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 sudden price increase resulted in the PUFFER token becoming the 450th largest coin by market cap. This occurred even though numerous users expressed dissatisfaction with the token airdrops that had been recently distributed. Several users mentioned the significant fees required to claim the minimal rewards.
Users Dissatisfied With Airdrop Rewards
On October 14, 2024, the Puffer Finance team announced the airdrop claim after facing a critical challenge when its claims page was temporarily disabled due to a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.
The attack happened simultaneously as an unusual surge of users hurrying to claim their $PUFFER tokens, causing the website to experience prolonged downtime and resulting in “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.
$PUFFER claims are now live! 🎉https://t.co/TqV0LfaQ63
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
Many users were able to claim and stake their airdrop token share; however, some users expressed their frustration on social media X. 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
Although several criticisms surround the PUFFER token launch, there remains some enthusiasm surrounding the project, as evident in the overall performance just 14 hours after the listing on top exchanges, including ByBit, HTX, Kraken, Gate.io, KuCoin, MEXC, and more.
Puffer Finance has reached a $58.70 million market capitalization and is now trading for $0.68, representing a drop of around 28% from its all-time high of $0.909, recorded four hours ago. According to data, its 24-hour trading volume has also hit $281.85 million.
Puffer Finance Price Chart | CoinMarketCap
While this surge looks attractive for a newly launched Defi token, we might expect some retracement as early-profited traders take profits or more airdrop receivers cash out their free tokens.
Meanwhile, 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 plays a vital role in fueling the ecosystem, consisting of Puffer LRT (Liquid Restaking Token) and the UniFi suite of products, such as UniFi AVS and UniFi Based Rollup.
The token offers yield farming and staking for its users and allows users to participate in governing key protocol parameters across the Puffer and UniFi ecosystems.
