Flare tokens airdropped to XRP holders after two years, FLR price plummets 70%

Flare’s FLR tokens were finally distributed to XRP holders, starting Monday night, after a nearly two-year-long wait in an event that generated massive chatter among community members.

Over 4.28 billion FLR tokens were shared and distributed to XRP holders who held at least one token during a snapshot in December 2020. The airdrop was conducted on a 1:1 basis, meaning one FLR for every XRP held.

The airdropped tokens currently represent 15% of the project’s total supply, with the remaining scheduled to be distributed over the next three years.

FLR holders would be able to vote for the way the future airdrop is distributed on Flare’s governance forums, alongside proposing other changes to the project.

As such, the tokens were dumped almost immediately by holders, CoinGecko data shows. They initially started trading at 15 cents apiece on Monday night, with prices dropping to just 2 cents at writing time. The tokens amassed some $25 million in trading volumes and are listed on crypto exchanges such as OKX and Kraken.

Flare, which initially aimed to become a decentralized finance (DeFi) application that utilized XRP tokens, has gradually transitioned to a layer 1 blockchain and oracle provider. Layer 1 refers to base blockchains, such as Ethereum or Solana, while oracles are third-party services that fetch data from outside a blockchain to within.

While the token is new, the Flare network was already functioning and handled over 268 million requests – for data and transactions over the past week, Flare’s vice president of engineering Josh Edwards said in a Monday tweet.