dYdX exchange releases governance token, making its airdrop worth up to $100K
Airdrops have been a fan-favorite in the cryptocurrency ecosystem for years because they offer projects a way to reward early adopters and increase token distribution.
The latest project to surprise its community of supporters with retroactive rewards for its newly minted token is dYdX, a non-custodial decentralized derivatives exchange that operates on a layer-2 version of the Ethereum (ETH) network.
Data from CoinGecko shows that on its first day of trading live in the markets, DYDX is trading at a price of $10.28 at the time of writing after hitting an intra-day high at $14.24.
The number of tokens received by each user was determined by their previous trading actively on the platform, with the lowest tier user receiving 310 tokens for trading at least $1 on the exchange, and the highest tier user earning 9,529 tokens for trading volumes exceeding $1 million.

At the daily high of $14.24, the airdrop was worth between $4,414 and $135,692 with the average user who traded between $1,000 and $10,000 in value on the platform receiving 1,163 DYDX worth $16,561.
Related: Ethereum layer-twos reportedly processing more transactions than Bitcoin
The ongoing shift to layer-two solutions
The retroactive ‘release’ of the DYDX governance token marks a big step for the protocol as it embarks on its path to becoming a fully decentralized, community-governed platform. It is and another sign of a larger shift by a growing number of projects shifting to layer-two solutions in order to operate in a lower fee environment.
Many blockchain projects are migrating to various cross-chain and layer-two solutions like Polygon and dYdX was actually one of the first decentralized exchanges to announce that it would launch on StarkWare, a layer-two solution it developed in conjunction with StarkEx.
According to
