Detailed explanation of Celestia airdrop and economic model. How will project airdrop methods evolve in the future?

Author: Wuhai, PANews

On the evening of September 26, the modular blockchain Celestia announced an airdrop, issuing a total of 60 million Celestia tokens TIA. Users benefiting include 7,579 developers and 576,653 active addresses on the chain. Celestia Labs team members and consultants cannot participate. This airdrop is allocated. Qualified users must claim it before 20:00 on October 17, 2023.

Looking back at Celestia’s previously officially announced financing, the amount and organization are also at the forefront of the industry. In 2021, Dutch cryptocurrency investment company Maven 11 Capital added Celestia to the portfolio of its $40 million closed-end fund. In July 2022, venture capital firm NFX’s second fund invested an additional $62.61 million in Celestia and Ramp Network. , in October 2022, Bain Capital and Polychain Capital led a US$55 million investment in Celestia, with a post-investment valuation of US$1 billion.

It can be predicted from the previous financing scale that the total amount of Celestia’s airdrop is also valuable. However, in the community, we have not seen any cases of carnival and sudden wealth among "hair-raising" parties. Compared with other previous airdrops, Celestia has taken into account fairness and real contributions when designing airdrop rules. This article PANews will explain Celestia in detail to users. Airdrop methods, economic models, and previews of subsequent airdrop qualifications for other projects.

Celestia airdrop revolutionizes the past and encourages real contributors and active addresses

Celestia allocates 60 million TIA tokens, 20 million to research, public goods, and early modular ecosystem, 20 million to early adopters of Ethereum rollups, and 20 million to stakers and IBC relayers on Cosmos Hub and Osmosis , whose specific allocation criteria are as follows.

Protocol Public Goods and Infrastructure

A total of 4.6 million coins are allocated to contributors to the protocol's public products and infrastructure. There are 3,838 eligible users, and a single person can obtain at least 1,198 coins. Specific qualifications are divided into: contributors to the protocol’s public products and infrastructure, contributors to Celestia and its dependent projects, and contributors to EIP and BIP.

Eth Research

The idea surrounding LazyLedger first formed in the Ethereum research community, and Celestia airdropped 1.4 million tokens for it, thanking the community for six years of open discussion. The conditions are Eth Research forum users who have created at least 1 topic or 1 post before July 5, 2023. There are 1947 eligible users, and each one can receive at least 719 TIA tokens.

Early modular ecology

Contributors to the early modular ecosystem can receive 8.35 million TIA tokens. 3,371 users are eligible, and a single person can obtain at least 2,477 tokens. The specific allocation groups are: the first Modularity Fellows, organizations attending Modularity Summit 1 (Amsterdam, 2022) and Modularity Summit 2 (Paris, 2023), and the Celestia Ecosystem v3 diagram released in July 2023.

For qualifications of the first modular researcher, please view the official documents: The modular summit and ecological V3 layout are shown below:

GitHub Super Contributor

Celestia distributes additional TIA tokens to Github contributors with at least 4 commits in all eligible repositories above, and more to contributors with a total of at least 23 commits in research and public products and early modular ecosystem standards .

According to official data, users who contributed and submitted Github at least 4 times were allocated 1.65 million TIA tokens. There were 1,604 people who met the conditions, and a single person received at least 1,028 TIA tokens. Contributors who meet the corresponding qualifications and submitted at least 23 times are allocated 4 million coins. There are 1,210 contributors, and a single person has received at least 3,305 coins.

Early adopters of Ethereum rollups

Celestia will allocate 20 million TIA tokens to the top 50% of active users on the chain who rank in the top 10 TVL on L2Beat and have a wallet balance of at least $50. The wallet address snapshot is on January 1, 2023 (Ethereum block 16308181), the TVL ranking snapshot is on April 20, 2023, and the activity standard allocates 23 points based on user behavior on the Ethereum mainnet and other top 10 chains.

On-chain behaviors that affect points distribution include: the number of smart contract interactions on the Ethereum mainnet or Optimism and other chains, the number of transactions, the total value of all transactions, ENS domain names held, account age, active months, Gitcoin donations, ETH chain Gas Cost, last transaction time.

Among them, the top 10% of active addresses received 7.15 million TIA tokens, a total of 78,793 addresses received, and a single address received 90 TIA tokens. The top 20% of active addresses received 4.25 million coins, 60,186 addresses were eligible, and a single address received 70 coins. The top 50% of active addresses will receive 8.6 million coins, more than 170,000 addresses are eligible, and a single address will receive 50 coins.

Celestia’s point allocation refers to the scoring method of Trusta Labs and excludes the witch clusters identified by it. It also excludes the witch addresses and blacklist addresses from previous airdrops of the HOP protocol, the witch addresses from the first airdrop of Optimism, and vulnerabilities on the chain. Known addresses related to other compliance standards.

Stakeholders on Cosmos Hub and Osmosis

Celestia distributes 18.5 million TIA tokens to stakers and delegators who stake at least $75 on the Cosmos Hub and Osmosis networks, snapshot time is January 1, 2023 (Cosmos Hub block 13482205; Osmosis block 7592794) . Like Ethereum’s early adopter incentive distribution of rollups, in order to allocate more TIA tokens to more active addresses, the air staking price is divided into three levels of staking and on-chain activity.

The address activity score refers to Trusta Labs' media scoring framework, specifically: last transaction time, number of IBC transactions, total value of all transactions, account age, number of transactions, and gas fees spent.

Among them, the top 10% of active addresses received 3.25 million TIA tokens, a total of 29,630 addresses received, and a single address received 109 TIA tokens. The top 20% of active addresses received 9.25 million coins, more than 110,000 addresses were eligible, and a single address received 79 coins. The top 50% of active addresses will receive 6 million coins, more than 110,000 addresses are eligible, and a single address will receive 50 coins.

IBC Repeater

Celestia considers IBC relays to be the unsung heroes of Interchain, helping to enable modular chain interoperability. Therefore, 1.5 million TIA tokens were allocated to addresses that conducted MsgRecvPacket transactions before the snapshot date. A total of 540 addresses received them, and a single address received 2,777 TIA tokens.

It should be noted that TIA tokens are not currently listed on any decentralized or centralized exchanges. Users should be aware of the risks of phishing links and counterfeit currency transactions.

Economic models and market value estimates

The total issuance of TIA tokens is 1 billion, and the inflation rate starts at 8% per year and decreases by 10% per year until it reaches a long-term inflation rate of 1.5%. TIA tokens can be used for the following four consumption points:

1. Payment: To use Celestia for data availability, rollup developers need to submit a TIA-denominated PayForBlobs transaction to pay network fees.

2. Gas fee

3. POS: Celestia is a proof-of-stake blockchain based on CometBFT and Cosmos SDK, which supports in-protocol delegation and will start with an initial set of 100 validators. As a verifier or delegator, staking TIA can obtain staking rewards from the network. The verifier charges a certain fee to the delegator, thereby obtaining a certain proportion of the staking rewards.

4. Decentralized governance: voting on governance proposals and managing the community pool, which receives 2% of the block reward.

All TIA tokens are allocated to community airdrops, investors, and teams, specifically:

Allocate 20% to the public community, 7.4% to Genesis Drop and incentivized testnet, and 12.6% to future plans. All will be released when this part goes online.

26.8% is allocated to R&D and ecology, specifically tokens used by the Celestia Foundation and core developers for research, development and ecosystem initiatives, including protocol maintenance and development and initiatives for rollup developers, infrastructure and node operators. 25% will be unlocked when this part goes online, and the remaining 75% will be unlocked continuously from the 1st to the 4th year.

19.7% is allocated to early backers of Series A and B, 33% of this part is unlocked and released in the first year, and the remaining 67% is continuously unlocked from the 1st to the 2nd year.

15.9% is allocated to the backers of the seed round, 33% of this part is unlocked and released in the first year, and the remaining 67% is continuously unlocked from the 1st to the 2nd year.

17.6% is allocated to early core contributors, including members of Celestia Labs, the first core contributor of Celestia. 33% of this part is unlocked and released in the first year, and the remaining 67% is continuously unlocked from the first to the third year.

According to the above data, TIA's initial circulation volume was 267 million, and its opening circulation market value reached US$270 million, which is on par with the Flare chain. Its full circulation market value is US$1.1 billion, ranking 100th. The opening circulation market value reached 8.6 billion, which is equal to Cardano. Its full circulation market value is US$11 billion, ranking 7th. The total circulating market value of the Cosmos chain it uses is US$2.5 billion, and the total circulating market value of the Polkadot chain in the same sector is US$5.4 billion.

Comparing the operation status of each chain and the current market sentiment, in the early days of TIA token’s launch on the secondary market, the total market value was relatively reasonable between Cosmos and Polkadot.

The evolution direction of airdrop methods in the future

With the continuous evolution of airdrop methods, project parties and users who win airdrops have changed from the previous mutually beneficial stage to the current rivalry model, entering a zero-sum game stage. Project parties use airdrop expectations and mutual interactions between users to obtain huge fees and other income for themselves, such as zksync, Layerzero or StarkNet and other projects sought after by millions of addresses. Project parties continue to attract users through various "PUA" activities to continue to consume Gas or handling fee.

From the perspective of the project side, users with multiple accounts per person who are PUAd do not have the publicity value required for airdrop operations. All you have to do is wait for the right time to kill the donkey. Therefore, the project side is most likely to prefer to distribute the airdrops as much as possible to real users who have contributed to the update of blockchain technology or concepts through rule formulation, and who have higher active ratings on the chain.

In addition, from the perspective of "conspiracy theory", the project team's own "rat warehouse" must be included in the scope of each airdrop. I would like to ask if other people have already rolled up the data on the chain in order to obtain qualifications and a higher number of airdrops. Should the project team’s rat warehouse address be added to the roll, or should they find another way in the formulation of rules and formulate a simpler and more confusing method? it goes without saying.

Moreover, in previous Optimism airdrops, in addition to the active addresses of this chain, airdrops were also issued to multi-signature, governance voting, and Gitcoin donation addresses. Recently, Sei conducted airdrops for cross-chain active addresses. It is worth mentioning that zksync officials have mentioned that the airdrop standard may consider the activity of the corresponding address on the Ethereum main chain.

The scope of Celestia's airdrop incentives this time is more biased towards real blockchain technology and project developers, as well as addresses with higher activity on the chain, instead of only targeting addresses on this chain as expected by the community. There are constant signs that airdrops are one of the operational activities of project parties. Project parties are gradually bidding farewell to the crude and crude form of distributing coins in the past, and are looking for more real contributors and active users. Because only in this way can the value of airdrops be maximized.

Summarize

Celestia's airdrop method has to a certain extent revolutionized the previous airdrop methods of various projects without thinking, and is aimed at real development contributors and active addresses on the chain that are as real as possible. And in terms of airdrop quantity distribution, Celestia airdrops will start at least 1,000 for each development contributor, while for active addresses, even the top 10% of active users on the entire network will only receive about 100.

It can be seen that the wisdom of Celestia’s airdrop method is to incentivize more tokens to absolutely real and valuable industry contributors on the one hand, and to the addresses with relatively high activity in the entire network. The number of these addresses is large enough, and the owners spread the word of mouth. Let them be used as traffic tools, and the advertising effect is extremely strong.

For users with development capabilities, if they want to capture the corresponding air investment qualifications, in addition to their previous contributions to blockchain technology, they also need to have an in-depth understanding of the development needs of the project side and participate in activities. The vast majority of users who do not have the ability to develop will enter a prisoner's dilemma, constantly enriching and updating the activity of the original addresses, and adding new addresses at the same time. On the premise that they cannot win with quality, they can maximize profits with quantity.