BNB Chain has launched a $45 million “reload airdrop” aimed at compensating users who lost money trading meme coins during Friday’s market crash.
The network announced on Monday that the initiative will distribute BNB (BNB) tokens to more than 160,000 eligible addresses. Aidops will begin this week and is expected to be completed by early November.
BNB Chain is a blockchain network developed by Binance and currently maintained by a decentralized community. It powers the ecosystem’s native BNB token and supports applications across DeFi, gaming, and digital assets.
According to Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao, rewards will be randomly assigned. Ecosystem partners such as Four Meme, PancakeSwap, Binance Wallet, and Trust Wallet will help distribute funds to eligible traders.
The airdrop comes in the wake of Friday’s market slump, which resulted in approximately $20 billion in liquidations across the cryptocurrency market, making it the largest single-day liquidation in the industry’s history.
On Monday morning, BNB hit a new all-time high of $1,370 per token, according to data from CoinMarketCap. The recovery came even as Binance faced backlash from users who accused the exchange of exacerbating the market turmoil during the crash.
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Binance’s response to the sudden drop in virtual currency
On Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump’s Truth Social post threatening to impose 100% tariffs on imports from China sent the cryptocurrency market into a historic liquidation, and Binance was caught in the middle of it.
Several Binance users reported that the system experienced glitches during the economic downturn, making them unable to exit their positions. One trader, Sleeper Shadow, wrote on Saturday that Binance “shut down the system during the market crash” and traders were “unable to close” their futures positions.
Another flashpoint comes from Ethena’s synthetic dollar, USDe, which fell to $0.65 on Binance on October 11, but remained near the $1 peg elsewhere. Guy Young, founder of USDe issuer Etena Labs, said the depeg could be because Binance used oracle data from its own order book, which had relatively little liquidity, rather than external price feeds.
The third problem is that altcoins including IoTex (IOTX), Enjin (ENJ), and Cosmos (ATOM) appeared to crash to $0 on Binance during the market downturn, even though they were listed above $0 on other exchanges.
On Sunday, Binance released a “Statement on Recent Market Volatility” to address user concerns. The exchange wrote that it had conducted a “comprehensive review” and confirmed that “core futures” continued to operate during the market downturn.
Binance said the temporary price crash for certain spot pairs was due to old limit orders being triggered amid thin liquidity during the decline. The exchange added that another “zero price” display glitch was not due to the token actually reaching zero, but rather a recent change in decimal point settings.
It also noted that forced liquidations on its platform accounted for a small portion of overall market activity, suggesting the volatility was primarily driven by broader market conditions rather than internal malfunctions.
Still, Binance acknowledged that the depegging of USDE (as well as BNSOL and WBETH) caused some users holding these assets as collateral to have their positions liquidated. In response, the exchange covered losses totaling $283 million.
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