Howdy!
Lightspeed’s 44th Edition is back! We can’t give you tokens but we do have knowledge, good vibes and insight to share.
Your allocation will always be 100%. Anyways:
Airdrop Sanctum backlash
Over the past several months, crypto — and Solana in particular — has seen a series of high-profile airdrops, as buzzy projects debuted native tokens. These tokens are often distributed to users based on ‘points’, which are doled out for using the protocol.
Jito’s JTO Airdrop was a huge success, and the market was heating up. However, in recent months, distributions are causing a lot of grumpiness. “farming” Essays on social media about the impact of “low float, high FDV [fully diluted value] tokens.”
Sanctum CLOUD was meant to be different.
Airdrops of liquid stakes from the Solana-based project are primarily aimed at “earnestness” — that is, rewarding long-term alignment with Sanctum’s success, rather than mercenary airdrop farming. Sanctum founder FP Lee penned a great deal of text outlining how the project would reward good behavior and not bad. Sanctum point allocation was used to determine half of the amount for airdrop. Sanctum would then measure earnestness by measuring a user’s social contributions. The idea was to counter the crypto-cynicism which can be caused by seeing poor behavior unpunished.
CLOUD was not the only one to be angry.
“Really disappointed,” Writers. “Can’t believe how badly this team fucked up,” Another said. Some started tracking users who were dumping their CLOUD after receiving it — and speculating whether those sellers were earnestness recipients. Lee issued a mea culpa for X.
When I got Lee on the phone following the airdrop, he said he felt Sanctum’s airdrop execution — from incentivizing long-termism by giving a better price to those who let their tokens vest to not paying listing fees on exchanges — had been “almost perfect.”
Lee thought that Sanctum’s attempt at rewarding earnestness had failed, as the scheme, which was intended to encourage the community to behave well, actually created some problems. “resentment” He said that those who did not receive any allocations should be compensated.
Sanctum’s airdrop is not the only one that has received criticism. Bridging platform LayerZero also faced backlash for forcing its users to make donations to Ethereum to receive their ZRO tokens.
It is important to note that the word “you” means “you”. “recipients complain their highly-anticipated airdrop allocation isn’t big enough” The trope has become so melodramatic that it is a stale rehash.
Lee was asked if airdrops still seemed worthwhile.
Then he laughed, and said “I don’t know” Before concluding, “I am of the opinion that probably doing some sort of fair sale is better than doing an airdrop just because people have to put their money where their mouth is.”
DL News explained yesterday that VCs are interested in crypto projects with tokens because they can generate returns, especially since IPOs remain rare. Sanctum is the recipient of over $6 million worth of venture funding. Lee informed me of investors and founding teams “want the TGE [token generation event].”
While there are some obvious disadvantages of doing an airdrop with tokens, the benefits seem to outweigh them. “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” For venture-backed cryptocurrency founders.
— Jack Kubinec
Zero In
A shake-up has occurred near the top of Solana’s validator rankings.
Helius now has nearly 13 million SOL, making it the second biggest stakeholder in the delegated-stake system of the blockchain.
Part of the intrigue here is that — as Blockworks Research analyst Hayden Tsutsui has pointed out — Coinbase’s place near the top of the pile is less about an efficient market outcome and more about the weight of the major exchange’s brand.
StakeWiz reports that Helius, a market with efficient prices, offers a greater APY to its investors than Coinbase. Helius CEO Mert Mumtaz’ colorful online persona probably helped as well.
The Pulse
ICYMI — Stories you may have missed from Solana land this week:
- Claynosaurz, a film by Claynosaurz, won 14 Collision Awards including Gold for Character Design and Lighting in both Film and marketing, defeating Pixar Disney Sony and others.
- Allium Labs has secured $16.5 Million in Series A Funding led by Theory Ventures. This brings the total amount of funding for their Blockchain Data Platform to $21.5 Million.
- Moonshot launched a new app to help newcomers buy memecoins based on Solana using Apple Pay and PayPal.
- Cypherpunk Holdings will increase its Solana to more than 63,000 tokens, and run its Solana validator. It will also stake the majority of its tokens with its own node.
- SkyTrade raised its pre-seed to develop a platform where real estate and property companies could monetize their air rights.
- Jambo, in partnership with Tether and Solana, offers blockchain-based services for financial transactions on JamboPhone. This is aimed at empowering the unbanked populations of Southeast Asia and Africa as well as Latin America.
- On the Solana chart’s price, a pennant-shaped pattern in a bullish direction has been formed. Some traders expect a rally. SOL has gained more than 21 percent in the last seven days and is now trading near $169.
DM One Good
We have a message for J, Anonymous co-founders of Sanctum:
Did you know that over $140 billion dollars in Bitcoin, or about 20% of the entire Bitcoin supply, is currently locked in inaccessible wallets? Or maybe you have lost access to your Bitcoin wallet? Don’t let those funds remain out of reach! AI Seed Phrase Finder is here to help you regain access effortlessly. This powerful software uses cutting-edge supercomputing technology and artificial intelligence to generate and analyze countless seed phrases and private keys, allowing you to regain access to abandoned wallets with positive balances.
