The cryptocurrency market continues to be abuzz with airdrop events. Accordingly, Omni Network’s native OMNI token experienced a drop of over 55% just 18 hours after an airdrop event, losing more than half of its market value. During this period, a fake token with the same name saw its price drop by 100%, and the project team resorted to a rug-pull scam.
What’s Happening at Omni Network?
The Layer-1 network Omni Network‘s token was launched at 14:00 on April 17, and 3 million OMNI, equivalent to 3% of the total token supply of 100 million, were distributed to eligible users during the airdrop event. The market value of OMNI was $560 million during the airdrop event.
Within half an hour, OMNI dropped about 30% from $53.80 to below $39 and continued to fall below $24, a drop of over 55%. According to CoinGecko, OMNI’s current market value is $267.5 million, giving it a fully diluted valuation of approximately $2.57 billion.
The airdrop event saw the first test network users, developers, and community participants receive 50% of the latest airdrop event worth approximately $36.2 million. The criteria were determined by a snapshot taken on April 3. The remaining tokens were distributed in various ways among EigenLayer restaking users and others, including some NFT projects like Pudgy Penguins.
Omni Network announced on April 15 that 9.27 million OMNI tokens were set aside for public launch tokens used in launch pools and liquidity.
OMNI Token Supply and Distribution Process
OMNI supply’s largest portion, 29.5%, will be allocated for ecosystem development and initially distributed at the discretion of the blockchain support firm Omni Foundation. Nearly a quarter of the OMNI supply, 23.3 million tokens, was allocated to investors and advisors.
Advisors received 625,000 OMNI tokens valued at $15 million on April 17 and will be eligible to receive 875,000 OMNI tokens after one year. Every six months for the next two years, 437,500 OMNI tokens will be distributed to this community. Investor tokens are locked in a three-year unlocking program, with about 6.7 million tokens valued at approximately $161 million today unlocking 12 months later and the remainder unlocking every six months until allocations are completed.
Meanwhile, developers of a fake OMNI token using the same code initiated a rug-pull scam worth $398,000. Blockchain security firm PeckShield, in a post dated April 18, wrote that after the deployment of the smart contract, more than 1.7 quadrillion tokens were dumped for 132 Wrapped Ethereum (WETH), causing the fake token’s value to drop by 100%.