Just-Launched Sei Blockchain's New Token Plunges 24% After Airdrop
Complaints flooded X (formerly Twitter) about the scantiness of the new SEI token allocations to early adopters, as many recipients apparently moved to dump their holdings on the market.
Aug 17, 2023 at 1:27 p.m. UTC
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An airdrop of tokens to early adopters of the new Sei blockchain turned into a crypto-market disappointment on Thursday, as recipients appeared to dump their holdings while complaints flooded X (formerly Twitter) about the scantiness of the allocations.
The SEI token tumbled 24% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko, pushing the market capitalization to $314.8 million.
That's a disappointment relative to some traders who had bet that the SEI value might approach $500 million.
The Sei Foundation, which coordinated the airdrop, posted on X early Thursday that it had tripled the number of eligible wallets for the cross-bridge airdrop to 1.5 million from 500,000, on blockchains including Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum and Solana. The expansion was "due to fervent demand," according to the post.
One user quickly retorted on X that "U should focus on increasing the allocation to your own users," including those "who helped u test for months on Testnet," and that the project should "later think of other chains."
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Bradley Keoun is the managing editor of CoinDesk's Tech & Protocols team. He owns less than $1,000 each of several cryptocurrencies.