XAI Airdrop on Arbitrum Puts $70 Million Into Gamers' Wallets

The first big gaming token airdrop of 2024 began this morning, as the Xai gaming network dropped its XAI token to eligible users.

There's layers to this: Xai is billed as a “layer-3” network built on Arbitrum, which itself a layer-2 scaling network for Ethereum—

According to the Xai Foundation, it’s offering up 125 million XAI tokens (or 5% of the token supply) to eligible users, including owners of certain Xai NFTs and those operating Sentry Nodes, or validators that help support the network. Crypto exchange Binance also allowed customers to earn XAI token rewards ahead of the launch by staking other cryptocurrencies.

XAI debuted at a price of just under $0.68 early Tuesday morning, per data from CoinGecko, and rose to a high above $0.77 before falling to the current price of $0.57. That puts XAI’s daily dip at 15% as of this writing, and a 20% drop from the peak price.

Airdropped tokens are famously volatile right out of the gate, but even so, the airdrop’s total value currently sits at nearly $70 million. At the time of writing, the market cap stands at just over $154 million with over 277 million tokens in circulation, including those from the airdrop.

Sentry Node operators and some NFT owners are able to claim several hundreds dollars’ worth of XAI tokens. Node operators, for example, can claim 1,658 XAI per key owned—that’s almost $925 worth at the current price. Vanguard NFT owners can claim 1,307 XAI, or about $730 worth, while Legendary NFT owners are able to claim 290 XAI ($162).

The Xai Foundation has teased a “Season 2” of airdrop token rewards for users, but has not yet detailed how network users can potentially earn additional rewards. Some owners of Xai NFTs at a lower tier than “Vanguard” or “Legendary” have complained via social media about not being included in this initial airdrop.

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The Xai network was developed by the Xai Foundation in collaboration with Arbitrum creator Offchain Labs and game studio Ex Populus. The Xai Foundation also announced a collaboration with prominent esports organization Team Secret to promote and participate in the network, with a focus on competitive games.

Xai’s first games are being developed by Ex Populus, including Final Form, a deck-building card game with auto-battler elements. Another game from the studio is LAMO, an online world with cartoonish characters battling it out. LAMO has already released physical toys inspired by popular gaming influencers like Ninja and Dr. Disrespect, with toy owners then able to unlock those characters within the game.

Edited by Stacy Elliott.