When I look back at how Solayer got its early traction, the listings and airdrops played a massive role. $LAYER first went live on big venues in February 2025 with USDT pairs, and that gave it instant visibility.
From there, the team pushed regional listings like Binance TR to make sure more people had an easy on-ramp.
Liquidity plus name recognition is a powerful combo when you are trying to bootstrap discovery for a new infrastructure token.
The other big piece has been airdrops. If you have been following, you probably noticed Binance running multiple “HODLer Airdrop” rounds. One of them dropped 6 million @Solayer LAYER in a single event, and the overall program was sized at 18 million.
That kind of distribution gets people talking, wallets filling, and charts moving.
The tradeoff is clear though: while attention spikes, short term price pressure can also hit when airdropped tokens flow straight to the market.
For me, it feels like Solayer used the classic playbook:
listings to build trust and liquidity, airdrops to spread tokens into as many hands as possible. It makes the project visible, but it also sets a challenge—turning early curiosity into long term holders.
My take: CEX airdrops are like jet fuel and smoke at the same time. They get you noticed and spread the token far and wide, but they also bring churn when people dump for a quick profit.
The real antidote is not more giveaways—it is building utility that makes people come back and actually rebuy.
