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 its token launch.

The program, Drift Points, starts today and closes in March. Drift points will be given out weekly, with the first distribution scheduled for Feb. 2.

"There will be around 100 million Drift points issued per month," Cindy Leow, co-founder of Drift Protocol, told The Block. "These points will be allocated to users based on their pro-rated 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 engaged with Drift before today, Leow said, "numerous checkpoints and snapshots" have already been taken to reward users.

Drift 'governance token'

"Drift will undergo a progressive decentralization plan with a governance token representing the first step of shifting towards community ownership," Leow said.

She added that the governance plans will involve an elected risk council from the token holders to manage the upgrade authority of the protocol. The council may determine functions 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 airdropped to users based on Drift points, but she said, "there will be a correlation between the two."

Drift drawing from the success of Jito

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

Jito, the second-largest Solana protocol that offers liquid staking services, launched its points program last September and then, in December, announced that it would be giving away 90 million JTO tokens in its airdrop. The Jito points program and token launch helped fuel recent Solana ecosystem growth, with the SOL token and tokens of various Solana projects experiencing substantial value increases.

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

Founded in 2021, Drift is backed by investors including Polychain Capital and Solana Labs co-founders Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal. 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.