Original author: stan (Initia CEO)
Original title: Initias Path to Long-Term Success: Allocating the Airdrop to Loyal Users
Compiled by: Asher ( @Asher_0210 )
Why an airdrop?
The core goal of airdrops is to maximize the conversion rate of ecosystem participants from test users to mainnet application users. This article will explore how to find a reasonable airdrop allocation plan for active Initia community participants based on real data and objective probability distribution ( for background information on Initia airdrops, please click here to jump to the official announcement content ).
Active users of The Initiation: Part One and The Initiation: Part Two acted as early adopters of Multichain Garden of Eden, testing the limits of the infrastructure, pointing out difficult-to-use interfaces, and continuously providing suggestions for improvements. In addition, this category of users accounted for the majority of unique accounts, so about 90% of the total airdrop was allocated to this group.
Testnet participants (89.46%)
Data analysis
Many users wanted XP to be the primary criterion for determining airdrop allocations. However, as emphasized in the initial testnet plan, increasing Jennie levels is the most important task. In order to find the best balance, Jennie levels are only used to determine the base allocation, and are adjusted significantly based on the number of tasks completed in the second phase of the testnet. Jennie levels are highly correlated with XP ranges and help reward users who are rigorous in their approach and make careful decisions (for example, instead of feeding the cheapest food on the first day, but making decisions at the end of the week).
The team is data-driven when making decisions. When designing the airdrop distribution plan, the team calculated the probability of reaching each level after obtaining a certain percentage of total XP. These probability calculations are based on the following assumptions:
Users will consume all XP at the end of each week;
Whenever steak appears, it is fed to Jennie first;
If the steak is not obtained, the user will try to synthesize it;
If you cant craft it, feed Jennie the highest quality food available.
The first and second tables show the probability of reaching each level in the most expensive and cheapest cases, and the green area indicates the user who is 100% guaranteed to reach or exceed the corresponding level. Assuming moderate XP growth, the median level (also the mode of the real sample data) is about 6, which will be used in subsequent calculations. In addition, it should be noted that total XP gained does not include additional bonus XP (such as XP given by events) and XP from steak airdrops and sales, so the actual probability of reaching each level is underestimated.
Based on these probability distributions, a positive correlation function can be established to map Jennies level to the underlying score. This function has the following properties:
The gradient is relatively slow in the early stage (lower levels grow more slowly);
It increases significantly around level 5-6 (rewarding more active users);
Levels off at levels 7-9 (to avoid over-rewarding extreme data points).
In this way, the airdrop distribution can be concentrated on the upper quartile of active users while avoiding excessive skewness at both ends of the distribution. In addition to the Jennie level, five fixed tasks are set (such as collecting stickers and freezing Jennie). As mentioned earlier, the goal of the airdrop is to incentivize long-term, stable and dedicated users. These tasks are not random (all requirements are clearly listed on the Initia XP interface), so users who complete more tasks can get increasing weighting coefficients. That is:
The gain of a user who completes 3 tasks is greater than that of a user who completes 2 tasks;
The increase from 2 tasks to 3 tasks is greater than the increase from 1 task to 2 tasks.
The purpose of this is to compensate users who may have been affected by bad luck during Jennies upgrade process.
Calculate the best allocation algorithm
The table above summarizes the number of eligible users by level and task completion. To qualify for airdrops, users must:
Jennie level ≥ 3;
Complete at least 2 fixed tasks.
Several key features of the dataset:
The level is positively correlated with the number of completed tasks;
For a particular Jennie level, the proportion of users who completed 5 tasks increased as the level increased, indicating that high-level users are more focused overall;
The distribution is right-skewed (more users with high task completion), indicating that users participating in the testnet are generally more serious;
All level 9 users completed all 5 tasks.
Based on these characteristics, the final allocation algorithm can be formulated:
The users base score is determined by Jennies level;
The number of completed tasks serves as an additional multiplier coefficient, increasing nonlinearly;
Final airdrop allocation: Calculate the final score of each user (basic score × task weighting coefficient), and distribute 89.4626% of the total 50,000,000 INIT airdrops according to the users score/the total score of all qualified users .
The final distribution exhibits a nice property:
The allocation function increases monotonically with level and task completion;
The increase in the weight of task completion is gradually increasing;
Beyond a certain “effort threshold” (i.e. median level 6), users with high completion rates will receive higher rewards.
For example: a (6, 5) user (level 6, 5 stickers) gets more rewards than a (7, 4) user ( level 7, 4 stickers ), which ensures that above a certain threshold of effort, long-term consistent participation is more important than just a high level.
In short, at the low level stage, the level itself has a greater impact; at the high level stage, the impact of task completion is greater. The final result is that the airdrop is more targeted to motivate stable, serious and active long-term users.
Interwoven Stack Partners (4.50%)
This part of the token distribution is relatively simple, with the goal of attracting deep users of Interwoven Stack core technology to join the ecosystem. LayerZero and IBC advanced users are potential community members who can provide insights for building a truly seamless multi-chain experience. In addition, advanced users who hold milkTIA and deposit it in DeFi protocols are also eligible for airdrops.
Initia’s Interwoven Stack not only integrates Celestia’s data availability, but its L1 Enshrined Liquidity mechanism also encourages increased liquidity for common assets and various types of liquid staking tokens, which will be launched on the mainnet. Advanced users who are familiar with LST and the DeFi economy are the key force driving the growth of the L1 governance layer and the application economy.
Social Contributors (6.04%)
This part is mainly composed of Discord, Telegram and X. From the distribution ratio, X seems to account for a higher proportion, but in fact, the average INIT tokens obtained by each user are as follows:
Discord: 1,199 INITs (417 unique users, 769 roles assigned);
Telegram: 50 INIT;
X: 625 INIT.
Since the main community discussions of Initia take place on Discord and X, we focus on analyzing the data distribution of these two channels:
X’s total allocation is 5 times that of Discord, but X’s number of benefiting users is 9 times that of Discord ( 4,000 vs 417);
The average allocation for the top 5% of Discord users is 5,246 INITs (minimum 2,904, maximum 7,648, excluding Discord moderators), while the average allocation for the top 5% of X users is only 2,044 INITs (minimum 1,812, maximum 2,276 ). This difference reflects the higher threshold for contributions on Discord and the stricter quality requirements;
The top Discord characters allocation is close to that of the high-level Jennie character (about 2,000 INIT);
Discord users can get assigned through multiple roles, and X users can increase their ranking through multiple high-quality tweets;
X interaction data is based on Kaitos Initia leaderboard and is time-weighted (2024-2025) to ensure that long-term participants get more rewards and prevent big Vs from getting too high a ranking with only 1 to 2 high-interaction tweets.
The Social Contributor Program is designed to encourage active community participation and in-depth exchanges around the AppChain ecosystem and its innovative mechanisms. Regardless of whether users choose Discord or X as the main discussion platform, core members who contribute high-quality content and promote community development over the long term will receive airdrop rewards through multiple channels.
Anti-Witch Mechanism
During the testnet, the team took a series of measures to minimize Sybil attacks to ensure that real community members of the Initia ecosystem have fair access to resources. Although this move is controversial, Gitcoin Passport was introduced in the testnet faucet to reduce spam transactions and allow verified users to receive testnet tokens more smoothly. This strategy has achieved significant results, and a large number of (1, 0) level Jennies (most likely robots) have become inactive.
In addition, the team has designed a unique method to determine whether the user submits a transaction through the Initia official front-end or interacts directly with the contract. During the XP scoring process, Initias back-end submits a Merkle root of the users score to the XP contract every week. When the user claims XP, he needs to submit the Merkle proof obtained from the back-end. A clever mechanism is added to this process: while the back-end provides the real proof, it also generates an additional forged Merkle proof, which is composed of the real proof. On the official front-end, the team will make slight modifications to this forged proof and verify whether this modification has occurred on the contract side. If the user claims XP through the official front-end, the system will correctly identify that they used the front-end; but if the user directly calls the contract to claim XP, the system will mark them as users who bypass the UI and directly execute the script.
Although this mechanism is not used directly to remove users, it is very useful in identifying potential Sybil groups. As far as the team knows, this is the first time that a similar method has been used in the industry for screening. However, since this strategy is difficult to reuse once it is widely known, its long-term effectiveness may be affected. In collaboration with Allium , we analyzed the possible Sybil accounts in various groups and adopted a series of screening methods, including:
Number of transactions: Define a small data window of about n days and count the number of transactions sent by the user. This will filter out simple bots that make the same number of transactions across multiple accounts in a given time period;
Function call sequence: Some robot groups will execute transactions in exactly the same function call sequence, forming a recognizable behavior pattern;
Trading cycles: Analyze the intervals between a series of trades. Automated operations often keep very short intervals between multiple trades. In addition, if there are repeated batches or patterns of transactions over a longer time frame (hours or days), it may also indicate that the account belongs to an automated operation or script batch account.
It should be noted that the above method is only part of the screening process, and the filtering algorithm ultimately adopted by the team is more complex. At the same time, accounts that only meet a single screening criterion will not be directly excluded, but will be comprehensively judged based on multiple factors to minimize the possibility of false positives.
summary
This airdrop is just the first step in distributing initial ownership and liquidity to the Interwoven ecosystem. Through Initias core mechanisms, Enshrined Liquidity and Vested Interest Program (VIP) , a total of 50% of the token supply will be used for long-term application ecosystem incentives. The team looks forward to the moment when L1 governance drives capital and liquidity allocation, and L2 applications achieve sustainable growth under quantifiable KPI indicators.
See you on the main website.
