Arbitrum whales bolster positions amid DAO–Foundation rift

With the Arbitrum proposals for improving the project under consideration by the DAO, major ARB holders boosted their token holdings. The Block reports.

Andrew Kang of Mechanism Capital spent a total of about $2.85 million to buy 2.3 million ARB at an average price of $1.24.

1/ On-chain data shows 4 whales continually buying $ARB.

Andrew Kang(@Rewkang) bought 1.51M $ARB with 1.85M $USDC again at $1.23.

Andrew Kang spent a total of 2.85M $USDC to buy 2.3M $ARB, with an average buying price of $1.24.https://t.co/22MgBVJiIR pic.twitter.com/lkN1pqE4Ou

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) April 6, 2023

Owner of 17.62 million ARB worth about $21.5 million transferred 5.85 million ARB to a non-custodial wallet on the Gate.io platform, according to Arbiscan.

The third whale purchased 795,381 governance tokens for ~$1 million USDC at a price of $1.26, bringing its stake to 10.61 million ARB (~$12.94 million).

The wallet of another major holder was topped up with 532,102 tokens for about $661,000. The position rose to 4.58 million ARB (~$5.59 million).

Whale activity temporarily restrained Arbitrum’s market-cap decline. ARB’s daily decline rate reached 5.6%. Over the past two weeks the asset has fallen by 10.1%.

On April 5, the Arbitrum Foundation put forward for community consideration AIP-1.1 and AIP-1.2.

The Foundation said it had taken into account the negative reaction from users to the first governance proposal.

AIP-1 triggered a number of concerns, which mainly related to transferring control of 750 million ARB tokens (~$0.9 billion at the time of writing) to the Arbitrum Foundation. It was proposed that the fund would use these funds to award grants to develop the ecosystem.

Users also noted that the organisation sold 50 million ARB from the treasury ahead of the vote.

As reported, the distribution of governance tokens started on March 23 and caused issues in the network. The total ARB supply will be 10 billion.