Wormhole Debuts at $3B Valuation in 617M Token Airdrop

• Token debuts at $1.66, $3 billion market cap.
• Heavy congestion on Solana-based decentralized exchange OpenBook causes downtime.
• A 6% share of the total supply was allocated to the airdrop.

Cross-chain bridge Wormhole initiated an airdrop that will see early users rewarded with 617 million of its newly issued governance token, W.

The token opened at $1.66 on Solana-based decentralized exchange (DEX) OpenBook with a market capitalization of $2.98 billion and a fully diluted value figure of $16.5 billion, according to CoinGecko.

OpenBook experienced a period of heavy congestion after the token was released with several users reporting that it was inaccessible.

The tokens released represent 6% of the total supply, a further 12% of which has been allocated to core contributors and 23.3% will be put toward the foundation's treasury.

The token was launched initially on Solana and will be natively issued on Ethereum and layer-2 networks at a later date.

Holders will be able to delegate W tokens to take part in governance votes. Delegation can take place on Solana or any of the compatible Ethereum-based chains in a process that is being dubbed the "first ever" multichain governance system.