Wormhole, valued at $2.5 billion, is about to launch its token, and the next "big wave" is coming
Good news: Community airdrop up to 17%; Bad news: If there was no interaction before, the snapshot time has passed.Author: Asher, Odaily Planet Daily
On the evening of February 7, Wormhole, valued at $2.5 billion, completed a $225 million financing round and published the economic model for its token W on its official X (formerly Twitter), with up to 17% of the tokens (1,700,000,000 W) allocated to the community (as shown in the image below). This news is a huge boon for "token farmers." Below, Odaily Planet Daily will take you through Wormhole and its tokenomics.
Wormhole Comprehensive Analysis
Introduction
Image source: Official Twitter
Wormhole is a decentralized universal messaging protocol that enables developers and users of cross-chain applications to leverage the advantages of multiple ecosystems.
The project was launched by blockchain infrastructure company Certus One in October 2020, initially in the form of a token bridge directly built between the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems. In August 2021, developers from Jump Crypto released the second version of the protocol, utilizing a proof-of-authority (PoA) guardian network as an oracle and a permissionless relay network to transmit messages across chains. It supports seven different blockchains, including Solana, Terra, Avalanche, Ethereum, Oasis, Binance, and Polygon. Around the same time, Certus One was acquired by Jump Crypto.
In February 2022, Wormhole suffered a hack that resulted in a loss of up to 120,000 ETH (worth approximately $326 million at the time), one of the largest recorded hacks of its kind. Subsequently, on February 4, 2022, Jump Crypto announced it would inject 120,000 ETH to compensate for the stolen losses, supporting Wormhole's continued development.
The good news is that within less than a month, Jump Crypto successfully retrieved the stolen funds of 120,000 ETH from the hacker's vault by collaborating with Oasis, transferring the collateral and debt from the hacker's vault to its own vault.
Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/wormholecrypto;
Official website: https://wormhole.com/.
Financing Situation
On November 29, 2023, Wormhole completed a $225 million financing round at a valuation of $2.5 billion, with no lead investor. Participants included Brevan Howard, Coinbase Ventures, Multicoin Capital, ParaFi, Dilectic, Borderless Capital, Arrington Capital, and Jump Trading. This is also the largest financing round for a cryptocurrency project in 2023.
In addition to raising $225 million, the team behind Wormhole announced the establishment of a new company, Wormhole Labs, to assist in developing new protocols.
Image source: rootdata
Token Economic Model
According to the documentation released by Wormhole, its native token W is an ERC-20 token with a total supply of 10 billion tokens and an initial circulating supply of 1,800,000,000 tokens, with the specific allocation ratios as follows:
Guardian Nodes: 510,000,000 W, accounting for 5.1% of the total supply. Guardian nodes provide the primary verification mechanism for any messages through Wormhole. The token supply allocated to Guardians will not be unlocked at TGE, but these tokens are subject to a token release schedule;
Community & Initial Release: 1,700,000,000 W, accounting for 17% of the total supply. Among them, 11% of the total supply (1,100,000,000 W) will be unlocked at TGE and distributed in the initial phase of TGE, including airdrops related to TGE (and related activities), while the remaining 6% (600,000,000 W) will be unlocked within four months after TGE. The snapshot for this airdrop was taken before this blog was published;
Ecosystem & Incubation: 3,100,000,000 W, accounting for 31% of the total supply. This portion is allocated to strategic contributors to the Wormhole ecosystem, including community organizations, developer community growth programs, etc. Among them, 5% (500,000,000 W) will be unlocked at TGE, and the remaining 26.1% (2,610,000,000 W) will be unlocked thereafter;
Core Contributors: 1,200,000,000 W, accounting for 12% of the total supply. This portion of tokens will not be unlocked at TGE and will be unlocked according to the token release schedule;
Strategic Network Participants: 1,160,000,000 W, accounting for 11.6% of the total supply. Similar to core contributors, the tokens for strategic participants will not be unlocked at TGE and will be unlocked according to the token release schedule;
Foundation Treasury: 2,330,000,000 W, accounting for 23.3% of the total supply. This portion of token supply is specifically reserved for the Wormhole Foundation. 2% (200,000,000 W) of the foundation treasury will be unlocked at TGE, and the remaining 21.3% (2,130,000,000 W) will be unlocked linearly according to the token release schedule.
Image source: Official Document
W Token Release Schedule
Official document link: https://wormhole.com/wormhole-w-tokenomics/.
Community Sentiment
Last night, as soon as the news of the Wormhole token model was released, various communities believed that this token airdrop could be a "big airdrop" in 2024. Users participating in the interactions felt:
"Good news: Wormhole is about to issue tokens, and 11% of the community airdrop will be unlocked at TGE, and the snapshot has already been taken; bad news: if you haven't interacted, then it's bad news."
"The number of addresses interacting with Wormhole is 91K. Considering that the address data may not be updated, there could be around 150K addresses interacting with Wormhole! If Wormhole's FDV reaches $10 billion, the 11% directly released from the airdrop would be $1.1 billion, averaging $7,333 per address! If that's the case, it would truly be a super airdrop! Hope to qualify!"
"11% directly airdropped to the community, users only have 1/8 of LayerZero, and there are very few bots. It's expected to be a super airdrop. Wishing everyone a great time during the New Year!"
