Original |
Author | Xiao Fei
Despite being in a fiercely competitive environment with numerous old L1s, new L1s emerging, multiple L2 horse races, and bear market stock games, Sei Network has never been short of traffic.
To be honest, when it comes to technological innovation, ecological projects, on-chain data, and financing scale, Sei may not be considered a leader at the moment. But in terms of marketing its own popularity and managing airdrop expectations, Sei can be said to be remarkable. A series of combination punches that the community loves and hates.
In the past year, how Sei often made headlines with news, and how it once again came to the forefront with a belated sun-shining airdrop when it was listed on Binance Launchpool, sweeping the crypto community. What about?
Full of controversy and heat before it goes online
Sei launched an incentivized testnet in August 2022 and announced that 1% of the total supply of SEI will be used to reward testnet participants. At that time, Seis interactive tutorial on hair-raising was already spread throughout the community. Everyone lamented that the interactive steps of this test network were really cumbersome. Not only did it require multiple interactions to complete five major tasks, but also required multiple forms to be filled in, and KYC was required to receive it. However, Lumao Studio adheres to the principle of the more troublesome it is, the more it should be done, and still continues to participate in the interaction.
On May 27, 2023, Sei officially tweeted that the Discord upgrade of the project has been completed, and users can now obtain the Verified Seilor role through Humanode facial recognition verification. It is reported that Verified Seilor is a users authenticity badge, proving that they are a real person on the Internet.
As soon as the news came out, the community was in a frenzy, accusing it of violating the spirit of Web3 and requiring face recognition to receive airdrops?
However, on June 15th, the Sei Foundation tweeted to clarify that the so-called Sei testnet incentives or airdrops require face recognition was a misunderstanding. Participating in Seis testnet incentives or airdrops does not require face recognition or face recognition. KYC. Previously, after receiving feedback about a large number of bot attacks in Seis Discord, we added a third-party face recognition tool to DIscord. Sei will not use any form of face recognition and KYC. Sei is an open source, permission-free Layer 1 .
Although there has been no actual change over time, Sei has gained enough attention and popularity in the media and social media discussions.
Schrödingers Airdrop and Anxious Community
Since then, rumors have been circulating in the community that Sei will be listed on Binance. Until August 1, Binance issued an announcement that Sei will be listed on Binance Launchpool, and trading will begin on August 15. The token details are as follows: Total number of tokens: 10, 000, 000, 000 SEI; initial circulation: 1, 800, 000, 000 SEI (18% of the total token supply); total mining volume: 300, 000, 000 SEI (3% of the total token supply).
What makes the community dissatisfied is that even after it was clear that Launchpool was online, Sei has not announced the airdrop details and quantity, and only announced a simple economic model. When community members asked questions, Mod only replied: There is an airdrop plan, and everything will be based on Official news shall prevail.
On August 11, the Sei Foundation stated: The mission of the Sei Foundation is to support the decentralization of the Sei blockchain from the beginning. The mainnet includes Sei airdrops and incentivized testnet rewards. First major token distribution aims to recognize loyalty and strengthen Sei Blockchain’s global reach as the best place to build Web3 applications。
At this time, many people in the community noticed that in Seis official statement, the two words airdrop and testnet incentives have always been separate and do not seem to be equivalent.
On the eve of its launch, Sei finally announced detailed token economics: 48% of tokens are allocated to the ecosystem; 20% of tokens are allocated to the team; 20% of tokens are allocated to investors; 9% of tokens are allocated to the foundation; 3% of the tokens are allocated to Launchpool; 48% of the tokens are allocated to the ecological tokens for staking rewards, ecological initiatives and Sei airdrops and incentives. The Season 1 airdrop will allocate 3% of the SEI token supply to reward community users.
However, the specific rules of the airdrop have not yet been announced.
Cross-chain blind box airdrop ignites the community again
However, on the day SEI was listed on Binance and started trading, the airdrop rules came belatedly, but to everyones surprise, it once again ignited community discussions and became a topic of discussion.
Sei Announcement, will conduct a cross-chain airdrop to active users of the six major ecosystems when the Pacific-1 mainnet is launched. The specific rules are as follows: Users active on Solana, Ethereum, Arbitrum, Polygon, BNB Chain, Osmosis and other chains have the opportunity to be selected into the whitelist to participate in the airdrop. To receive it, you need to create a Sei wallet after the mainnet is launched and bridge the designated assets to Sei network.
Those who participate in Seis Atlantic 2 testnet and/or ambassador program have separate reward rules and are not called airdrops.
This seemingly sunshine airdrop rule made the community boil, but some users said that this set of rules is exactly the same as the cross-chain operation of Cosmos, similar to the evmos airdrop back then, but it is not common in public chain airdrop rules, but the Sei team itself It is not surprising that it comes from Cosmos.
Actual testing by the community found that when receiving the SEI airdrop, you can choose between airdrop treasure box and cross-chain treasure box. Users who choose Cross-chain Treasure Box will have at least $500 worth of encrypted assets such as ETH or USDC, and bridged to Sei will get a certain amount of SEI, and the number of airdrops obtained depends on the value of the bridged assets.
This opens a whitelist for active addresses on multiple chains and uses a random number of airdrops, causing the community to frantically discuss how to obtain more airdrops. Finally came to the conclusion:Basically, the more the whitelist address participates in the cross-chain, the greater the number of airdrops. Someone received a screenshot of the airdrop of more than 10,000 SEI, which made more people rush in, and many people borrowed cross-chain loans.
Afterwards, Sei immediately announced that due to strong demand, the Sei Foundation increased the number of eligible wallets for cross-chain airdrops from 500,000 to 1.5 million, allowing more people to roll up. Because many people chose Osmosis, a relatively unpopular cross-chain, and must exceed 500 U to receive an airdrop, the price of OSMO was briefly raised.
Of course, except for a very small number of giant whales, most people just accompany them and receive a pigs trotter meal, but Seis cross-chain data has soared.
Such rules have caused many people to praise Sei for its carefulness and innovative mechanisms, but it has also caused dissatisfaction among others. First, users who have previously done complex incentive tasks on the test network believe that their efforts are not as valuable as those of large players who easily cross-chain. , the project team does not pay attention to the community; secondly, some users reported that their cross-chain amounts were not small, but they received few rewards, and the blind box was unreliable, and they complained in Discord.
Last night, perhaps because the airdrop was in full swing and the network was congested, many community users reported that they got stuck when receiving the cross-chain airdrop on the Pacific-1 webpage, and the page stayed at the third step for a long time, unable to complete the Claim smoothly.
Whats even worse is that in the early hours of this morning, Bitcoin, which had been trading sideways for a long time, plummeted, falling by nearly 4,000 US dollars in a short period of time, and other tokens naturally fell in response. Some users said on social media that they borrowed money to cross-chain and wanted to get Sei’s airdrop, but they were still stuck on one side and liquidated on the other side. Even if they were not liquidated, the airdrop they received might not be able to cover the price drop...
write at the end
In any case, Seis case seems to be successful in one dimension, with innovative mechanism design and full topicality. But in the long run, it may also be another dimension of consumption and overdraft, which requires follow-up operations to keep up.
Whether project parties should airdrop and how to formulate rules and standards has long been a commonplace topic in the encryption industry.
Originally, the airdrop was aimed at motivating active users and completing a cold start. However, under the encouragement of the myth of creating wealth, countless sluts came to work with dreams in mind. Once their dreams were free, many studios came into being. Unexpectedly, they gradually fell into the dilemma of PUA, tug-of-war, love and killing each other.
However, as the market continues to drop and project parties are tightening their belts, airdropping to make money is becoming more and more difficult, and it has become crazy. Recently, according to media reports, many lumao studios have failed to make ends meet, unable to support and closed down.
Admittedly, this is also the result of industry reshuffle iterations. DeFi OG Mindao onceoutspoken on twitter: Now that the airdrop farmers have gone industrialized, and the airdrop rules are so predictable now that Sybil resistance is simply impossible, IMHO it is better to abandon the airdrop altogether, or allocate more tokens to normal liquidity mining after TGE.
However, so far this discussion has not reached a convincing conclusion. Perhaps we can only hope that when the market improves again and new traffic enters again, the industry will form a healthy ecological cycle.
additional reading
Sei Airdrop Complete Guide: Cross-chain airdrop covering users of six major public chains
