As a previous user has said. A pre-launch airdrop will attract many users and boost the user count by 3x to 5x. However, this came with some side effects. Discussions were not towards the development of the protocol, but towards the airdrop itself. And for a few weeks after the announcement of the airdrop it is what the discord was talking about. I was part of the airdrop, and I can tell you, it was hectic. Every channel was spammed with people asking for airdrops. Is that the kind of engagement we want? Soon after, the levels of activity tapered and have now returned back to normal.
Now, I would suggest that instead of just airdropping tokens to those early discord members, we incentivize the usage of the protocol itself. How? Let me explain
Members of the protocol are airdropped a token, let’s call it “Blue”. The airdrop budget is 840,000. With a community of 2.3k, this would mean 365 per member (I would suggest allocating part of the budget towards other communities as well). However, this token is not Indigo. So how are they supposed to convert it to Indigo?
The answer is by using the protocol itself. By providing liquidity to the protocol and staking “blue”, you would incentivize people providing liquidity to the protocol. As you can see, this is similar to the MIN/MINt model that minswap has. And I would say that this option would appease the majority of users.
For those who would like to sell early, they get to sell it at a discounted price
For those who would like to see massive TVL in the protocol, this would further incentivize users locking their tokens in stability pools (other than the incentive already in place).
For those who missed the drop, they get to buy it at discounted price for a higher incentive (where they can buy it off DEXes and lock the tokens)
This solution is two-fold.
reward early community members
Incentivize protocol usage.
However, it comes with a drawback
Development time (you would have to spend more time on writing code for this)
It would be easy to drop it to early members, however, it comes with no strings attached. By dropping a different token with the ability to convert to Indigo through protocol usage, you incentivize both early members and also protocol usage.
You will ALWAYS have these people who will sell early regardless. So why creating more work and take developers away from the protocol. That is my opinion but I am all ears
I was part of the Aairdrop too. Things have calmed down and it’s heartwarming to see the amount of engagement from people asking about providing liquidity on Sundaeswap vs Liqwid when they launch.
If you look at the TVL in Sundaeswap it’s increasing.
However we shouldn’t deal with anecdotes but should make decisions based on facts.
What do the Liqwid team feel about the drop? It would be great if they published feedback on the whole process.
You have a great take on how to better the protocol.
I expect Indigo will kickstart liquidity on SundaeSwap (just a thought). It is a DEX that is designed for people to provide liquidity. When you LP, you are doing this in pairs. In this case, $ADA/$INDY in a 1:1 ratio. If there is no $INDY in circulation, no one can provide liquidity. Second, creating a market for $BLUE will, in my opinion, slow down the implementation of governance.
Also, a critical difference between Indigo and MinSwap is that MinSwap held a FISO. Everyone who participated has claimed or can claim their rewards in both $MINt and $MIN (vested). I think Indigo did not choose to go this route.
I propose the Liqwid way for this airdrop. I think the team will capture mostly $INDY holders who want to better the protocol.
The development time to create a secondary token would indeed eat up bandwidth that ought to be used developing the actual protocol. But I agree with the intent of the proposal.
Since airdrops are essentially rewards, I think it is well within the discretion of the project heads to decide what (or how) the application and distribution of these rewards ought to be. They’re free, and only self-entitled people would have the gall to rant and complain about anything.
The two-fold solution hits it right on the button: early community members are rewarded for their engagement, and it serves its supposed purpose of driving protocol usage at the same time.
We do however need to think about how we can compensate for the need to develop a secondary token and the time it would cost the developers. I understand Indy did not conduct a FISO like Minswap did, but perhaps volunteer community managers can assist in any manual work that needs to be done?
Perhaps indigo should set the cutoff date for pre-sale/airdrop at whenever the 2000th person of the server joined or whatever to prevent people just joining to look for freebies last minute. Different ways to do this.
An idea that is quite similar to yours could be, drop 0.75% first to early supporters to get the ball rolling and creating a bit of noise leading to initial buy/sell as a form of marketing. The remaining 0.75% should then be locked into the protocol where early supporters will have to contribute to the protocol to receive the remainder of the airdrop like a vesting period.
The more INDY you kept in the beginning = the more INDY you would be adding to the protocol which will speed up your vesting. The less INDY you hold, the slower your vesting will be(like the more you contribute, the more INDY you get for like say per epoch from your locked airdrop rewards). Then the final 0.5% to be distributed publicly through whatever method suits everyone like DripDropz or like FCFS google forms.
This gives early supporters the freedom of liquidity while also giving them control on how fast or slow they would like their airdrops to be released.
This all fits the purpose of liquidity, freedom of choice, contributing to the protocol, and marketing, and for supporters to get the most out of their vested airdrops they would encourage people to use the protocol and create engagement.
But, maybe someone else would be able to tailor this better somehow, just a suggestion.
You never know in what situation people are. Liqwid changed so many lives. Maybe for someone that airdrop will be life-changing. DC saved so many lives.
LQ certainly gave a good deal of people amazing opportunities with the airdrop they did. The changing lives part is now up to the recipients how they can further leverage the asset and really change their circumstances for the better and for the long term. I certainly learned that from the discussions in their Discord and still remember a comment: “Key is deployment”
I hold that input to heart as Indigo is providing the same opportunity. Key will be how we deploy the opportunity they’re providing. I think at the core of it is how we maximize our participation in the protocol both to 1) boost Indigo’s success (holding and providing liquidity, engage to encourage info dissemination, participate in healthy discourse) as well as 2) increase our chances of earning more value out of it long term.
I just think the airdrop was a bit too far away from launch. Needs to be when launch is in site imo - unless there is governance reasons why it should be earllier
It is a good model what Minswap has created, but you must understand that Indigo is not a dex to create such sort of an asset pair to gain TVL… Someone has to create a synthetic asset first and then there must be many for the sake of choice, you cant create one thing and say people to choose that… And also the complexities of creating two tokens which you pointed out in your post as well…
Also for how long will the non value assets be valid? Lets say I got the so called Blue tokens, we should also enforce some time limits like within 45 days or anything else for people to convert their tokens which means we are basically forcing people to go find liquidity within that time and bring it to the protocol. On the other hand if it is deemed to be any time, then some tokens might be lost or some will never change it lets say. Then their respective share of the INDY tokens are also kept off locked without coming into circulation. This could either be a good thing or bad thing in the long run.
Bottom line is, no method is perfect! We need find a safe middle somewhere and proceed with it.!
Not that I’m an expert or anything but it seems irrelevant when the token is released. I think it’s more about what the token is used for. Governance etc.
As long as qualification for the pre-drop isn’t tied to benign metrics like “minimum of 10 posts in the forum”, I think however it works out will be fine. People like free stuff, and the only thing to consider is what is the over arching goal… to grow the community? To reduce volatility? To promote usage? Once this is clear, and only then, can we consider what the best format will be.
I do somewhat agree, not sure of the exact approach and would like to see the community incentivised to be active and play valuable roles. Simply dropping tokens in a first come first serve manner could be detrimental. People will be looking out for pre launch air drops especially after the incredible Liqwid & Aneta drops, I fear they will grab and run causing genuine community members to loose out despite their loyalty and contributions. We need a strong core to be competitive, there are some incredible options entering the market.
