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LayerZero’s “non-airdrop” ZRO token airdrop led to a new peak in Arbitrum’s daily revenue.
LayerZero’s token launch on June 20 resulted in a massive increase in transaction fees on Arbitrum, pushing the blockchain’s daily revenue to a record $3.43 million, up nearly 16,680% from the previous day. LayerZero launched its ZRO token on Thursday but drew criticism for its mandatory “donation” mechanism, which requires token holders to spend a small amount of money per token to receive their allocation.
This mechanism has increased average gas fees on the blockchain from typically less than 1 cent to 89 cents. This increased the network’s profits to $3.29 million, another record high for the network, according to data from Dune Analytics and DefiLlama.
LayerZero enabled those who requested ZRO tokens to donate a small amount per token. “To claim ZRO, users must donate $0.10 USDC, USDT, or local ETH per ZRO,” LayerZero wrote in a June 20 X post. He added that the donation will go to the Protocol Guild, which helps fund Ethereum developers.
LayerZero argued that the token launch was “not an airdrop” because airdrops “are not aligned with the goals of fair distribution, community building, and protocol health,” as many buyers have “little or no long-term interest in the project.”
This was Arbitrum’s biggest day of revenue since it posted $2.13 million in revenue on December 14, the day before the inscription spike that caused the network to go offline.
Inscriptions are a type of data formatting that can carry larger packages than simple transactional data, such as images, making them expensive due to their size.
This cost is also reflected in Arbitrum, which caused it to make just $414,000 in profits on December 14 because it faced higher fees to send and verify expensive inscription data on Ethereum.
Meanwhile, ZRO lost value. It dropped 23% to $3.42 in the last day, falling from its peak of $4.79, according to CoinGecko.
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