If I say that Arbitrum is the white lotus of the hair-pulling people, there shouldn't 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 stimulated by ARB to take the path of no return. To this day, whenever there is a project that is not airdropped, everyone will miss ARB.

Let’s talk about Arbitrum again: Lian Po is old, can he still make a living?

With the proliferation of L2, many people may say that ARB is outdated and that they are just speculating on the new instead of the old. In fact, looking at all Ethereum L2, 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. Mainnet implements 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.

Let’s talk about Arbitrum again: Lian Po is old, can he still make a living?

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, making it 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. It can be said to be the biggest trend in 2025, which 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 Arb's main focus this year is on the AI track.

Let’s talk about Arbitrum again: Lian Po is old, can he still make a living?

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 soon launch an incentivized testnet.

For more Arbitrum ecosystem AI projects, please refer to the official collection: https://x.com/arbitrum_cn/status/1882762323020136495