Steven Goldfeder, co-founder of Offchain Labs, the company behind Arbitrum, stated that the market is misinterpreting the supply by counting the DAO treasury as traditional locked supply.

He clarified that the unlocking of investor and team shares is nearing completion, with all tokens set to expire by March next year; the portion of tokens that have not yet been unlocked accounts for approximately 7.7% of the total supply. The Arbitrum DAO treasury currently holds about 2.84 billion ARB, which is not time-locked but controlled by circulating token holders, requiring votes from other holders for transfers. The total supply of ARB is 10 billion, with the team and advisors originally accounting for 26.9%, while the foundation and DAO received a larger share; the public unlocking schedule marks the end date for allocations as March 23, 2027, after which tokens will continue to be released monthly until that date.

Counting the treasury as locked supply would imply a potential selling pressure of "still 30% cannot be released"; according to his breakdown, the forced vesting is now only a single-digit percentage, with the rest becoming governance inventory. If the 2.84 billion tokens were to enter the market all at once, the scale would far exceed the remaining vesting, but each allocation must go through a vote, and the pace depends on proposals rather than a linear timeline. Data websites still calculate the total unreleased amount as higher, with the difference stemming from whether the DAO inventory is included in the "unlocked" count.

Since the token's generation in March 2023, it has undergone four years of vesting. The market often uses fully diluted market capitalization to compare with circulating supply; the larger the treasury, the greater the controversy over circulating metrics. The co-founder is now changing the denominator for valuation: locked supply only counts for team and investor time locks, while the treasury is counted as governance floating supply.

Mechanically, this is a narrative-driven supply reclassification, not an on-chain burn. Buyers are trading the narrative of selling pressure into short derivative accounts, while sellers aim to lower the "unlocked ratio" of the project. Funds do not immediately enter or exit the treasury due to the publication, but the valuation shifts from "locked supply ratio" to "whether governance can approve allocations." The beneficiaries are addresses holding circulating tokens that can vote, while the pressured side is treating the 2.84 billion tokens as a passive locked supply model that will never sell; after March next year, the time lock narrative ends, and the selling pressure narrative will be rewritten with each treasury proposal.

Source: Public Information