Official: the DAO of Arbitrum has approved the proposal to allocate 225 million ARB tokens for crypto gaming.
It is about 215 million dollars to be distributed over three years through the new Gaming Catalyst Program (GCP).
Summary
Arbitrum and the proposal for crypto gaming
Arbitrum currently is the largest layer-2 of Ethereum.
Its chain is in fact the fifth in the world for TVL DeFi, behind only those of Ethereum, Tron, BSC, and Solana which are all layer-1.
On its chain, versions of the main DeFi protocols in the world, such as Uniswap, Aave, Pendle Curve, and many others, are running.
Furthermore, at this moment its TVL is at an all-time high, as it has surpassed 3.1 billion dollars, just slightly below the 3.2 billion of the historical peak in March.
In July 2022, in the midst of a bear-market, it was below 600 million dollars, so since then its TVL has more than quintupled.
The token ARB
The price of the ARB token in the crypto markets, on the other hand, has dropped by 15% in the last seven days, perhaps also due to the news of the allocation of 225 million tokens for the Gaming Catalyst Program.
Until Thursday the price was above $1, close to $1.1, but on Friday it suddenly dropped to $0.95, and for now it hasn’t bounced back.
This is a price level in line with that of May 20, therefore Friday’s decline did nothing but wipe out all the gains of the last ten days of the previous month.
It is worth noting that the peak of 2024 was recorded in January, when it managed to rise above $2.2. Since then, it has been losing 57%.
It should still be remembered that the January peak recorded the new all-time high of the ARB token price, which has existed on the financial markets for just over a year, and therefore did not go through the great bullrun of 2021.
It should be noted, however, that the initial price in March 2023 was $1.3, which is significantly higher than the current one.
Crypto news from Arbitrum: The Gaming Catalyst Program
The Gaming Catalyst Program (GCP) is a proposal now approved by the Arbitrum DAO.
The objective of this proposal is to catalyze the growth of the gaming ecosystem on Arbitrum.
Currently Arbitrum is mainly used for low-cost transactions of compatible assets, and for operations in DeFi.
With GCP, it would like to land as a protagonist also in the crypto gaming online sector.
The idea is indeed to enhance the games on Arbitrum with 225 million ARB tokens over three years, in order to attract the best studios and the best games in the Web3 sector.
In particular, GCP has been designed to immediately expand the awareness and adoption of Arbitrum/Orbit/Stylus by developers and players.
It was precisely the significant growth in the DeFi sector in recent times that pushed the Arbitrum community to consider the possibility of venturing into the crypto gaming sector as well, with the goal of attracting the best developers to create high-quality games that should attract and retain new users.
According to the creators of this proposal, currently the games/Web3 segment is still relatively small, but it is expected to grow exponentially in this decade.
The funds
The funds will be used by the GCP to act as a catalyst, with particular attention to onboarding and supporting high-quality developers.
Therefore, the funds will be distributed mainly to those who will develop crypto games on Arbitrum, for example by co-investing in studios and promising games together with publishers approved and aligned with Arbitrum itself.
Furthermore, publishers and developers will be subject to a series of checks to ensure alignment with the objectives of GCP and with the values of Arbitrum DAO.
160 million ARB tokens will be invested for the onboarding and growth of developers.
25 million will be allocated instead to grants for the creation of games.
135 million will be used for investments.
Another 40 million, on the other hand, will be distributed in infrastructural prizes.
GCP will have its own dedicated team to manage all operations.
Note that 225 million ARB tokens are equivalent to almost 8% of the entire current supply of the token, which is approximately 2.9 billion tokens.
This is therefore a decidedly important initiative, the approval of which has not coincidentally caused the value of ARB to drop by 15%.
