Solana NFT platform Metaplex recorded a 70% decline in the price of its native token, MPLX. The price drop occurred a few hours after Tuesday’s announcement of the project’s second airdrop.
Metaplex Hosts Second Airdrop
The Metaplex Foundation, a non-profit organization aimed at bolstering the Metaplex ecosystem, approved the airdrop of 40 million MPLX tokens. The foundation noted that the beneficiaries of the airdrop are NFT creators on its platform. The token gives its holders voting rights in the project’s decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).
The non-profit further made it clear that only creators outside the territory of the United States are eligible for the airdrop. At the time of writing, 14,842,485 MPLX tokens had been claimed according to the platform’s official website.
Last month, Metaplex launched the MPLX token. The token got airdropped to “developers, creators and artists” across several countries aside from the U.S. and its citizens. Developers who received and held the tokens were eligible to use them in paying for certain services.
MPLX Sees 70% Drop
Following the second airdrop by the platform, the price of the token began to see a rapid decrease. Why?
It appears to be that the mass distribution of MPLX tokens within a short time has resulted in a dilution of its price. Before the airdrop commenced, MPLX traded around $0.35. Currently, it traded at $0.11, representing about a 70% decline.
Not the First Time
This is not the first time a blockchain-based project will experience dilution in price following an airdrop. In May, the Ethereum-based layer-2 scaling solution Optimism recorded a 70% decline in price shortly after launching its native token, OP.
After launching the airdrop at 11 am on May 31, the company didn’t officially announce the commencement of the token airdrop on Twitter until about 7 hours later. Due to the delay, the network got congested and several irritated users opted to sell their airdropped tokens.
This led to a significant drop in the price of the OP token. After several users had sold off their tokens, the price of the asset dropped to $1.2. Currently, though, the OP token traded at $0.75.
