Solana protocol Drift announces points reward program ahead of token launch

Drift Protocol, the largest perpetual futures trading platform based on the Solana blockchain, has announced a rewards program for users ahead of the token launch.

The program, Drift Points, starts today and closes in March. Drift points are distributed weekly, with the first distribution scheduled for February 2.

“There will be approximately 100 million Drift points issued per month,” Cindy Leow, co-founder of Drift Protocol, told The Block. “These points are assigned to users based on their pro-rata trading volume and other activities on Drift, such as market making and liquidity provision,” Leow said.

The points program recognizes future activities. For those who have dabbled with Drift before, Leow said, “Numerous checkpoints and snapshots have already been created to reward users.

Drift ‘governance token’

“Drift will undergo a progressive decentralization plan with a governance token that represents the first step toward community ownership,” Leow said.

She added that the governance plans will involve an elected risk board of the token holders to manage the protocol’s upgrade authority. The council can determine features such as fees and technical parameters of the protocol.

The Drift token is expected to launch “shortly after” the points program ends in March, Leow said. She declined to comment on how Drift tokens would be dropped to users based on Drift Points, but she said, “There will be a correlation between the two.”

Drift drawing of Jito’s success

Drift Protocol follows Jito Network’s recent successful rewards program and subsequent token airdrop and launch.

Jito, the second largest Solana protocol offering liquid staking services, launched its points program last September and then announced in December that it would be giving away 90 million JTO tokens in its airdrop. The Jito points program and token launches have contributed to the recent growth of the Solana ecosystem, with the SOL token and tokens from several Solana projects seeing significant increases in value.

In turn, Drift is the ninth largest decentralized finance protocol on Solana, with a total value of over $113 million, according to data from DeFi Llama. Drift said it has processed more than $4 billion in trading volume to date for more than 80,000 users.

Founded in 2021, Drift is backed by investors including Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal, the co-founders of Polychain Capital and Solana Labs. The project raised $23.5 million in Series A funding last October and plans to launch new features soon, including a redesigned mobile app and new governance modules.