The ME Foundation announced details Monday for the upcoming ME token airdrop, which will reward users of Magic Eden’s Bitcoin exchange and cross-chain NFT platform. At launch the community is set to collectively receive 12.5% of the total ME supply of 1 billion Solana-based tokens, or 125 million tokens—currently estimated to be worth $312 million based on the current pre-market price at Whales Pro.
The pre-market ME price of $2.50 represents a 233% gain in the last 24 hours on about $193,000 in volume traded in that time. While pre-market prices are not especially reliable, an airdrop of this magnitude would place ME inside the top 20 crypto airdrops of all-time according to CoinGecko.
Irrespective of the pre-market price, Magic Eden users are set to receive one of the largest community airdrops of 2024, with the token generation event (TGE) expected “in a few weeks” per the official ME Foundation post. The 12.5% community allocation instantly unlocked from the start matches that provided by Tensor, a rival Solana NFT marketplace to Magic Eden. It also exceeds the 10% that Jupiter, the Solana decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator, unlocked in its community airdrop at launch.
An additional 225 million ME tokens have been earmarked for future airdrops to active users of Magic Eden’s products, and soon, “You’ll be able to earn $ME through your daily use of Magic Eden products,” tweeted Magic Eden CEO and co-founder Jack Lu.
While many traders celebrated the token detail reveal, uncertainty still abounds about how exactly Magic Eden will convert the platform’s existing points-like rewards system, Diamonds, into the ME token. Multiple users on Twitter (aka X) responded to Lu’s comments seeking clarity on Diamonds, with Web3 personality DFarmer suggesting that Magic Eden is “really dragging this out” without providing a date for the token generation event or Diamonds-to-ME conversion rate.
“You know this is what people wanna know, enough with the self-incensing and announcements of announcements,” said DFarmer. Users of Magic Eden’s Bitcoin, Solana, and Ethereum-related products will find out their allocations of ME on the day of the token generation, according to a member of ME Foundation’s go-to-market team. An eligibility checker will be launched beforehand.
Since beginning as a Solana NFT marketplace, Magic Eden has branched out to welcome Bitcoin Runes as well as NFT trading on as many as seven blockchains, including Bitcoin and Ethereum. It is the leading on-chain marketplace, processing more than $1.12 billion in trading volume over the last six months and maintaining a 33% market share during that span, per Tiexo.
