Wormhole’s highly anticipated airdrop appeared to attract attention across much of the cryptosphere on Wednesday as the protocol’s native token sank nearly 25% before rebounding more than 10%.
After hitting a high of $1.66 at 7:46 a.m. ET, according to CoinGecko, Wormhole’s token then declined by nearly 25%, reaching $1.25 about two hours after the 7:30 a.m. ET airdrop. At the time of writing, Wormhole’s token had rebounded more than 10%, changing hands at $1.50 as of 1:01 p.m. ET.
Trading volume exceeded $17 million at the time of writing, also according to CoinGecko data.
Along with Wormhole’s price fluctuation, the airdrop has sparked interest from some of the biggest names in crypto, including world-renowned artist Beeple, who shared some Wormhole inspired art with its more than 780,000 subscribers.
Wormhole inspired art. Image: Beeple’s X profile.
Phishing scams
The blockbuster drop also seemed to bring would-be scammers out of the woodwork. User X @0xngmi, from DefiLlama, posted a picture to the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, aimed at highlighting alleged scams posted online.
Internet sleuth ZachXBT has also appeared online, attempting to warn people about potential scams looking to take advantage of the increased interest in Wormhole dropping. “Be careful, there are tons of accounts with golden checkmarks in replies posting phishing scams.” ZachXBT posted on X.
“We block hundreds of fraudulent comments under the Wormhole drop claim”, Pocket Universe also posted on. The company is a browser extension that protects users from scams and wallet drainers.
Nearly 400,000 wallets are eligible to claim 678,823,000 Wormhole tokens, representing 6.78% of the total supply of 10 billion. The token is an ERC20 native token and a Solana SPL native token, with an estimated initial circulating supply of 1.8 billion.
Last year, Wormhole closed a $225 million funding round, giving it a valuation of $2.5 billion. Investors included top cryptocurrency venture capital firms such as Brevan Howard, Coinbase Ventures, Multicoin Capital, Jump Trading and Borderless Capital.
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