PUFFER Finance's Native Token Surged Over 157% After Its Launch, Despite User Dissatisfaction With Airdrop Rewards

PUFFER, the native token of the Ethereum scaling and rollups platform Puffer Finance, surged over 157% just a few hours after its launch on October 14.

The native token of the Ethereum scaling and rollups platform, PUFFER, surged over 157% just a few hours after its launch on October 14.

This sudden price increase saw the PUFFER token become the 450th largest coin by market cap, despite the fact that many users expressed dissatisfaction with the token airdrops that had been recently distributed. Several users mentioned the large fees required to claim the minimal rewards.

Users Unhappy With Airdrop Rewards

On October 14, 2024, the Puffer Finance team announced the airdrop claim after facing a major setback when its claims page was temporarily disabled due to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

The attack occurred as an immense surge of users rushed to claim their $PUFFER tokens, causing the website to experience extended downtime and displaying “ineligibility to claim” errors.

Once the issue was resolved, the team announced that users could stake their tokens on the platform after claiming, participate in governance, boost their rewards, and earn more points.

After claiming, you can stake with Puffer, participate in governance through vePUFFER staking, boost your rewards, and earn more points. Don’t miss out!

We sincerely apologize for the website being down earlier due to an… pic.twitter.com/OodSSnRF5l

— Puffer Finance 🐡 (@puffer_finance) October 14, 2024

While many users were able to claim and stake their airdrop token share, some users took to social media to express their frustration. They mentioned that the fees for claiming and staking outweighed the rewards they received.

Yash Jhade, the creator of Puffy Games and Dotnames Domain, noted that he spent $18 on gas fees to receive a $30 PUFFER airdrop. When he tried to withdraw his staked pufETH from the platform, it resulted in an extra $52 in gas fees.

PUFFER Price Analysis

Despite the criticisms surrounding the PUFFER token launch, the project seems to have garnered some interest, evident in the token’s performance just 14 hours after it was listed on major exchanges like ByBit, HTX, Kraken, Gate.io, KuCoin, MEXC, and more.

Puffer Finance now boasts a market capitalization of $58.70 million and is trading at $0.68, which marks a decrease of about 28% from its all-time high of $0.909, recorded four hours ago. According to data, its 24-hour trading volume has also reached $281.85 million.

Puffer Finance Price Chart | CoinMarketCap

While this surge may be exciting for a newly launched Defi token, we can expect some retracement as early-profited traders take profits or more airdrop receivers cash out their free tokens.

notably, as a liquid restaking platform on Ethereum, Puffer Finance is one of the leading decentralized protocols with a total value locked (TVL) of $1.413 billion, according to DeFiLlama data.

It is currently the 28th-largest protocol in terms of TVL rankings, while other platforms like Lido, EigenLayer, and AAVE lead the list overall.

What is Puffer Finance?

$PUFFER is the governance crypto token of Puffer Finance, an Ethereum scalability decentralized finance platform.

The token is integral to the ecosystem, which consists of the Puffer LRT (Liquid Restaking Token) and the UniFi suite of products, such as UniFi AVS and UniFi Based Rollup.

The token can be used for yield farming and staking by its users and enables participation in governing key protocol parameters across the Puffer and UniFi ecosystems.