Yesterday, February 7, 2024, Wormhole made official the launch of its new token, the “W”, accompanied by a long-awaited airdrop. At a time when airdrops are attracting growing interest among cryptocurrency investors, that of Wormhole’s token raises questions about its tokenomic, which reveals a relatively inequitable distribution.
Wormhole details the tokenomics of token W
Yesterday, Wednesday February 7, 2024, Wormhole officially announced the launch of its token soberly named “W”, as well as its imminent airdrop.
Currently, Wormhole occupies 9th place in the ranking of most-used bridges, with a transaction volume approaching $300 million over the past month.
The W will be an ERC-20 and SLP-compliant token, the bridge’s native token standard.
This token will have a maximum offering of 10 billion units, with an initial offering of 1.8 billion. This means that 82% of the total supply will be brought to market within 4 years and 8 months of its launch.
Wormhole (W) token distribution schedule
Initially created tokens will be distributed to different groups:
- 5.1% will be distributed only after the first 12 months to node operators, called “Guardian nodes”, who manage the nodes of the various blockchains supported by Wormhole and provide the main verifications for token transfers;
- 12% will go to the main contributors, i.e. the organizations outside Wormhole that have contributed to the security and development of the bridge. This share will only be released after the 1st year;
- 31% will be allocated to members of the Wormhole ecosystem and incubators, including investors and organizations internal to Wormhole, with 5%, or W500 million, available from the launch of the token;
- 11.6% is reserved for the network’s future strategic players, who will contribute to its development and can only be released after 1 year;
- 23.3% for the foundation’s treasury, with 2% available immediately at launch and the remaining 21.3% distributed on a straight-line basis over the following 4 years;
- 17% for the community, with 11% available at launch and 6% after 4 months.
All in all, W3 billion will be distributed between the foundation, investors and the community during the 1st year.
Although this distribution initially gives a great deal of power to the community, with 57% of the available W supply, the tokenomics structure gradually diminishes this share by allocating more tokens to the foundation and its investors, ultimately leaving only 17% to the community once the 10 billion W have been issued.
What do we know about W’s airdrop?
We talked to you about this airdrop in an article published on December 24, 2023 by the TCN Research team, which detailed the steps to follow to try to become eligible for this airdrop.
As confirmed in Wormhole’s announcement, the 17% allocated to the community represents an airdrop, i.e. a reward awarded to bridge users. Unfortunately, as the snapshot was taken before the announcement, no action taken from now on will make you eligible for it.
