If I say that Arbitrum is the white lotus of the hair-pulling people, there shouldnt be many people who would object.
Many people who have been using ARB to make their first fortune have made money through ARB airdrops, and many more have been inspired by ARB to go down this path of no return. To this day, whenever there is a project that is not airdropped, everyone will miss ARB.
At a time when L2 is rampant, many people may say that ARB is outdated and that they are just speculating on the new instead of the old. In fact, this is not the case. Looking at all Ethereum L2s, ARB is the most hardworking one, continuously optimizing the network while focusing on ecological construction, in sharp contrast to those ghost chains.
It is said that Arb will have many big moves in 2025. You can make arrangements in advance when no one is FOMOing. After all, opportunities always come to those who are prepared. I would like to share two dynamics/trends that I think are very important for your reference:
1. The mainnet implements the BoLD protocol to achieve “permissionless verification”
A few days ago, the BoLD protocol was officially activated on Arbitrum One and Nova chains, allowing permissionless verification on its Layer 2 ecosystem, thereby improving the decentralization and security of the network.
To put it simply, the original verification process adopted a permissioned system. The entire process was very complicated, sacrificing decentralization to a certain extent, and there was a risk of delayed attacks. The BoLD protocol was improved by introducing an interactive, time-limited dispute resolution mechanism, and adopted a permissionless mechanism to open participation to anyone interested in network security.
In other words, the launch of BoLD makes the Arbitrum ecosystem more secure and decentralized than ever before, while helping Arbitrum achieve four of the five conditions for Stage 2 decentralization, the closest to the goal of Stage 2 decentralization among all Ethereum L2 chains.
2. Focus on AI and build the DeFAI Home
In the past two months, DeepSeek has become extremely popular, and the global AI industry has been surging, which can be said to be the biggest outlet in 2025. This also makes the industry full of expectations for AI×Crypto.
Arb officials have obviously realized this opportunity and have been working hard on the AI ecosystem in recent months. For example, they invested $1 million to launch the Trailblazer program, which is specifically used to fund AI builders on Arbitrum: https://arbitrumfoundation.medium.com/trailblazer-1m-grants-to-power-ai-innovation-on-arbitrum-c6de1200e656
In addition, the official also organized an AI theme space, compiled the Arbitrum ecosystem AI collection, and even said Arbitrum = the home of DeFAI. Anyone with a discerning eye can see that Arbitrums main focus this year is on the AI track.
As a reminder, AI projects that have obtained official endorsement and have not issued tokens include Axal, Capx, Aikaverse, Lit, Spheron, and Skynet. Among them, Spheron has a whitelist, CapX is running an incentivized testnet, and Skynet may also launch an incentivized testnet soon.
For more Arbitrum ecosystem AI projects, it is recommended to refer to the official collection: https://x.com/arbitrum_cn/status/1882762323020136495
