Solana Futures Exchange Drift Will Airdrop 100 Million Tokens to DeFi Traders

The Drift Foundation, the organization supporting the Solana-based perpetual swap futures exchange Drift Protocol, announced the platform’s governance token DRIFT on Tuesday, with 10% of the total supply set to be airdropped to eligible wallets.

According to the Drift Foundation, 53% of the total supply of DRIFT tokens will be allocated to the community, with 43% going to ecosystem development and trading rewards and the other 10% going to the aforementioned airdrop. With a total token supply of 1 billion DRIFT, that means that 100 million DRIFT tokens will be airdropped to users.

“The DRIFT token is the first step on Drift’s decentralization journey,” the Drift Foundation wrote on Twitter (aka X), “empowering users to become true stewards of the protocol and to guide its future to become the biggest derivatives exchange in crypto.”

While the Drift Foundation did not say when the DRIFT token airdrop will take place, Drift co-founder Cindy Leow told Decrypt it will happen in “a matter of weeks.”

The airdrop coincides with the creation of the Drift DAO, which the group said will include Realms DAO—which is responsible for developing the Drift protocol—a security council that is responsible for monitoring fees, margin ratios, and upgrades, and Futarchy DAO, which will fund Drift ecosystem projects.

The other 47% of the DRIFT token supply will go to protocol development and “strategic participants,” respectively.

“DRIFT token holders will be able to actively participate and vote via the token, shaping the protocol's future,” the Drift Foundation said. “The Drift Foundation will coordinate and implement decisions made by token holders of the DAO.”

Launched in October 2021, Drift Protocol is the largest perpetual swap futures exchange on Solana. The decentralized exchange (DEX) boasts over $21 billion in cumulative trading volume to date, with 16.2 million trades and 181,861 users to date.

In January, Drift launched a rewards program that distributed 100 million Drift points to users on a weekly basis. Points were distributed based on a user's trading activity and how much liquidity they put up for the network.

On Tuesday, Drift announced that the rewards program is coming to an end later this week.

“All trading volume up until April 18 00:00 UTC will be counted towards the last points drop,” Drift wrote on Twitter. “Any trading activity after this date will count towards future rewards.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward