Wormhole Airdrop Begins as Solana Token Debuts to $3 Billion Market Cap

Cross-chain protocol Wormhole’s W token launched Wednesday, hitting a price of $1.66 before taking a nosedive. The price of W now stands at $1.31, down 20% on the day.

CoinGecko data shows that the asset’s market capitalization flirted with $3 billion at that short-lived peak price. It now stands at nearly $2.4 billion, making it the 54th biggest digital asset.

Wormhole is a project that allows the transfer of crypto coins and tokens across different blockchains—known as a bridge. 

The W airdrop started today, and Wormhole is giving out tokens to more than 400,000 unique wallets across its “community and launch” category, with 617.3 million W tokens allocated for those users. The initial circulating supply is 1.8 billion tokens.

In the crypto space, airdrops are designed to help new projects try to attract users: They dish out free tokens or coins with the hope of growing their community and rewarding early users and contributors, all while hopefully boosting the price of the protocol’s asset in the process.

Some 500 million tokens will be handed out to those who have used a Wormhole application across more than 30 eligible chains—including major projects Ethereum, Solana, and Avalanche. 

Its W token natively runs on Solana, the blockchain behind the fifth biggest digital coin, SOL. However, it’s also been extended to Ethereum as an ERC-20 token using Wormhole’s own cross-chain tech.

Edited by Andrew Hayward