GRASS becomes ‘most distributed’ Solana airdrop as nearly 1.5 million addresses claim tokens
2024-10-31

The number of addresses that have claimed the GRASS token airdrop has jumped to nearly 1.5 million, according to Dune Analytics. That would make it the largest token airdrop to date on Solana — at least by the number of addresses that now hold tokens.
When the token first dropped on Monday, it contributed to an outage of Solana’s largest wallet, Phantom.
Upwards of 2.8 million wallets are eligible to receive GRASS tokens — the newly launched governance token for the Solana-based DePin project — because they connected on time. However, around 5 million addresses will ultimately get other opportunities to claim tokens, Andrej Radonjic, CEO of Wynd Labs, a core contributor to Grass, told The Block.
The previous record for the largest Solana airdrop fell to Jupiter, a much-used decentralized exchange, with 639,000 claimants.
That said, users can have multiple blockchain addresses and wallets — so it should not be assumed GRASS is the most widely distributed token in terms of number of holders. It is rare for the number of addresses eligible to receive an airdrop to exceed one million, according to The Block Research.
What is Grass?
GRASS is a viral crypto project that scrapes and validates data to train artificial intelligence bots. Millions of users have reportedly downloaded the browser extension and mobile app that collects and cleans website data. Users are rewarded with GRASS tokens.
“Historically, your bandwidth has been stolen from you by companies that pay developers to sneak software into your free apps. They then turn around and allow F500's and AI companies to use your device to scrape valuable web data,” Radonjic said.
“Today marks the first time ever that users are receiving network ownership for sharing their bandwidth. This bucks a 20+ year trend in an industry that has been reliant on extractive incentive structures,” he added.
The token will also be used to stake on the protocol to facilitate “web traffic flowing through the network” and pay for bandwidth.
In Epoch 1 of the GRASS airdrop “season,” the protocol issued 100 million GRASS (10% of total supply) to early node runners and community members. The majority of those tokens, 9%, went to people who earned more than 500 Grass Points using the network.
Data from CryptoRank shows that GRASS’s Linear Unlock process will continue until 2028. Between now and Oct. 28, 2025, 0.01% of the total supply, equivalent to 146,200 GRASS, will be unlocked daily, potentially exerting long-term selling pressure on GRASS’s price.
GRASS is currently trading at just under $1, giving the token a fully diluted valuation near $1 billion.
Complaints
Not everyone has been impressed by the airdrop. Many industry participants have said Wynd made the airdrop too easy to farm, meaning that many of the tokens went to people running massive bot operations. Several prominent users reported receiving a couple hundred bucks from the airdrop.
Others have complained that the use case — Grass using your bandwidth through their extension — is akin to malware. Addressing that particular criticism, Radonjic said it "has gone through a stringent certification process with AppEsteem, a leading cybersecurity firm that ensures that Grass operates ethically."
"It is very easy to join the network, and this is an intended feature. In order to build an internet scale web crawl that is owned by millions of users around the world, there needs to be a frictionless onboarding process," he said “Because the network relies on IP addresses and device fingerprints, it has the best sybil filtering (ie more real users than any other protocol on Solana).”
Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.
© 2024 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.