Wormhole $617M Airdrop Ignites Valuation Surge To $3B, But W Price Stumbles 23%

Wormhole, a cross-chain communication protocol enabling the transfer of assets between blockchains, recently launched an airdrop campaign for its newly issued governance token, W. Early users were rewarded with 617 million W tokens, and the protocol also released a roadmap outlining its plans.

According to the protocol’s roadmap, W aims to become a native multi-chain token, leveraging the advantages of both the Solana and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chains. 

Initially launched as a native SPL token on Solana, W will reportedly leverage Solana’s performance, offering increased performance, scalability, low transaction costs, and fast settlement times.

After the Solana debut, W will be extended to all Wormhole-connected EVM chains using Wormhole Native Token Transfers (NTT). This framework allows W to continuously roll out across Solana, the Ethereum mainnet, and Layer 2 (L2s) without liquidity fragmentation.

The open-source NTT framework allows projects to control token behavior on each chain, including token standards, metadata, ownership/upgradability, and custom features.

Wormhole also introduces a governance system where token holders on any supported chain can create, vote on, and implement governance proposals. This approach allows maximum participation in the Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) by providing a frictionless user experience for token holders distributed across multiple chains. 

As announced, W holders can lock and delegate their tokens on Solana and EVM chains, allowing them to participate in governance decisions. The Wormhole DAO, composed of W token holders, will oversee the Solana, Ethereum mainnet, and EVM L2s governance system.

Wormhole, developed by Jump Crypto, a division of Jump Trading Group, has been under development for several years. Despite encountering challenges, including a significant hack in February 2022 resulting in a loss of approximately $320 million, the protocol has continued to evolve. 

Furthermore, the recent listing of the W token on major exchanges such as Crypto.com and the future support planned by Coinbase on April 4 further validate its progress.

The W token debuted on the Solana-based decentralized exchange (DEX) OpenBook at $1.66, with a market capitalization of $2.98 billion and a fully diluted value of $16.5 billion. 

However, the token’s market capitalization and fully diluted value have since fallen to $2.2 billion and $12.5 billion, respectively, according to updated data from CoinGecko. Trading volume for W has remarkably increased, reaching $555,937,593 in the last 24 hours, representing a staggering 25,732,359.60% surge.

Following the airdrop, some users openly shared their sell-offs of the W token on social media platforms, resulting in a 23% price drop. At the time of writing, the token is trading at $1.32.

Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView.com