Taiko airdrop storm: a project that claims to be completely decentralized and the founder who claims that the rules are opaque
The airdrop is not over yet,TaikoWill word of mouth reverse?
By flowie, ChainCatcher
Editor: Marco, ChainCatcher
In the early morning of May 23, Taiko announced the airdrop search page and TKO token economy model, but since the airdrop was far lower than expected and the airdrop rules were not transparent, Taiko was questioned by many community users.
Being scolded for airdrop issues is nothing new, but Taiko's co-founder and CEO Daniel Wang (Daniel Wang)'s tough statement completely ignited the anger of community users and put himself on the cusp.
Wang Dongxian wrote on X, “In order to avoid unnecessary controversy, we will not disclose the detailed TKO Genesis airdrop rules. Our goal is fair, but we can't satisfy everyone. Congratulations to those who received TKO and apologies to those who didn't.”
Soon after, as there were more and more questioning and even abusive voices on the X platform, Wang Dong also seemed to be irritated and spoke again on Discord:
There is zero tolerance for any related abuse;
Taiko is a partner of Galaxy. It is not a part-time job. It is not used as a reference in Galaxy rankings, and participation in Taiko related activities on Galaxy does not account for much weight;
If you don't get an airdrop, it's because someone else has more points;
The rules are not transparent because they are transparent and cannot resolve differences, and the definition of “fair” is highly subjective.
As soon as this remark came out, Taiko completely fell into a vortex of public opinion. Some users complained that “this is the worst PR response I've ever seen,” while others called on major exchanges to resolutely boycott this opaque crypto project.
Taiko: Born with a Golden KeyEthereumlayer 2
Taiko has been in the spotlight since its inception in early 2022, as its core team is almost the original team of Loopring, a well-known Ethereum Layer 2 zk-rollup protocol.
Taiko's three co-creators Wang Dong, Brecht Devos, and Matthew Finestone are all fromLoopringteam.
Taiko co-founder and CEO Wang Dong (English name Daniel Wang), speaking to the community this time, is also the founder of Loopring.
Loopring is the first zk-rollup deployed on Ethereum, and Loopring was launched in 2020CoinbaseIt became the first Chinese project to be listed on Coinbase, and was launched laterBinance、OKXWaiting for the exchange, the scenery was perfect for an hour.
Before joining Web3, Wang Dong was also the technical director of Zhong'an Insurance and JD, technical director and senior software engineer at Google, and participated in the establishment of Yunrang Technology, Coinport, etc.
With a complex background such as a traditional Web2 giant, serial entrepreneur, Web2+Web3, etc., and has already founded a good Web3 project, Wang Dong can be said to be the most popular type of founder among investors.
Soon after its establishment, Taiko attracted investment from a number of well-known investment institutions.
According to RootData data, in about 2 years since its establishment, Taiko has received a total of 37 million US dollars in financing. Investors include traditional investment institutions such as Sequoia China, Yunqi Capital, BAI Capital, and GGV Capital, as well as well-known exchanges or market makers such as OKX Ventures, GSR, and Wintermute, andHash Global、IOSG Ventures、Generative VenturesWait for the participation of cryptographic native capital.
Taiko, on the other hand, is a Type-1 type of ZK-EVM (see article: “Vitalik: The Future of Different Types of ZK-EVM”), that is, a fully decentralized, Ethereum-equivalent zk-rollup.
The zkEVM that Taiko wanted to build was originally part of Loopring's work, but during the development phase, Wang Dong and his team believed that Loopring was an application-specific extension, and Taiko wanted to build a generic extension, which would cause great confusion, so Taiko developed independently from Loopring.
Why did the Taiko airdrop cause discontent?
On December 27, 2022, Taiko released the first public testnet Alpha-1 testnet. In January of this year, Taiko announced the launch of its sixth and final testnet, Katla.
Over the course of a year and a half, Taiko released a total of 6 testnet issues, and many more Galaxy missions during this period.
Although the time cycle is long and there are quite a few tasks to participate in, Taiko, the founder of Star Capital, has always been a key project of the “Jerk Up Party”, and community users have high expectations for it.
According to official data disclosed by Taiko in February, after the release of the sixth test network, Taiko had more than 1.1 million independent wallets, more than 30,000 decentralized proponents, and more than 14,000 decentralized validators. It can be seen that users are enthusiastic about participating.
Currently, according to Taiko's official information, the total supply of TKO is 1 billion, with Genesis Airdrop accounting for 5%, mainly airdropped to Taiko users and the Loopring community.
However, after the announcement of this testnet phase airdrop, some users discovered that although they participated in multiple testnet and Galaxy missions, in the end, they completely accompanied them, and the account airdrop was 0. Although some users also received some airdrops, the numbers also seem to be far below expectations.
But for community users, what's more dissatisfying than spending a lot of time interacting with zero gain is that they don't know where “death” is at all? The opacity of Taiko's airdrop rules has raised questions from the community.
Mission points on the Galxe Galaxy platform record user interaction behavior and have always been regarded as rough estimated evidence for airdrops.
However, some community users claim that the airdrop results for different accounts with the same Galaxy score are very different. In addition to the fact that the project party did not publish the detailed conditions of the witch and snapshots, there is reason to question that it is the project's mouse cage.
Wang Dong emphasized this on discord. Taiko is a partner of Galaxy. It is not a part-time job. Galaxy rankings are not used as a reference, and participation in Taiko related activities on Galaxy does not account for much weight.
For participating users, since Galaxy missions don't have much weight, why does Taiko continue to publish a large number of Galaxy missions to guide users to participate.
After releasing the token airdrop, Taiko is still posting new missions in the Galaxy. Will users still participate in these missions?
The airdrop is still not over, will Taiko's word of mouth reverse?
Naturally, every time the project side airdrops, there are people who are happy and others are worried. Scolding the project side because the airdrop fell short of expectations is nothing new.
Although many users have zero airdrops this time, there are also quite a few users who have received good returns.
Taiko has also released airdrop related data, which indicates that 300,000 addresses have claimed more than 50 million tokens. Some of these users received TKO tokens ranging from 3,000 to 9,000. According to the current AEVO premarket OTC price of $5, they received a value of about 15,000 to 45,000 US dollars.
Testnet airdrops are generally just a starter, and Taiko said that 10% of the tokens will be used for subsequent airdrops.
In March, Taiko stated that the main network will be launched within three months after the Cancun upgrade. The main network is imminent. After experiencing the first airdrop, will Taiko's subsequent airdrops learn lessons and win a reversal of word of mouth?
