Pyth Token Debuts Near $500M Valuation as 90,000 Wallets Receive Airdrop

Pricing oracle network Pyth's token debuted at a market cap of $468 million on Monday after issuing an airdrop for 90,000 wallets.

The token is trading around $0.32 after rising as high as $0.51, according to CoinMarketCap.

Those eligible for the airdrop have 90 days to claim their PYTH tokens, which will be used for on-chain governance votes.

The token initially has a circulating supply of 1.5 billion, with the remaining 85% of the total supply being locked for between six and 42 months. Two hundred fifty-five million tokens were allocated for the airdrop.

The Pyth Network currently has $1.5 billion in total value secured (TVS) across 120 protocols, making it the fourth-largest pricing oracle. Competitor Chainlink (LINK), in comparison, has $14.7 billion in TVS, according to DeFiLlama. Pyth gathers first-party pricing data from exchanges and institutional traders before sending that data to smart contracts.

"Today marks the launch of the Pyth Network’s permissionless mainnet, ushering in a new era of token-led governance for the protocol," Pyth developers wrote on the company's social media platform X's (formerly Twitter) page.

"Ecosystem participants can actively engage in Pyth Governance by locking their PYTH Tokens in the Pyth staking program to cast votes on community governance proposals."

PYTH is one of the anticipated airdrops of the year, it follows Celestia [TIA] which has increased in value by 230% since its release last month.