Solana-Based GMT Tokens Surge 54%, ZIL Sees $13M in Liquidations

Crypto markets fell 3.5% in the past 24 hours as bitcoin (BTC) briefly lost support at the $45,000 level in early Asian trading hours on Friday.

Cardano’s ADA and Avalanche’s AVAX dipped 5% each while Polkadot’s DOT, Shiba Inu’s SHIB and Dogecoin’s DOGE dropped more than 7% in the past 24 hours. Solana’s SOL continues to outperform, remaining flat on Friday after leading gains on Thursday; BNB Chain's BNB modestly outperformed as well losing 3%.

Crypto-tracked futures saw over $400 million in liquidations in the past 24 hours. Liquidations refer to an exchange forcefully closing a trader’s leveraged crypto trading position due to a partial or total loss of the trader’s initial margin.

Topping futures losses at over $120 million was bitcoin, followed by ether (ETH) futures at $63 million. However, volatile trading action led to some less popular futures posting losses in excess of other major cryptos on Friday.

Futures on Zilliqa’s ZIL tokens saw $13 million in liquidations, while losses on Stepn’s GMT tokens amounted to over $11 million. ZIL was a top gainer over the past week with a 315% surge since March 26, rising to as much as $0.23 on Friday from last week’s $0.04 level.

ZIL previously saw similar prices in May 2021. Price charts suggest ZIL could see volatility between the $0.19 and $0.22 levels, although some support seems to exist at the $0.16 mark.

Growth on ZIL came ahead of the launch of Metapolis, a Metaverse-as-a-Service (MaaS) platform powered by the Zilliqa blockchain that’s scheduled to launch with a VIP event on Saturday in Miami. It would allow users to build their own virtual universes as metaverses gain in popularity as a sector in the broader market.

Meanwhile, the 3-week-old GMT rose 52% in the past 24 hours to highs of $3.11. GMT is the governance token of Stepn, a fitness app that allows users to access in-game features, such as mint virtual sneakers, upgrade “gems” and participate in governance voting.

Built on Solana, Stepn is self-styled as one of the first lifestyle applications in the Web 3 world, reaching a market capitalization of over $1.5 billion just weeks after launch.

Some attributed GMT's rise to its strong underlying fundamentals.

"The growth in GMT is notably a function of the value the StepN application offers, which has to a very large extent continued to intrigue investors," explained Alexander Mamasidikov, co-founder of digital bank MinePlex, in an email to CoinDesk. "The demand for the GMT token is on the rise as users of the app need to burn these tokens in order to gain access to mint high-quality merchandise like Virtual NFT Sneakers which are used to walk, jog, or run in a bid to earn GST tokens."

"We can expect more leaps in the price of the token in the near future. At the moment, a sustained buy up will see the token touch new all-time highs of $4," Mamasidikov added.

Elsewhere, Bored Ape Yacht Club's native ApeCoin (APE) tokens slid 8.3% amid reports of an exploit on its official channel on messaging service Discord. A rogue tool notified community members about a new non-fungible token (NFT) mint collection. The link was malicious, however, as clicking on it would have allowed exploiters to gain access to a user’s private keys and empty their wallets, security researchers found. Other NFT projects saw similar malicious messages, as reported.