The X1 validator airdrop is getting close. The remaining 90% of X1's incentivized testnet rewards will be dropped straight into the wallets of the operators who ran the chain's SVM testnet before mainnet existed. According to X1's new testnet rewards site, 5,016,724 XNT is on course to be paid, 73.2% of a total award of 6,855,821 XNT. There is nothing to claim. X1 has not yet confirmed a payout date.
For the operators who have been validating X1's SVM chain since mid-2024, through resets, version upgrades and a mainnet launch, this is the payday the whole testnet was built around. It will most likely land around the same time as the first investor unlock, into a market with very little depth. Both halves of that matter.
Hi everyone, please take a moment to test the testnet rewards site at https://testnet-rewards.x1.xyz. Let me know if you notice any inconsistencies with the numbers or addresses.
Nick Pettas, X1 Labs core developer, X1 Telegram, 22 September 2026
The numbers
The site reads live from X1's API and recalculates every epoch until the payout. At epoch 386 the award breaks down like this:
| Bucket | XNT | Share of award |
|---|---|---|
| Paid at genesis (Oct 6, 2025) | 685,582 | 10.0% |
| Payable (date not yet confirmed) | 5,016,724 | 73.2% |
| Forfeited to performance | 510,283 | 7.4% |
| No mainnet validator | 643,232 | 9.4% |
| Total award | 6,855,821 | 100% |
The payout goes to 465 addresses, covering 586 testnet accounts that map to a mainnet validator; 33 addresses collect for several validators. The largest single address is due about 143,000 XNT across ten validators. The median address is due about 7,782 XNT, and 281 addresses are due 5,000 XNT or more.
How the payout works
The rules are set out in X1's Incentivized Testnet Rewards documentation. Every vote a validator cast on testnet earned credits, converted at 50,000 credits = 1 XNT. At mainnet genesis on October 6, 2025, 10% was made claimable so operators could stake into their own nodes on day one. The other 90% was locked for 365 days, and it only vests in full for operators who kept a validator running through the first mainnet year. The documentation says the vested tokens unlock only after 365 days from mainnet launch, so the payout cannot come before early October, but no exact date has been announced.
Go offline for three months and you keep three quarters. Perform poorly and the payout is scaled down, which is where the 510,283 XNT "forfeited to performance" comes from. Testnet accounts with no mainnet validator at all account for another 643,232 XNT. The documentation says unvested tokens are deposited into the X1 Stake Pool Delegation Program, where they keep earning staking rewards.
The site is explicit that the 90% goes to the same address that received the first 10%. Operators should look up their vote account, identity or withdrawer on the site now and report anything that looks wrong, which is exactly what Pettas asked for.
Started on mainnet instead? The Bootstrap Bonus
Asked whether there is anything for nodes that joined on mainnet rather than testnet, Pettas pointed to the Bootstrap Bonus:
Yes, the bootstrap bonus is available. You can find more details here: https://docs.x1.xyz/validating/validator-rewards/bootstrap-bonus. We will also have a dashboard for these rewards up soon. Please note that they will not be paid out until November.
Nick Pettas, X1 Telegram, 22 September 2026
The Bootstrap Bonus is paid on self-stake between 1,000 and 10,000 XNT, with a +16% performance bonus for validators that meet the program criteria: commission at or below 10%, vote credits at least 97% of the network average, skip rate no more than 10% above average, and the majority Tachyon version. It counts self-stake only, not delegations, and caps any one operator at ten validators.
Most likely around the investor unlock
October 6, 2026 is the end of the 12-month cliff for X1 Labs investors, when 25% of an exercised allocation becomes eligible to unlock, followed by monthly releases from November 6. We covered that schedule in X1 Labs investment round and XNT vesting, explained. The testnet lock runs 365 days from the same mainnet launch, so it is very probable the airdrop lands around the same time as the investor unlock, possibly on the same day. Two unlocks arriving together is the part of this story the market will watch.
The liquidity problem
Five million XNT is a small number against X1's 1 billion XNT supply: 0.5%. It is not a small number against what actually trades. XNT's circulating supply is about 14.1 million, so the payout adds the equivalent of 35% of the float. At today's price of $0.283 it is worth about $1.42 million, against a market cap of $4.0 million and a fully diluted valuation of $304 million.
The deepest dollar market for XNT on X1 is still the XDEX XNT/USDC.X pool, holding $3,983 this morning, roughly 7,040 XNT on one side and $1,990 on the other. The airdrop is about 700 times the XNT side of that pool. A validator who market-sells a median payout of 7,782 XNT, worth $2,202 on paper, would get back about $1,046 before fees. Selling into that pool mostly hurts the seller, and it moves the price for everyone else.
That is the problem X1's last two launches are aimed at. wXNT went live on Solana yesterday through the Warp bridge, so XNT can now reach Solana's much larger pool of buyers. Next is the XDEX Terminal, the concentrated-liquidity XNT market Jack Levin has been trailing, built to hold far more depth than a single constant-product pool. Whether meaningful liquidity is in place before the airdrop lands is the question to watch over the coming weeks.
Capybara: why many will stake, not sell
Selling is not the only thing recipients can do with the airdrop, and for many it is not the most profitable. The X1 Foundation's delegation program now requires a minimum self-stake of 5,000 XNT, up from the 3,000 XNT set when Project Capybara introduced its P85 threshold in June. The program's own API shows what that floor is worth:
- 310 validators are receiving Foundation delegation, averaging about 1.04 million XNT each.
- Of 701 validators in the program, 311 fail the minimum self-stake. It is by far the most common failing criterion; the next, skip rate, catches 41.
- Among approved validators, the literal 85th percentile of self-stake is already about 6,730 XNT, above the 5,000 XNT floor.
Put those next to the payout. 281 addresses are due 5,000 XNT or more, enough on its own to clear the current floor. For an operator stuck below it, staking the airdrop into their own validator can unlock a million XNT of delegation and the rewards that come with it. A sale in a $4,000 pool looks poor by comparison.
That is also why the floor is likely to go up after the payout. The threshold follows the self-stake distribution, and if even part of five million XNT flows into self-stake, the distribution moves up with it. We set out that dynamic in the Capybara ratchet effect. The airdrop is the first time a large amount of new XNT lands in validators' hands all at once.
Is it enough?
Opinions on the size of the award are split. The case that it is thin: the whole airdrop of 6,855,821 XNT, both the 10% paid at genesis and the 90% still to come, is 0.69% of the 1 billion XNT supply. The median payout address receives about 8,780 XNT in total across both tranches, roughly $2,480 at today's price, for more than a year of testnet plus a full year of mainnet, running hardware at their own cost. The usual justification is that only a few hundred validators took part, so the pool was sized to the group.
Our view: the airdrop was never going to be the whole reward. Its real value is that it pays for the self-stake that qualifies for Foundation delegation and the Bootstrap Bonus, which pay far more over time. On those terms it is a door, not a payday. For operators who were already above the floor, it is simply a thank-you, and a modest one.
What validators should do now
- Check your address on testnet-rewards.x1.xyz and report any inconsistencies in X1 Telegram before the payout.
- Make sure you still control the genesis payout address. The 90% goes to the same address as the first 10%, with nothing to claim.
- Keep performance up. Amounts are live until the payout and scale with mainnet performance.
- Check your self-stake against the 5,000 XNT floor at delegation.mainnet.x1.xyz, and read our delegation program guide before deciding what to do with the payout.
Figures read from api.x1.xyz, the X1 delegation API and XDEX on September 23, 2026, at epoch 386. Payable amounts change each epoch until the payout.