The Solana Drift Protocol, known as a leading platform for trading perpetual futures on the Solana blockchain, has announced the launch of a new rewards program for its users. This program, named Drift Points, starts today and will last until March. Users will receive Drift points weekly, with the first distribution scheduled for February 2nd.
Drift Protocol co-founder Cindy Leow reported that about 100 million Drift points will be issued monthly. These points will be distributed among users based on their trading volume and other activities on the Drift platform, including market making and providing liquidity.
Leow also noted that the points program takes into account future activities, and for those who have already worked with Drift up to this day, "numerous checkpoints and snapshots" have been created to reward users.
Drift plans to gradually transition to decentralization with the introduction of a governance token, which will be the first step towards moving to public ownership. The governance plan includes the creation of a selected risk council from among the token holders to manage protocol update powers, including determining the size of fees and technical parameters of the protocol.
The Drift token is expected to be launched soon after the completion of the points accrual program in March. Leow did not disclose how Drift tokens will be distributed among users based on accumulated points, but confirmed that there will be a correlation between them.
Drift follows the example of the successful rewards program of the Jito Network and its subsequent token release. Jito, the second-largest Solana protocol offering liquid staking services, launched its points accrual program last September and announced the distribution of 90 million JTO tokens as part of its airdrop in December. This contributed to the growth of the Solana ecosystem.
As the ninth-largest decentralized finance protocol on Solana, Drift has a total locked value of over $113 million and a trading volume of over $4 billion for more than 80,000 users. Last October, the project raised $23.5 million in a Series A round and plans to soon launch new features, including an updated mobile app and new management modules.
