The Defiant

dYdX Drops Over $1B to Past Users in Airdrop

Margin trading protocol dYdX launched its native token with one of the largest distributions in decentralized finance. dYdX dropped 7.5% of its initial billion-strong token supply on Sept 8. At the current price of $11.12, those 75M tokens are worth more than $800M. At one point the airdropped tokens’ value eclipsed $1B.  That’s up there…

By: Owen Fernau Loading...

dYdX Drops Over $1B to Past Users in Airdrop

Margin trading protocol dYdX launched its native token with one of the largest distributions in decentralized finance.

dYdX dropped 7.5% of its initial billion-strong token supply on Sept 8. At the current price of $11.12, those 75M tokens are worth more than $800M. At one point the airdropped tokens’ value eclipsed $1B.

That’s up there with some of DeFi’s heaviest hitters — Uniswap’s massive airdrop last fall was initially worth about $750M though the UNI token’s appreciation pushes that figure over $3B today.

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Governance Token

The DYDX token will be used inside the protocol to vote on the project’s direction. dYdX recently introduced a foundation, which, similar to MakerDAO’s foundation, aims to manage decentralization of the protocol.

The largest chunk of dYdX will go to future traders, with a quarter of the initial one billion tokens distributed over the next five years.

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Existing users of the protocol, who had also traded on the exchange’s Layer 2 network, were eligible for the airdrop. Users who traded more than $100K in the past were eligible for about 6.4K DYDX tokens, which are worth over $60K today.

The unclaimed tokens will go to dYdX’s community treasury, according to the token launch post.

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Despite the massive windfall, not everyone’s happy. In their announcement, dYdX stated that U.S. residents were not eligible to receive the airdrop. This is likely due to regulatory concern, with some Twitter users thanking the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for “protecting” them from receiving the airdrop. The agency enforces securities laws to protect investors from unlawful practices in the markets.
Trading volume on dYdX surpassed $1B in August according to a post by the project’s founder, Antonio Juliano, came on The Defiant’s podcast in March.

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