Faster Than Stimulus Checks: Over 40% of UNI Tokens Claimed From Uniswap’s Airdrop

It’s still less than 24 hours since the team behind the decentralized finance protocol, Uniswap, announced its governance token, UNI.

According to the distribution schedule, 15 % of tokens (150,000,000) are available to historical users and liquidity providers. Each eligible address could potentially claim at least 400 UNI (appr. $1200 at the time of the release), with users having the option to choose whether or not to sell these tokens immediately.

Interestingly, some crypto personalities were quick to compare the airdrop of these tokens to historical Uniswap users, with the arrangement by authorities in different countries to provide relief to citizens in the wake of the COVID-19 financial crisis.

While the distribution process in some countries (including the United States) was largely successful, observers criticized the disbursement process. CBS News reported two months after the signing of the stimulus checks proposal that some 20 million Americans were yet to receive theirs and were also unsure about when the “money will land in their mailboxes or bank accounts.”

However, in a little under 14 hours after Uniswap announced UNI, results show that over 40% of the tokens (61,196,952 UNI) have been claimed by some 94,886 eligible users (addresses).

The timely distribution of these tokens calls to mind just how, with a few technical iterations, users can quickly receive government relief aid. As shown in the above chart, a significant number of token claimers received their UNI tokens within a few minutes after the Uniswap announcement, while users in different jurisdictions woke up to the news as the hours went by.

Any worries that interested sellers would face a hard time liquidating their UNI claims were quickly dismissed as several centralized cryptocurrency exchanges listed UNI almost immediately.

Binance, for instance, broke its own listing record by opening its UNI order books within 60 minutes after the official announcement. San Francisco-based Coinbase announced support for UNI a few hours later.

The only argument against the UNI distribution could be that the price of UNI will largely fluctuate in its early days. Even that too may not matter to many who have already cashed out their near-instant stimulus checks, while the U.S. continues to use another $2 trillion stimulus check that will likely take months to reach end users.