The official Arbitrum airdrop page crashed right after the claiming process began around 1 am UTC on March 24. Some users still managed to claim it through alternative methods like Arbiscan. In the first two hours, the market witnessed a massive sell-off of the token, with its price declining from over $10.29 to lows of $1.
At ByBit, the token started trading for $7.50, but dropped to $1.50 within minutes. At the time of writing, the token was trading at $1.33.
Only one address successfully sold the token at $10.29 through the ARB/USDC pool on Uniswap, bagging $64,340 for 6,250 tokens. A few others were able to sell for $4.50, however, the price dropped quickly below $1.50 as more sellers arrived.
Nansen data shows that out of 6.03 million ARB claimed by “smart money” wallets, $5.01 million were moved to a centralized or decentralized exchange, most likely to sell. The analytics firm puts “smart money” tags on addresses that trade in significant size and are usually active.
While some smart money accounts added 3.45 million from DEXs, overall, the amount moved to exchanges was 150% larger than inflows to the wallets, suggesting a massive sell-off.
Related: Arbitrum’s ARB token signifies the start of airdrop season — Here are 5 to look out for
Poor claiming experience for the average user
The Aribtrum airdrop claim webpage crashed thanks to overwhelming requests from users to claim ARB tokens. The page returned 404 and 429 errors, remaining down for more than an hour after the claiming process began.
Nevertheless, some users still claimed the airdrop through alternative services like Arbiscan. The blockchain explorer witnessed a record number of visitors of over 84,000 in the first 30 minutes after the claiming window opened.
Nansen’s data shows that 15% of the airdrop claims were processed when the official Arbitrum webpage was down.
However, the claims through Arbiscan were far from smooth. The website also suffered from downtime due to traffic overload, creating a bad user experience for many.
Arbitrum network insanely congested, Arbitrum website down, Arbiscan down
— The DeFi Investor (@TheDeFinvestor) March 23, 2023
Everything will likely return to normal in the next few hours.
But crypto still has a long way to go before it's ready for mass adoption.
The token claiming widow will be alive for 184 days, until September 24.
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.