Wormhole's W Token Climbs to $2.5 Billion Market Cap Post Airdrop

Popular cross-chain bridge Wormhole has skyrocketed into the top 100 on Coingecko after airdropping 617 million of its native token to early adopters.

After opening to a whopping $2.9 billion market capitalization, the network has since settled on $2.65, and $14.7 billion fully diluted valuation, according to Coingecko.

Wormhole’s new token, W, has been on a roller coaster today. Traders were paying $1.65 upon launch, only for W to plummet shortly after to $1.25. It has rebounded slightly, changing hands for $1.48 as of writing, an 11% drop on the day.

April 3 marks the beginning of a 1.1 billion airdrop to early adopters, with the remaining 600 million that comprises the 17% assigned to the Wormhole community set to unlock four months after this initial distribution.

Wormhole has not been exempt from issues over the years. In what was the second-largest DeFi hack to date, the project fell victim to a $320 million exploit in February 2022.

According to the team, aside from the 17% allocated to the community, 23% has been tagged for the Foundation’s Treasury, 12% to core contributors, and 31% for ecosystem and incubation purposes. The remaining 17% will be distributed between strategic partnerships and guardian nodes.

Total value locked on Wormhole has been on a strong uptrend in the past six months, according to DefiLlama. It sits at $2.4 billion, up from $318 million since Oct. 1, 2023.

Activity on Wormhole surged in Dec. 2023, and has remained consistently high in the first quarter of 2023. According to a Dune dashboard, the network suffered a short-lived drop in transactions during February dropping from 17,683 to 13,506, but came back to life in March, notching 16,549 transactions.