Orbiter Finance has surged over 50% in the past 24 hours with the 24-hour trading volume of over $108 million, up by 87%, buoyed by the Bithumb’s listing announcement.

Orbiter Finance (OBT) is up 75% today. The main catalyst seems to be Bithumb’s announcement that it will be listing OBT/KRW pair. The announcement dropped around 5 hours ago, propelling the price from around $0.018 to its ATH of $.032. However, the price has since retraced almost 6% from ATH, with OBT currently trading for $0.027, according to Coinmarketcap.

The Bithumb listing announcement came on the heels of the protocol releasing its bridging stats on March 12. According to that announcement, users have so far made a total of 728,488 transactions to bridge assets between different blockchains using the Orbiter Testnet, with 101,478 unique participants.

OBT was launched on Jan. 20, plunging into downtrend post-launch and reaching its all-time low in mid-February. However, starting in late Feb, the price began a steady climb, gradually rising throughout March. Thanks to today’s surge, the price has finally broke out of the resistance level at $0.018 – $0.020, where it has been consolidating for about two weeks.

Orbiter Finance background and tokenomics

Orbiter Finance is a decentralized cross-rollup bridge designed to facilitate digital asset transfers between Ethereum’s Layer 2 networks, leveraging zero-knowledge proof technology. The protocol was launched 3 years ago and has so far processed over $28 billion.

The OBT token, which performs governance and staking functions, was launched on Ethereum (ETH), Arbitrum (ARB), and Base (BASE) in Jan. 2025 with 10 billion OBT total supply. The OBT token distribution allocates 40% to the community through airdrops and incentives, with an initial 22% airdrop to Orbiter users and subsequent monthly airdrops. 20% is dedicated to ecosystem growth and partnerships, while 15% supports the Orbiter Foundation’s vision. Another 15% is allocated to the team and contributors. The remaining 10% is reserved for investors from series seed and A funding rounds, including big-name VCs like OKX Ventures, Lemniscap, Mirana Ventures, Amber Group, and Dialectic.

Initial unlocks took place at TGE on Jan. 20 to reward early adopters and participants in the Orbiter Finance ecosystem. Specifically, 22% of the community allocation was distributed immediately to eligible users, with an additional 3% scheduled for monthly distribution over the following six months.

Then, the first linear unlock for the OBT community airdrop was open on March 3 and lasted until March 10, releasing 3% of the community allocation equivalent to 120 million OBT tokens. The next unlock is slated for March 20, where the protocol will release 350.00M tokens (3.50% of max supply).