show Less
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