Wormhole token slides 24% before recovering slightly following airdrop

The price slump is in contrast to Ethena’s airdrop from earlier this week

article-image

Wormhole and Adobe Stock modified by Blockworks

share

The cross-chain messaging protocol Wormhole opened airdrop claims for its governance token, named W, Wednesday morning. 

Some recipients celebrated so-called Wormhole Wednesday by cashing out on their allotment, leading W’s price to fall 24% within a few hours of the token beginning to trade, according to CoinGecko. The token would quickly recover though, settling at a smaller dip from its opening price by press time. 

6.78% of W’s supply was set aside for the airdrop, an allocation worth roughly $855 million at current prices.

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

Wormhole is a multi-chain protocol, but it initially launched W as an SPL token on Solana. The protocol facilitates the movement of assets and data between blockchains.

The project cited the blockchain’s “scalability, low transaction costs, and rapid processing times.” It will soon expand to Ethereum and its layer-2s

It was not immediately clear how much W had been claimed Wednesday morning, but Wormhole’s blockchain explorer shows a swift uptick in transactions following the airdrop.

W is meant to serve as a Wormhole governance token, a common use case for community tokens. The forthcoming Wormhole DAO will be a multi-chain DAO operating on Solana, Ethereum and layer-2s.

Read more: Why cross-chain messaging is becoming more popular

Interestingly, W’s post-launch dump wasn’t the universal trend among airdrops this week. The yield-bearing stablecoin project Ethena saw its ENA governance token double in price after being listed on exchanges Tuesday.

W and ENA launched with similarly-gaudy fully-diluted valuations. Wormhole’s community will hope that W can follow the lead of Ethena’s community token, though the early returns aren’t promising.

“Notice how quiet the Wormhole airdrop is compared to the Ethena airdrop. The entire timeline isn’t talking about it,” a developer at Delegate wrote on X.

Back in November, Wormhole announced it had reached a $2.5 billion valuation in a $225 million funding round.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

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

Upcoming Events

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.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates (19).png

Research

Suilend has grown into the top money market and liquid staking provider on Sui. STEAMM, Suilend’s Superfluid AMM, presents a compelling avenue for growing market share within Sui’s DEX landscape and revenue generation for the protocol. Suilend’s multi-product suite position it well for owning market share across key verticals. While current metrics across the Sui ecosystem are likely inflated due to Sui Foundation incentive programs, SEND trades at amongst the lowest multiples in the lend/borrow sector, suggesting that a bull case for continued growth in the ecosystem may be mispriced.

article-image

The stablecoin issuer now plans to offer 32 million Class A common stock shares at a price of up to $28 each

article-image

Let’s go whale watching, Bitcoin style: Investigating the mysterious “12ib7” wallet now worth $3.2 billion

article-image

Bitget’s L2 is undergoing a leadership change and will be helmed by Colin Goltra, formerly the blockchain’s chief growth officer

article-image

The funding was spread out across 61 rounds, a slight dip in both number of rounds and total funding in comparison to other months

article-image

Why is it controversial to say things are better than they used to be?

article-image

Wallchain could make influencer ROI more measurable for Solana businesses