Wormhole’s W airdrop to ‘acknowledge and reward’ dedicated users

While a date was not included, Wormhole did divulge that 617 million W tokens will be allocated to the community

article-image

Wormhole and Adobe Stock modified by Blockworks

share

The interoperability platform Wormhole shared insights about its upcoming airdrop on Wednesday. This event is meant to expand its ecosystem through the strategic distribution of its new native currency — W tokens.

While the post stops short of providing a specific date, it does outline that a hefty allocation of tokens will go towards supporting community engagement and protocol use. The announcement states that 617 million tokens, or 6% of the total supply, “has been allocated from the Community & Launch category in connection with this airdrop across 397,704 wallets following anti-sybil measures.” 

“The airdrop included 500,000,000 W for on-chain activity for users who used Wormhole ecosystem applications across the 30+ Wormhole-connected blockchains, as well as approximately 117,305,000 W for community users, such as Wormhole Discord users, various NFT communities, Monad community and Pyth stakers,” the post continued

Read more: Wormhole goes multichain with native token transfers

The maximum supply of W will be 10 billion, though it’ll only circulate 1.8 billion initially.

Airdrops are utilized to reward users for being active in communities. Tokens or coins are generally dropped into user wallets as part of the event.

The cross-chain messaging platform added that it determined the eligibility for the airdrop based on each user’s length of engagement with the protocol, and “the cumulative volume of messages and transfers, and consistency of use throughout the protocol’s lifespan, as well as participation in applications within the ecosystem.”

Wednesday’s post added that the protocol plans to make W the governance token for its yet-to-launch Wormhole DAO.

“Over time, Wormhole plans to progressively decentralize the protocol’s governance to W holders. After the token generation and distribution events, on-chain governance will largely guide community programs and treasury-related activities,” a post from early February explained. 

Read more: Wormhole: Cross-chain messaging layer

It added that it expects the DAO to take “more responsibility” for actions and listed token design and smart contract upgrades to a list of decisions.

Wormhole has a few open-source protocols: Wormhole messaging, Connect and SDK, Queries and Gateway. Messaging is a cross-chain messaging protocol, which has handled over a billion cross-chain messages for various teams.  

Read more: 3 DAO governance trends to watch in 2024

“Wormhole was designed as a cross-chain token wrapping and swapping protocol between Solana and Ethereum. Since this original design and implementation, Wormhole has expanded to become a cross-chain messaging layer, which not only allows token wrapping and swapping between chains but also enables external protocols to build on top of it by leveraging Wormhole’s cross-chain state attestation model and messaging,” Blockworks Research wrote.

The cross-chain protocol has a $2.5 billion valuation as of November of last year after raising $225 million. Late last year, Wormhole’s Saeed Badreg and Anthony Ramirez split from Jump Crypto to run the protocol independently


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 24 - 26, 2026

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Unlocked by Template (1).jpg

Research

As AI supercharges surveillance, privacy becomes a prerequisite and the winning stack will combine confidentiality with selective disclosure. Zcash’s Tachyon, composable standards on Ethereum/Solana, and compliance-aware pools aim to make private rails the new norm.

article-image

The startup says it aims to rival Stripe and Worldpay by using stablecoins to speed merchant settlements from days to seconds

by Blockworks /
article-image

“S&P 500” for crypto comes as segment gains “established role in global markets,” S&P exec says

article-image

The S&P Digital Markets 50 Index combines 15 cryptocurrencies with 35 crypto-linked companies, offering investors hybrid exposure

by Blockworks /
article-image

Gnosis is betting that openness — not ownership — will define the future of onchain money

article-image

Crypto’s quest to imbue shareholder protections for tokens

article-image

Grass previously raised a seed and Series A rounds and plans to utilize the token purchase to execute on its roadmap