The hotly anticipated Ethena token airdrop on April 2nd had the crypto community watching intently as $450 million worth of ENA coins were distributed. One holder, the airdrop's largest beneficiary, raked in a massive $1.96 million windfall.

According to on-chain data analyzed by Arkham Intelligence, wallet address 0xb56 received a staggering 3.3 million ENA tokens from the airdrop - nearly $2 million at Ethena's opening $0.60 price. The megadrop vaulted the unknown holder into crypto's echelons of whales.

Ethena Labs announced the full 5% token allocation destined for the airdrop had been distributed by 7:17 am UTC on April 2nd. The distribution unlocked trading on major exchanges like Binance, Bybit and KuCoin starting at 8 am.

The airdrop's mechanics suggest the holder likely met criteria around being a heavy user or liquidity provider for Ethena's protocol. The startup launched its USDe synthetic dollar stablecoin in February, which soon became crypto's highest-earning DApp by offering a 67% annual yield.

USDe's total value locked has swelled to $1.6 billion from over 123,000 users chasing its currently advertised 35.4% APY returns. Ethena integrated viral token incentives and gamification to supercharge USDe's growth heading into the ENA airdrop.

Within its first day of trading, ENA's price slid over 15% to the $0.58 level. Its $836 million market cap ranked it the 110th biggest cryptocurrency. As of today, April 4th, the token price has pushed to $0.9, making it the 73rd largest crypto by market cap.

The airdrop's $1.96 million high scorer. whose fortunes by now have surged to $3M, was just one of many new ENA holders minted overnight. But they'll likely face plenty of competition from whales looking to consolidate.

With its USDe stablecoin rapidly gaining traction and exchange liquidity now established for ENA, all eyes are on what innovative or lucrative utility Ethena Lab's has in store next for its newly liquid token.