Airdrop Sparks Controversy: A Review of Historical Airdrop Events that Caused Public Outcry Starting from Starknet

Author: Web3 Insights

Recently, besides the hotly discussed inscriptions and DePIN, the most anticipated project is the Starknet airdrop.

On December 1, after the Starknet official announced the airdrop plan, they immediately released the airdrop rules: a "provisions committee" was set up to allocate 900 million STRK tokens. The official stated that the purpose of this organization is to ensure fair, decentralized, and transparent distribution of tokens across multiple projects and phases. They also mentioned a plan to execute and deploy the "devonomics" plan in the first quarter of 2024, taking 10% from the previously accumulated 1600 ETH as rewards for transaction operators. Of this, 8% is allocated to DApp developers and 2% to core developers.

Since then, discussions about the Starknet airdrop have not ceased throughout December.

Many ordinary users questioned that Starknet's airdrop rules clearly favor developers, thereby neglecting the interests of regular users, and believe this reflects Starknet's lack of confidence in its ecosystem, fearing that users would take the airdrop and run. Moreover, Starknet's official silence has led to chaos within the community.

In fact, besides Starknet, many projects have sparked widespread discussions during their airdrop periods:

Arbitrum: No matter if it's a white cat or a black cat, as long as it contributes data, it's a good cat

In March 2023, Arbitrum launched its airdrop, with an initial total supply of 10 billion ARB tokens, with a maximum annual inflation of 2%. In terms of token airdrop, 11.62% of the initial total supply will be airdropped to Arbitrum users, and 1.13% will be airdropped to the DAO treasury of applications built on Arbitrum.

|------------------------------|------------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Percentage of Initial Supply | Number of Tokens | Allocated to | | 42.78% | 4.278 Billion | Arbitrum DAO treasury | | 26.94% | 2.694 Billion | Offchain Labs Team and Future Team + Advisors | | 17.53% | 1.753 Billion | Offchain Labs Investors | | 11.62% | 1.162 Billion | Users of the Arbitrum Platform (via airdrop to user wallet addresses) | | 1.13% | 113 Million | DAOs building apps on Arbitrum (via airdrop to DAO treasury addresses) |

According to public data, there are a total of 2.66 million on-chain addresses, with 625,143 addresses qualifying for the airdrop, accounting for 23.5%.

After the ARB airdrop, many people reported receiving rewards at multiple addresses. It is evident that Arbitrum did not completely exclude bots from the airdrop eligibility list; they believe that as long as the address is active and has contributed sufficient trading volume, it qualifies for the airdrop.

SEI Airdrop Controversy

When it comes to airdrop controversies in 2023, SEI is certainly on the list.

Since SEI announced its airdrop plan in August 2023, a series of drama events surrounding the airdrop rules have ensued:

The Discord real-name verification, which was launched prematurely, faced strong opposition from the community, leading the official team to deny the Discord real-name verification rule.

The airdrop rules divided users into two main groups: incentivized testnet participants and active users from six major public chains.

First, for testnet participants, data shows that 7 million addresses participated in the testnet, including a large number of bot addresses. After users confirmed their token airdrop amounts, many felt mocked: the value of the tokens received barely covered the Gas Fees incurred during the testnet interaction tasks. Although users could earn around 400 additional SEI tokens by completing Twitter tasks and cross-chain tasks, many remained dissatisfied.

As SEI faced worsening public opinion due to the testnet airdrop rules, the airdrop rules targeting active addresses on public chains quickly turned the negative sentiment around.

The SEI Foundation tweeted: The number of eligible wallets for the cross-chain airdrop has been increased from 500,000 to 1.5 million, including users from Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Solana, Optimism, and Osmosis chains. The airdrop target was directly doubled, covering active users from mainstream blockchains in 2023. The claiming rule is for cross-chain assets to the SEI network.

The number of airdrop tokens an address can receive is roughly linked to two aspects: 1. Determination of active addresses: addresses that have frequently performed cross-chain operations in the past year. 2. The value of assets crossed to the SEI network.

According to user feedback, this portion of rewards is quite substantial, and due to the increase in the number of airdrop addresses, it received positive reviews from a broader audience.

Airdrops are directly tied to interests, and users pay high attention to them. In places where countless eyes gather, there will naturally be many controversies. From Arbitrum to SEI, every airdrop has been accompanied by significant public opinion waves, and Starknet cannot avoid this either.