Sonic Labs announces 200M S token airdrop, U.S. residents will be eligible 

Sonic Labs has unveiled a 200 million S token airdrop to reward users and developers in its growing ecosystem, and U.S. residents are now officially eligible.

The announcement was made via a June 3 blog post and was later confirmed on X, marking a rare moment where an airdrop will be accessible to users in the U.S. under legal compliance. According to Sonic Labs, 190.5 million Sonic (S) will be distributed through a gamified points system that includes Sonic Points for regular users, Sonic Gems for decentralized finance protocols, and Game Gems for game developers. 

The first season of the airdrop becomes claimable around December 2025, with 25% unlocked immediately and the rest vested over 270 days. Early claims will be subject to a linear decay mechanism, which will burn a portion of the vested tokens to regulate supply and incentivize sustained participation. Users can choose to stake their S tokens at a 4.61% APY.

OpenBlock and Sentio, two analytics platforms known for powering incentive programs for protocols like EigenLayer (EIGEN) and Solana (SOL), are supporting the airdrop design. OpenBlock will model and optimize incentive allocation, while Sentio’s high-speed indexing engine will track on-chain activity and update points in real-time.

The news follows Sonic Labs’ $10 million token sale to Galaxy on May 12 to drive U.S. expansion. Galaxy, which serves over 1,300 institutional clients, is expected to help bridge traditional finance with Sonic’s fast, EVM-compatible blockchain infrastructure.

Sonic has processed over $17 billion in decentralized exchange volume to date, with over $4 billion monthly since January. On May 16, founder Andre Cronje introduced Flying Tulip, a DeFi super-app built on Sonic’s ultra-fast SonicVM and SonicDB stack, featuring trading, lending, and liquidity pools.

Despite the recent developments, S has struggled to price in the momentum. It’s down 22% in the past month, and total value locked has slipped to $861 million after peaking at $1.14 billion in mid-May, according to DeFiLlama data.