Share this article
Crypto Startup Backed by Likes of Dragonfly Aims to Create Market to Trade Airdrop-Related Points
Rumpel Labs seeking to create efficient secondary markets, going live in mid-September.
Updated Aug 26, 2024, 4:16 p.m. Published Aug 26, 2024, 4:13 p.m.
In this article
- Secondary markets for trading points will provide access for people who want to reduce or increase exposure to points but are unable to do so, and improve price discovery, said Rumpel Labs CEO Kenton Prescott.
- The project is backed by some big-name VCs like Dragonfly and Variant.
Rumpel Labs, a startup that builds tokenization infrastructure for loyalty points, distributed by many decentralized finance (DeFi) and Web3 projects, has emerged from stealth with backing from some big-names in the venture capital arena, like Dragonfly and Variant.
Dishing out loyalty points to incentivize user behavior and reward early adopters, often with a promise of airdropped tokens, has become a go-to strategy in the crypto space in recent years. Close to 50% of recent airdrops were distributed to point holders, with notable examples of the power of points programs demonstrated by the rapid proliferation of projects like NFT marketplace Blur, or Ethena’s USDe stablecoin.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Airdrops, for crypto, refers to distributing free tokens or coins to users who participate in a particular blockchain network. The strategy is often used by crypto companies to incentivize users to engage with the project, attract new users and grow community engagement.
While various projects have seen real value brought by the accelerated growth from leveraging points programs, there have been issues around unmet promises and users getting airdrops and payouts from their point programs that are much less than they were expecting, said Rumpel Labs CEO Kenton Prescott - a former developer of MakerDAO. Meanwhile, there are users out there who want to get extra exposure to these projects, but have no way of getting that, Prescott added.
However, more formalized secondary marketplaces need to be created, with better capital efficiency, deeper liquidity and price discovery, while learning lessons from some of the existing attempts to trade point exposure, says Prescott.
“These issues are just caused by not having the ability to effectively transfer and trade points,” Prescott said in an interview. “A secondary marketplace with capital efficiency, deep liquidity and price discovery, solves these problems simultaneously.”
Rumpel will have its own points program and go live in mid-September.
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
NFT Project Pudgy Penguins Takes Over Las Vegas Sphere in Holiday Campaign
The NFT brand’s animated segments will air on the Sphere across Christmas week, signaling the crypto company's move into real-world consumer markets.
What to know:
- Pudgy Penguins will run an ad campaign at the Las Vegas Sphere during Christmas week, one of the few crypto brands to secure a spot at the high-profile venue.
- The NFT project, which launched on Ethereum in 2021, has expanded into physical toys and digital gaming as part of a broader consumer push.
- Pudgy Penguins briefly overtook Bored Apes in floor price earlier this year and recently launched its PENGU token on Solana, now trading on major exchanges.
Top Stories
