Key Takeaways
- Wormhole's governance token, W, was launched with a $850 million airdrop, attracting the attention of scammers who created fake accounts to post malicious links;
- Following the airdrop announcement, a parody token named "warmhole" rose in value, quickly moving from a valuation of around $100,000 to a staggering $8.3 million;
- The airdrop initially included eligibility for the hacker behind the 2022 Wormhole bridge exploit.
Cross-chain bridging platform Wormhole has recently launched a $850 million airdrop of its newly issued governance token, W.
The event quickly attracted the attention of not only investors and crypto enthusiasts, but also scammers and memecoin creators.
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On April 3, the W token made its debut on the Solana-based decentralized exchange OpenBook, initially boasting a market cap of $3 billion. At the time of writing, its value has decreased by 28.5%, trading at $1.18. The airdrop has delivered 674 million tokens, 6.75% of its total supply.
The launch was immediately followed by attempts from scammers and hackers to exploit the airdrop event. Crypto sleuth ZachXBT highlighted the issue, pointing out that scammers set up fake Wormhole accounts, some even obtained verification marks, to post malicious links.
Furthermore, the event saw the rise of a parody token, "warmhole," which experienced an astronomical surge in value. Initially valued at around $100,000, it catapulted to a market cap of $8.3 million in under six hours.
Among the more controversial aspects of the airdrop was the eligibility of the hacker responsible for the 2022 Wormhole bridge exploit, which resulted in a loss of $321 million. The Wormhole team has since fixed this issue, as the wallet addresses are no longer eligible.
Wormhole's airdrop event has not only showcased the immense interest in new crypto tokens but also underscored the risks and challenges associated with managing large-scale token distributions.
In other news, the Solana-based decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Kamino has also announced an airdrop of its KMNO token.
