As Countdown for ARB begins, Arbitrum Outshines BNB Chain on This Front

Arbitrum‘s [ARB] decentralized exchange (DEX) volume surpassed $4 billion in the last seven days, marking the company’s highest weekly performance to date. In fact, this was the layer-2 rollup’s second straight weekly all-time high.

With a 32.41% increase, it eclipsed BNB Chain [BNB] to become the public chain second only to Ethereum [ETH] in DEX trade volume, according to DeFiLlama statistics.

Almost 50% of the total volume on the chain was accounted for by Uniswap [UNI]. According to Coingecko data, the most traded pair on Uniswap (Arbitrum) was USDC/WETH, demonstrating that stablecoins were still heavily traded on exchanges.

Aside from DEX trading, the Arbitrum chain saw a large growth in the overall amount of money put on its smart contracts. The total value locked (TVL) increased by more than 21% in the last week, the most among popular chains.

GMX, a decentralized derivatives exchange, was Arbitrum’s leading DeFi protocol, accounting for roughly 40% of total TVL. Furthermore, the number of users on the chain increased significantly. According to Token Terminal data, the weekly average of daily active users increased by 44%. Due to high network traffic, total transaction fees increased by 11% in the last week to $931k.

The Arbitrum ecosystem announced the introduction of its native coin, ARB, last week, fueling discussion in the crypto industry. The forthcoming AirDrop on March 23rd will give about 1.27 billion tokens to Arbitrum community members.

With the launch of the governance token, holders will be able to vote on and propose modifications to the Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova networks, thereby establishing Arbitrum as a full-fledged decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).

Meanwhile, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has announced that it will launch ARB, with spot trading pairs beginning on March 23. The withdrawals will begin on March 24, according to the exchange.