The Arena taps Moats to run V2 staking for $ARENA

In Brief:

• A partnership with Moats will carry The Arena’s V2 staking program for $ARENA, the platform said.
• Three routes will be open to holders — staking, locking or burning $ARENA — and each one pays out a different set of points and rewards.
• The largest haul of Moats points comes from staking, and those points roll up into a Fort Score that Moats has linked to a planned airdrop.

In a post on X, the Avalanche SocialFi app said its V2 staking program will run on Moats.

Rather than a single path, holders get three. $ARENA can be staked with withdrawals available at any time, locked for a set term, or burned outright — and the mix of points and rewards differs with each.

“Gladiators will earn the most possible Moats points for staking $ARENA,” The Arena said. “You will have the choice to stake, lock, or burn $ARENA for different points and rewards.”

What hasn’t been spelled out is how the three options stack up against one another, and no start date has been given.

What Moats does

Built by FortiFi, Moats is staking and rewards infrastructure. A token project can set up a staking and reward distribution system through it without writing any contracts, and Snapshot integration means the same deposits serve both staking and governance. Its contracts have been audited.

Lock terms stretch anywhere from a single day to two years, and the longer the commitment, the higher the reward. Supply is permanently removed by burners, who still collect rewards or special access. Reward rates and lock periods aren’t frozen at launch either — projects can adjust them later.

There are two layers to the points system. Each individual Moat issues its own Moat Points, tracked separately from every other. Across all the Moats a user takes part in, those points are combined into a weighted Fort Score, which Moats has said correlates directly to an upcoming airdrop for early participants. A $MOATS governance token is on the roadmap, with the community steering platform development and emissions.

What it changes for ARENA holders

Staked $ARENA is already doing something on The Arena. Tokens staked via the Token Portal carry one vote each in governance, measured against a 10 billion total supply, and they grant Arena Champion status. Every token that graduates off the platform’s launchpad sends 2.5% of its supply to Champions as an airdrop.

What V2 adds is a second points economy sitting on top of the first — one that The Arena isn’t in charge of. Whether Champion tiers will treat locked or burned tokens the same as staked ones is something neither party has addressed.

$ARENA launched on the Avalanche C-Chain and debuted exclusively on Trader Joe.

Background

The project began in late 2023 as Stars Arena, which brought the buy-a-creator’s-ticket mechanic over to Avalanche. It was gutted by a contract exploit. In November 2023 a new team acquired it and rebuilt it under CEO Jason Desimone and COO Phillip Liu Jr., raising $2 million in pre-seed funding.

May 2025 brought V2, which folded a bonding-curve launchpad and a native DEX into the social feed. Tips to creators through live streaming and Stages — the platform’s social audio product — have passed $5 million, while the launchpad has cleared more than $500 million in volume.

Every Monday at 14:00 EST, points are distributed on The Arena. Recipients of the airdrop received 15% of their allocation at launch, with the other 85% paid out monthly across a year; whatever goes unclaimed within that 12-month window is funneled into a Future Incentives and Growth pool.

This isn’t Moats’ first run at the model. Its $FREAK Moat, created with Avalanche NFT project Lucid Red, pays out in USDC and uses the same stake, lock and burn structure. On May 8, 2025, that Moat showed 25.85 million $FREAK staked and 96.06 million locked, with a further 74.40 million burned — about 19.36% of total supply.