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Jito, a decentralized finance (DeFi) liquid staking protocol based on the Solana (SOL) ecosystem, started the distribution of its long-awaited airdrop on Thursday, sharing a total of over 90 million of its native token to early birds who helped in bootstrapping the network.
According to reports, the digital asset JTO, which also serves as the governance token within the protocol, was listed on many Solana-based exchanges at the floor price of $1.20 after the airdrop distribution.
However, as users began trading the asset, the token accelerated to almost $2. Decrypt reported that the total assets distributed are now worth $225 million.
Jito Airdrop Allocations
Qualified users received airdrops starting from 4,941 tokens, with the biggest being 104,391 tokens, depending on their interaction with the protocol using its so-called liquid staking token (LST), jitoSOL.
Earlier this week, the Jito Foundation, the non-profit company overseeing the network, released the airdrop eligibility and allocation plan.
The foundation allocated 80% of the airdrop to be shared among users who participated in the Jito Points program, which started in January and ended in November. Wallet addresses that held 100 Jito Points before November 25 were qualified to receive the airdrop.
In addition, 15 million of the assets were distributed to validators who operated the Jito-Solana client within the epochs 366 to 536 timeframe, specifically participating in at least one epoch between 527 and 536. Validators who were early adopters and actively contributed to the initiation of the Jito-Solana client will receive a higher token allocation.
The remaining tokens were designated for Jito MEV searchers utilizing the Jito Network’s suite of MEV programs. A total of 5 million JTO tokens have been granted to these searchers.
According to DefiLlama data, the platform ranks as the second-largest DeFi protocol on Solana, boasting a total value locked (TVL) of $456.14 million.
18-Month Claim Window
With the airdrop distribution now complete, the protocol states that all claimable tokens will be available for 18 months starting on the token generation date. However, any unclaimed assets will be moved to the DAO treasury.
Even with an extended claim window, 60% of the recently released tokens, amounting to 54 million out of 90 million, were claimed within the first four hours of the airdrop, according to data on Flipside Crypto.
Meanwhile, the protocol is not the first DeFi platform in Solana to airdrop its tokens to reward users for their contributions.
In September 2020, DeFi protocol Uniswap airdropped 150 million of its UNI governance tokens to users. The token is now worth over $900 million at current prices.
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