Crypto roundup: Ethereum Name Service (ENS) soars after airdrop launch; Cardano rises

Coinhead Rob Badman
Crypto airdrops, MetaMask, Hop Protocol, Layer 2s and more

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It’s another fairly pump-tastic day in crypto so far, with Bitcoin and Ethereum looking pretty strong, and several daily success stories to be found up and down the charts, including Cardano.

We’ll get to the day’s various standout performers (plus a few losers) in a bit, but first, there’s a bit of noise about a newly launched token called ENS, which stands for Ethereum Name Service.

If you’ve been poking around the Twitter feeds of the crypto world (commonly referred to as Crypto Twitter) for a while now, you’ll have seen numerous Ethereum bulls using the .eth suffix on their names. E.g. Vitalik.eth.

That’s the Ethereum Name Service crypto domain name tool at work, and you can think of it as the blockchain or “Web3” equivalent of the internet Domain Name System.

Much how that system did away with having to use IP addresses to navigate the early days of the internet, services such as ENS (Unstoppable Domains is another one) enable crypto holders to register their Ethereum-based public blockchain addresses as .eth names – for simplicity’s sake.

Anyway, the news here is that the Ethereum Name Service today launched its governance token with a community airdrop, and the thing has gone pretty ballistic so far. At the time of writing, ENS has surged 137 per cent since it hit the open market about 15 hours ago, currently changing hands for about US$43. It hit US$54 a few hours ago.

The airdrop is available to all Ethereum users who have, or have held, a .eth address before October 31, and can be claimed until May 4, 2022.

https://twitter.com/tonyherrera/status/1457734510687055875

With about 11 per cent of its 100 million supply in circulation, ENS reached a market cap of about US$570 million earlier, with a fully diluted valuation over US$5 billion.

The airdrop is reminiscent of the Uniswap drop of September 2020, which sent 400 UNI to anyone who’d used the site before a certain date. That airdrop, if held till now, is worth more than US$11,000 for individual recipients.

“Magic internet money” right there. Will we see more big airdrops before the year’s out? It’s a definite possibility.

 

Mooners and shakers: Cardano flips Solana again

At the time of writing, the overall crypto market has just pulled in for a pit stop, cooling down just a fraction. It’s still up one percentage point from this time yesterday, however, and sitting at US$3 trillion, with more than $47 billion in spare change.

Coin360.com

You can see what some of the top coins are doing right now, in the Coin360.com overview above. The “Bitcoin dominance” figure is still around the same levels its been for quite some time, not hinting at an out-and-out altcoin season just yet.

The real story in the top 10 today, though is Cardano (ADA), which has made a strong move – up about 12.5 per cent since this time yesterday, and actually currently just flipping Solana (SOL), reclaiming fifth spot.

Solana is down 3.8 per cent in the past 24 hours, cooling off a tad after some strong price action over the past week.

Some analysts are pointing to a triple-bottom chart pattern for ADA. The last time that happened, Cardano saw a parabolic rise.

Meanwhile, former top-10 mainstay Litecoin (LTC) is continuing its impressive comeback, reaching a six-month high just now of US$267, up about 20 per cent on a 24-hour timeframe.

Others performers of note in the top 100 include, in no particular order… Bitcoin Cash (BCH) +12.6%; Ethereum Classic (ETC) +14.5%; The Graph (GRT) +9%; Helium (HNT) +12%; Loopring (LRC) +34%; Dash (DASH) +12%; Livepeer (LPT) +141%; and Basic Attention Token (BAT), +11%.

To finish up, how about some tokens that have caught recent buzz, but have pulled back a bit over the past day? Here you are… Abracadabra Money’s governance and utility DeFi token SPELL, -16%; supply-chain favourite Origin Trail (TRAC) -13%; metaversal wonder MetaHero (HERO) -12.5%; Polkadot “oracle” Kylin (KYL) -12%; and another respected metaverse/gaming project Wilder World (WILD), down 10% since this time yesterday.

 

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