South Korea’s Upbit will launch Solana-based DRIFT trading pairs

Upbit to Launch DRIFT Trading Pairs for KRW, BTC, and USDT on Nov. 8

South Korea’s largest crypto exchange, Upbit, has announced that it will list DRIFT, the governance token of Drift Protocol, starting Nov. 8, 18:00 KST. DRIFT will be available for trading against the Korean Won (KRW), Bitcoin (BTC), and Tether (USDT) on the platform.

Drift Protocol, one of the largest open-source perpetual futures decentralized exchanges (DEXs) built on Solana, is already listed on major platforms like Coinbase and Bybit. The token has experienced significant growth, soaring 71.26% at the time of writing, and is currently trading at $0.88 — a 92.96% increase in the past week.

Upbit will allow deposits and withdrawals of DRIFT within three hours after the announcement. The exchange will use CoinMarketCap for price reference and will apply trading restrictions: buy orders will be restricted to 5 minutes after trading support begins, while sell orders priced more than 10% below the previous day’s closing price will also be limited.

DRIFT has seen its market capitalization climb to $211 million, with a 24-hour trading volume of around $74 million. As of now, DRIFT is ranked 296th in terms of market cap.

In May 2024, Drift Protocol launched its DRIFT token via an airdrop of 120 million tokens. This distribution represented 12% of its total initial supply of 1 billion DRIFT. An additional 20 million tokens were included as a bonus to enhance user experience and encourage participation. According to Cindy Leow, co-founder of Drift Protocol, the bonus was aimed at preventing network congestion and early sales while rewarding loyal users.

Drift Protocol allows users to engage in perpetual futures trading on the Solana Network. Through staking, DRIFT token holders can participate in governance by proposing and voting on protocol improvements.