In late 2020, the Flare Network attracted a lot of attention in the Ripple (XRP) community. The creators wanted to open up the DeFi space for Ripple and announced an airdrop of Flare (FLR) tokens for all XRP holders.
However, holders of XRP had to be patient for a long time. The launch was postponed several times. But today is finally the day: at 6:59 p.m. EST, the distribution of FLR tokens will take place.
The FLR Token Distribution event is just 24 hours away.
Join the #Flare team and guests on Twitter tomorrow. The distribution starts at 23:59 UTC sharp. The stream will start a few minutes before.#ConnectEverything pic.twitter.com/CLtmUird1Z
— Flare ☀️ (@FlareNetworks) January 8, 2023
However, there is also bad news. Just before the launch, the FLR/USDT trading pair is seeing a massive dump of around 71% on Bitrue.
The exchange was the only trading platform besides Poloniex to date where FLR could be traded as an IOU. As can be seen in the 1-day chart from TradingView, the FLR/USDT pair has seen a massive dip over the last two days on Bitrue.
The token was trading at $0.5394 yesterday and crashed to a low of $0.1559 at times today before recovering to $0.2395 at press time. With this, the FLR token is still posting a loss of around 55% compared to two days ago.
Airdrop For XRP Holders Is Finally Here – Too Late?
When the project started, the narrative was clear: Ripple (XRP) lacked access to the booming sector of decentralized finance (DeFi). This has since changed, at least in part. Ripple has been developing a bridge to Ethereum (ETH) on its own to enable smart contracts and DeFi. Moreover, the XRP Ledger now has a DEX and its own NFT standard.
To adapt to it, the project now aims to provide smart contract capabilities for blockchains without them, starting with Ripple (XRP). Flare Network is a layer 1 Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) based interoperable blockchain based on the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism.
However, whether Flare Network can convince investors after its 2-year delay with its new approach or whether there will be another dump tonight when the majority of Ripple (XRP) investors receive their FLR tokens, remains to be seen. Today’s dump suggests that some investors may not be interested in FLR in the long term.
FLR Token Distribution
For every 1 XRP in the snapshot (taken in December 2020), 1.0073 FLR will be airdropped. Today, the first 15% of this amount will be distributed via airdrop. The remaining 85% of the tokens will be paid out in 36 monthly installments. The method of distribution depends on the outcome of the community vote on the Flare Improvement Proposal 01 (FIP.01).
If the community approves the proposal, the remaining 36 monthly distributions will be decentralized on the chain. The tokens will be divided among the wallets that packaged FLR tokens (WFLR).
If the community rejects the proposal, the same self-storage wallets and the same centralized exchanges that received the initial airdrop will receive one airdrop per month for 36 months.
Featured image from iStock, Chart from TradingView.com