Sophon’s utility token, SOPH, experienced a sharp decline of more than 33% within 24 hours of its debut and listing on Binance.

The primary driver behind the price plunge appears to be the airdrop of 900 million SOPH tokens, 9% of the total 10 billion supply, unlocked at launch.

Why is SOPH’s Price Declining?

For context, Sophon is a Layer 2 ZK (zero-knowledge) blockchain built on Validium technology and part of ZKsync’s Elastic Chain vision. It is designed as a consumer-focused platform targeting entertainment applications. The blockchain offers high throughput, low fees, and Ethereum-level security.

The project has raised over $70 million from prominent investors, including Binance Labs. On May 23, Binance announced SOPH’s listing via an X (formerly Twitter) post. 

“We’re pleased to announce that Binance will be the first platform to feature SOPHON (SOPH),” Binance posted.

Trading commenced at 13:00 UTC on May 28. On the same day, SOPH also began trading on other major exchanges, including OKX, KuCoin, Upbit, Bitget, and MEXC, marking a broad rollout.

According to data from CoinGecko, the token climbed to an all-time high of 0.11 shortly after launch. However, it saw a steep drop after this. Over the past day, SOPH’s price has depreciated by 33.3%. At the time of writing, the altcoin was trading at $0.06.

The decline also wiped out over $80 million in market capitalization. Furthermore, the trading volume surged 2,724.8%, indicating heavy distribution by early airdrop receivers.

At the Token Generation Event, Sophon unlocked 9% of SOPH’s total supply for distribution. This included 6% allocated to Layer 1 farmers and 3% for eligible early contributors, zkSync users, and NFT holders. 

Notably, airdrops often lead to short-term price declines due to increased supply. This is especially true when a token’s utility is not yet fully established.

Currently, SOPH’s immediate utility remains limited to gas fees and sequencer decentralization. Thus, this may not yet provide enough demand to counterbalance the airdrop-driven sell-off.

“We expect the utility to evolve over time as our network and our product offering grows, incorporating new utilities as we do. There is plenty planned on the product front so stay tuned for the evolution of SOPH,” Sophon stated.

Adding to the volatility, Binance applied a “seed tag” to SOPH. The seed tag is a classification for cryptocurrencies with higher risk and greater volatility than other tokens. It typically identifies new projects that are prone to larger price swings. 

Furthermore, the exchange introduced futures trading for SOPH with up to 75x leverage, amplifying price swings. Given these factors, the market sentiment surrounding SOPH remains fragile.

That’s not all. After three months, an extra 20% of SOPH’s supply, allocated as node rewards, will begin unlocking weekly. If market sentiment does not improve, this could exert further downward pressure.

Despite this, on-chain activity offers some optimism. Data from DefiLama revealed that Sophon’s total value locked (TVL) reached a peak of $20.28 million today.

This reflected an increase of 14.1% from the previous day. Additionally, decentralized exchange volume reached a record peak of $47.44 million.