Wormhole, a cross-chain communication protocol that enables the transfer of assets between blockchains, recently launched an airdrop campaign for its newly issued governance token, W. Early users were rewarded with 617 million W tokens, and the protocol also released a roadmap outlining its plans. .
Unveils the Wormhole Protocol Roadmap
According to the protocol’s roadmap, W aims to become the original multi-chain token, leveraging the advantages of both Solana and the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) chain.
Initially launched as the original SPL token on Solana, W will leverage the functionality of Solana, offering increased performance, scalability, lower transaction costs and faster settlement times.
After Solana debuts, W will be extended to all wormhole-connected EVM chains using wormhole native token transfer (NTT). This framework allows W to continuously roll out to Solana, Ethereum Mainnet and Layer 2 (L2s) without liquidity fragmentation.
The open-source NTT Framework allows projects to control token behavior on each chain, including token standards, metadata, ownership/upgradability, and custom features.
Cross-chain governance system
Wormhole also introduces a governance system where token holders on any supported chain can create, vote and implement governance proposals. This approach allows for maximum participation in a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) and provides token holders with a distributed user experience across multiple chains.
As announced, W holders can lock and assign their tokens to the Solana and EVM chains, allowing them to participate in governance decisions. A wormhole composed of W token holders will oversee the DAO, Solana, Ethereum mainnet and EVM L2s governance system.
The wormhole, developed by Jump Crypto of Jump Trading Group, has been in development for several years. Despite the challenges it faces, including a significant hack in February 2022 that cost around $320 million, the protocol continues to evolve.
Furthermore, the recent listing of the W token on major exchanges such as Crypto.com and the planned future support by Coinbase on April 4 validate its progress.
W’s debut on OpenBook
The W token debuted at $1.66 on Solana-based decentralized exchange (DEX) Openbook, with a market capitalization of $2.98 billion and a fully diluted value of $16.5 billion.
However, the token’s market capitalization and fully diluted value have since fallen to $2.2 billion and $12.5 billion, respectively, according to updated data from CoinGecko. Trading volume for W has grown significantly, reaching $555,937,593 in the last 24 hours, representing an astounding 25,732,359.60% increase.
After the airdrop, some users openly shared the W token sale on social media platforms, resulting in a 23% drop in price. At the time of writing, the token is trading at $1.32.
Featured image from Shutterstock, chart from TradingView.com