Cap Protocol concluded its “Frontier” reward phase on Wednesday, February 4th by distributing 12 million cUSD, a dollar-pegged stablecoin, to early users. The project is calling the effort the “first-ever stablecoin airdrop” for cryptocurrencies.
In a post on X, Cap explained that they chose to airdrop stablecoins rather than governance tokens in order to provide users with fixed-value rewards rather than rewards that can fluctuate based on market prices. According to CoinGecko, cUSD’s market capitalization is currently over $282 million.
Cap is a stablecoin and yield protocol that programmatically routes funds to specialized yield generating institutions while enforcing strict on-chain risk controls. According to DeFiLlama, the total value locked (TVL) is approximately $315 million.
Cap Protocol TVL
Stablecoin airdrops are unusual in cryptocurrencies, where projects typically distribute governance tokens. For example, in October 2025, World Liberty Financial, a project backed by US President Donald Trump, announced that it would airdrop 8.4 million WLFI tokens to its users. $USD1 Earn stablecoins through a points program instead of paying rewards directly $USD1.
The cap airdrop also took place amid heightened volatility in the overall cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin (BTC) has fallen about 19% over the past week and is trading at levels last seen in April 2025. Stablecoins, by contrast, continue to grow, with a market capitalization of about $306 billion, up about $100 billion from a year ago.
“Our guiding principle was to keep the stabledrop value around $250 million (fully diluted valuation), which is 5% of the cap value. This percentage is consistent with previous stablecoin airdrops,” X’s post reads. “To verify that this amount is sufficient to reward users, we focused on YT-cUSD holders, the profile of users who took the most risk during Frontier.”
Capp said the company is currently looking to expand its yield engine by bringing in institutional investors. The company claimed to have partners with over $1 trillion in accumulated assets under management (AUM).
Following the airdrop, the protocol will enter a new reward phase called Homestead, which will last from January 29th to July 23rd, 2026, according to an official blog post. Homestead allows users to earn cap points by holding cUSD (10 caps per cUSD per day), and points will be doubled during the first month of the program.
