BNB Chain has launched a significant initiative called a “reload airdrop,” providing a total of $45 million in BNB to users who faced financial losses while trading memecoins amid last Friday’s market turmoil.

The plan aims to provide support to over 160,000 eligible addresses and is set to commence this week, with distribution wrapping up by early November. BNB Chain operates as a decentralized blockchain network developed by Binance, supporting its ecosystem’s native BNB token and facilitating various applications in DeFi, gaming, and digital assets.

According to Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, rewards from this airdrop will be allocated at random. It has partnered with several ecosystem players like Four Meme, PancakeSwap, Binance Wallet, and Trust Wallet to assist in delivering these funds to the affected traders.

This follows an unprecedented market drop last Friday that resulted in losses totaling around $20 billion across the cryptocurrency landscape, marking the most significant single-day collapse seen to date.

On Monday morning, BNB rose to an all-time high of $1,370 per token, as reported by CoinMarketCap. This increase occurred despite some criticism directed at Binance from users who alleged that the exchange exacerbated the market instability during the crash.

Image Source: BNB Chain

Binance’s Actions Amid Market Volatility

The sell-off was intensified by a remark from Donald Trump, the US President, suggesting the imposition of 100% tariffs on Chinese imports, triggering unprecedented liquidation in the crypto markets. As part of the fallouts, numerous Binance users reported technical issues on the platform that prevented them from liquidating their positions. One user recalled on X, that Binance had “shut down their system during a major market crash,” which hindered his ability to close futures positions.

Another notable issue arose with Ethena’s synthetic dollar, USDe, which sank to $0.65 on Binance, while maintaining its peg elsewhere. Guy Young, the founder of Ethena Labs, attributed this disconnection to Binance sourcing oracle data from its thinner order book rather than relying on an external price feed.

Additionally, other cryptocurrencies experienced significant discrepancies as they appeared to plummet to $0 on Binance, despite their actual trading values being above that in other exchanges.

On Sunday, Binance issued a public statement addressing user concerns regarding market fluctuations, confirming that their core futures services functioned normally during the downturn. The exchange clarified that brief price drops for certain trading pairs resulted from old limit orders being triggered due to the low liquidity, emphasizing that a display glitch showing tokens at zero prices was linked to adjustments in decimal settings.

While Binance noted that forced liquidations on their platform made up only a minor fraction of overall market activities, the company did admit that some users with collateralized assets like USDE, BNSOL, and WBETH faced liquidation as values dropped, leading to the exchange covering losses amounting to $283 million.