1inch Foundation plans to distribute 10M tokens to compensate for gas costs

The non-profit arm of decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch plans to give away more than $23 million to users starting September 1.

In an announcement on Tuesday, the 1inch Foundation said it would begin distributing 10 million of its native 1INCH in an effort to refund gas costs for users who stake the tokens. The foundation intends to issue monthly refunds for those who stake the token anytime between the first swap in a given month and the day it distributes 1INCH.

At the time of publication, the price of 1INCH has risen more than 15% in the last 24 hours to reach $2.33, meaning the foundation would potentially be distributing more than $23 million in tokens. However, only users who stake 100,000 1INCH or more will receive a full refund for their gas fees. The project also reported a minimum of 100 tokens is necessary to get a 25% gas refund for transactions that include “fast gas price” and a slipping tolerance greater than or equal to 1%.

According to the foundation, it will continue refunding gas fees for users under the terms mentioned above until it distributes 10 million 1INCH tokens. The project said the original idea for such a program came from community members via the 1inch Network’s governance forum.

Related: 1inch to launch dollar-pegged stablecoin with ICHI

1inch searches for the best rates on multiple decentralized exchanges and splits the trade by several pools to retrieve the maximum amount of tokens possible in a single transaction. For large trades using 1inch, going through multiple exchanges can sometimes ensure a better exchange rate, allowing users to get back some of the value from gas fees. The aggregator also uses its Chi Gastoken (CHI), aimed at helping users save on gas fees. The token is minted when the gas price is low and burnt when it's high.

The price of 1inch’s utility and governance token has fallen significantly since reaching an all-time high of $7.58 on May 8. At the time of publication, the price of 1INCH is roughly $2.30 with a 24-hour trading volume of more than $321 million.