Pyth Network Airdrops $77 Million
Debuting with a market capitalization of $765 million, the Pyth Network's token airdrop distributed $77 million worth of tokens to crypto users, with the token's trading price leveling out at around $0.36.
The token of Pyth, a DeFi oracles network, started trading at $0.53 on its launch day, subsequently falling to $0.28 within minutes. As of the latest report, the trading price has stabilized at just above $0.36. Interestingly, the token saw a trading volume surpassing $134 million on its debut day.
According to the token’s roadmap, the initial circulating supply of 1.5 billion tokens will gradually increase to a total of 10 billion tokens. The increment in the token supply is expected to commence in six months and will take place over the subsequent three years.
The Pyth Network rewarded its early users through an airdrop of approximately 250 million tokens. This effectively placed over $77 million worth of the crypto token into the wallets of users. A total of 90,000 wallets were eligible to receive the airdrop, and over 35,000 have already claimed their portion, as per on-chain data.
The eligibility for the airdrop extends to users of decentralized apps (dapps) across 27 blockchains that utilize Pyth network data, Pyth NFT holders, and Pyth Discord community administrators. They have until February 18 to claim their free tokens.
The new crypto exchange, Backpack, spearheaded by FTX’s former general counsel, also joined the airdrop wave. It announced that it would airdrop PYTH tokens to each of its new users who staked SOL in the past two days. The exchange has reportedly airdropped PYTH to 74,000 wallets through this scheme.
Oracle networks such as Pyth serve to connect blockchains with off-chain data sources. Pyth, now the fourth-largest network by total value secured, holds a market share of 4.75% according to DeFiLlama. This shows a slight decrease from last week when the network held 4.83% of all oracle business.
“Today marks the launch of the Pyth Network’s permissionless mainnet, ushering in a new era of token-led governance for the protocol,” the Pyth developers announced on their social media page.
Allowing ecosystem participants to actively engage in community governance proposals, the Pyth Governance platform allows for PYTH tokens to be locked in for staking.
With a total value secured (TVS) of $1.5 billion across 120 protocols, Pyth Network ranks as the fourth-largest pricing oracle. For comparison, Chainlink, a competitor, has a TVS of $14.7 billion, according to DeFiLlama. Pyth gathers first-party pricing data from exchanges and institutional traders before relaying that data to smart contracts.
