Blockchain will be airdropping approximately $125 million worth of Stellar lumens to its users, in conjunction with the Stellar Development Foundation. This marks the largest airdrop in cryptocurrency history.
Those interested in taking part must possess a Blockchain wallet and be willing to verify their identity. The first group of customers is set to receive their lumens sometime this week at no charge. Stellar is Blockchain’s first airdrop partner since it launched its official “Airdrops Guiding Principles” framework last month.
Jed McCaleb, co-founder of the Stellar Development Foundation, believes airdrops can be powerful tools when it comes to building the crypto ecosystem and boosting mainstream adoption.
“We believe airdrops are central to creating a more inclusive digital economy,” he said. “Giving away lumens [XLM] for free is an invitation to communities to design the services they need. Our hope is to eventually have global citizens own and use lumens in both developing and developed economies. By working with Blockchain to increase the availability and active use of lumens on the network and leveraging their almost 30 million wallets, we will increase the network’s utility by many orders of magnitude.”
CEO of Blockchain Peter Smith explained what attracted his company to Stellar. “We were looking for a protocol and network built for scalability with an active and rapidly growing ecosystem,” he said. “Stellar was a clear frontrunner, and we’re excited to be working with their world-class team.”
As part of the airdrop, Blockchain is looking to partner with several additional enterprises including the non-profit fundraising software Network for Good, Stanford’s emerging tech initiative and the online computer science education system Code.org. Blockchain says it will release the details of these partnerships in the coming weeks.
Blockchain has aided millions of companies and individuals in both developed and third world nations to get their hands on digital assets. Recently, the company raised over $70 million in a funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Google Ventures.
Stellar is a distributed ledger network that permits multiple assets and currencies to be digitally transferred, issued or exchanged online. The system boasts a built-in order book, network token and pathfinding algorithm, allowing assets to move more easily between sending and receiving parties.
