Cross-chain bridge Wormhole initiated an airdrop that will see early users rewarded with 617 million of its newly issued governance token, W. The token opened at $1.66 on Solana-based decentralized exchange (DEX) OpenBook with a market capitalization of $2.98 billion and a fully diluted value figure of $16.5 billion, according to CoinGecko. OpenBook experienced a period of heavy congestion after the token was released with several users reporting that it was inaccessible.

The tokens released represent 6% of the total supply, a further 12% of which has been allocated to core contributors and 23.3% will be put toward the foundation's treasury. The token was launched initially on Solana and will be natively issued on Ethereum and layer-2 networks at a later date.

Holders will be able to delegate W tokens to take part in governance votes. Delegation can take place on Solana or any of the compatible Ethereum-based chains in a process that is being dubbed the "first ever" multichain governance system.