![Binance Offers to Give Away Staking Rewards Earned by ‘Accidentally’ Staking Users’ Stellar Lumens [XLM] Tokens](https://crypto-economy.com//wp-content/uploads/2019/09/stellar.jpg)
Leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance is giving away 9,500,000 Stellar Lumens [XLM] to its users’ XLM hodlers. But why? Well, apparently the exchange had been staking its customers’ Lumens allegedly “accidentally” for close to a year now and the 9.5 million lumens, worth about $865,000 as of press time are the rewards from the staking exercise.
Therefore, the exchange announced on Thursday that it will be airdropping the funds to XLM hodlers on the platform on September 1st based on the users’ XLM balances as from Saturday, July 20th.
“Back in August 2018, the Binance team heeded the Stellar team’s recommendations to change some parameters on both cold and hot wallets,” the exchange wrote on Thursday.“This change has allowed us to unknowingly earn staking rewards starting August 31, 2018.”
It is hard to imagine that an exchange that has invested a lot into security and policy can implement a change to its wallets without understanding the implications of the recommendations. However, the exchange’s users are ecstatic about the airdrop and most have chosen to ignore the ‘honest’ mistake given that Binance is repentant and willing to give away ‘all’ the staking rewards to its users. Not only that, but Binance also announced that it will enable staking support for XLM tokens on its platform starting from July 20th the same date when they start tracking XLM balances on the platform for the airdrop later this year.
“When we discovered this, we made two decisions: to immediately add staking support for XLM, and to share the XLM rewards we gained to the entire community.”
Due to the news, the XLM token has surged in price to $0.091 according to Coinmarketcap gaining more than 10% in less than 24 hours. A surge in trade volume for XLM pairs on the platform confirms that most users interpreted the news positively and are willing to take Binance on its offer. At least 10 XLM will be required to qualify to receive part of the reward. The rewards will be airdropped similar to how exchange currently distributes rewards from other coins supporting staking on the platform including NEO (GAS), Ontology (ONG), and VeChain (VTHO).
