Interpret Celestia’s airdrop method, economic model, and pre-performance of airdrop eligibility for subsequent projects.
Written by: Misty Sea
On the evening of September 26th, modular blockchain Celestia announced an airdrop, distributing a total of 60 million Celestia tokens (TIA), benefiting 7,579 developers and 576,653 on-chain active addresses. Celestia Labs team members and advisors are not eligible to participate in this airdrop distribution. Eligible users must claim their tokens before 20:00 on October 17th, 2023.
Looking back at Celestia’s previous funding announcements, both the amount and institutions involved were at the forefront of the industry. In 2021, Dutch cryptocurrency investment firm Maven 11 Capital included Celestia in its $40 million closed-end fund portfolio. In July 2022, venture capital firm NFX added $62.61 million to its second fund to invest in Celestia and Ramp Network. In October 2022, Bain Capital and Polychain Capital led a $55 million investment in Celestia, resulting in a post-investment valuation of $1 billion.
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From the scale of previous funding, it can be foreseen that the total amount of this Celestia airdrop is also substantial. However, in the community, there haven’t been any cases of “getting rich” or enthusiastic celebrations like previous airdrops. Compared to previous airdrops, Celestia took into account fairness and genuine contributions when designing the airdrop rules. This article from LianGuaiNews will provide a detailed interpretation of Celestia’s airdrop method, economic model, and a preview of the eligibility for subsequent project airdrops.
Celestia’s airdrop revolutionizes and incentivizes genuine contributors and active addresses
Celestia will distribute 60 million TIA tokens, allocating 20 million to research, public products, and early modular ecosystem, 20 million to early adopters of Ethereum rollups, and 20 million to stakers in Cosmos Hub and Osmosis and relayers in IBC. The specific allocation criteria are as follows.
Protocol Public Products and Infrastructure
A total of 4.6 million tokens will be distributed to contributors of protocol public products and infrastructure, and there are 3,838 eligible users. Each person can receive a minimum of 1,198 tokens. The specific qualifications include contributors to protocol public products and infrastructure, contributors to Celestia and its dependent projects, and contributors to EIP and BIP.
Eth Research
The idea around LazyLedger initially formed in the Ethereum research community, and Celestia will airdrop 1.4 million tokens to thank this community for its open discussions over the past six years. The conditions include being a forum user of Eth Research who has created at least one topic or one post before July 5th, 2023. There are 1,947 eligible users, and each can claim at least 719 TIA tokens.
Early Modular Ecosystem
Contributors to the early modular ecosystem can receive 8.35 million TIA tokens. There are 3,371 eligible users, with each person receiving at least 2,477 tokens. The specific allocation groups include: the first cohort of modular fellows, organizers of Modular Summit 1 (Amsterdam, 2022) and Modular Summit 2 (Paris, 2023), and the Celestia Ecosystem v3 graph released in July 2023.
You can view the qualifications for the first cohort of modular fellows in the official documentation: https://blog.celestia.org/meet-cohort-one-of-modular-fellows/. The Modular Summit and the v3 ecosystem graph are shown in the following images:
GitHub Super Contributors
Celestia will allocate additional TIA tokens to GitHub contributors who have made at least 4 commits to the eligible repositories mentioned above. Contributors who have made a total of at least 23 commits to research, public products, and early modular ecosystem standards will receive even more tokens.
According to official data, 1.65 million tokens will be allocated to users who have made at least 4 GitHub contribution commits. There are 1,604 qualified users, with each person receiving at least 1,028 TIA tokens. Contributors who have made at least 23 commits meeting the corresponding qualifications will receive 4 million tokens. There are 1,210 contributors who meet this criteria, with each person receiving at least 3,305 tokens.
Early Adopters of Ethereum Rollups
Celestia will distribute 20 million TIA tokens to the top 10 ranked TVL on L2Beat, among the top 50% active users with a wallet balance of at least $50. The wallet address snapshot was taken on January 1, 2023 (Ethereum block 16308181), and the TVL ranking snapshot was taken on April 20, 2023. The activity criteria will distribute 23 points based on the user’s behavior on the Ethereum mainnet and other top 10 ranked chains.
The online behaviors that influence the point distribution include: the number of interactions with smart contracts on the Ethereum mainnet or Optimism, the number of transactions, the total value of all transactions, possession of ENS domains, account age, number of active months, Gitcoin donations, ETH chain gas expenses, and the time of the last transaction.
The top 10% of active addresses will receive 7.15 million TIA tokens, with a total of 78,793 addresses receiving tokens and each address receiving 90 tokens. The top 20% of active addresses will receive 4.25 million tokens, with 60,186 qualifying addresses and each address receiving 70 tokens. The top 50% of active addresses will receive 8.6 million tokens, with over 170,000 qualifying addresses and each address receiving 50 tokens.
The distribution of Celestia’s points refers to Trusta Labs’ scoring method, excluding the identified witch clusters, as well as the witch addresses and blacklisted addresses during the previous airdrop of the HOP protocol, the witch addresses during the first airdrop of Optimism, and the known addresses related to on-chain vulnerabilities and other compliance standards.
Validators on Cosmos Hub and Osmosis
Celestia will distribute 18.5 million TIA tokens to validators and delegators who have staked at least $75 on the Cosmos Hub and Osmosis networks, with a snapshot taken on January 1, 2023 (block 13482205 for Cosmos Hub; block 7592794 for Osmosis). Similar to the incentive distribution for early adopters of Ethereum rollups, the airdrop eligibility is divided into three levels based on equity and on-chain activity in order to distribute more TIA tokens to more active addresses.
The address activity score refers to Trusta Labs’ media rating framework, specifically the last transaction time, the number of IBC transactions, the total value of all transactions, account age, transaction count, and gas fees spent.
The top 10% of active addresses will receive 3.25 million TIA tokens, with a total of 29,630 addresses eligible, receiving 109 tokens per address. The top 20% of active addresses will receive 9.25 million tokens, with over 110,000 addresses eligible, receiving 79 tokens per address. The top 50% of active addresses will receive 6 million tokens, with over 110,000 addresses eligible, receiving 50 tokens per address.
IBC Relayers
Celestia considers IBC relayers to be the unsung heroes of Interchain, contributing to the interoperability of modular chains. Therefore, 1.5 million TIA tokens will be allocated to addresses that conducted MsgRecvLianGuaicket transactions prior to the snapshot date, with a total of 540 addresses eligible, receiving 2777 tokens per address.
It should be noted that TIA tokens are currently not listed on any decentralized or centralized exchanges, and users should be aware of the risks of phishing links and counterfeit transactions.
Economic Model and Market Value Estimation
The total supply of TIA tokens is 1 billion, with an initial inflation rate of 8% per year, decreasing by 10% per year until reaching a long-term inflation rate of 1.5%. TIA tokens can be consumed in the following four ways:
1) Payment: To use Celestia for data availability, rollup developers need to submit LianGuaiyForBlobs transactions priced in TIA to pay network fees.
2) Gas fees
3) POS: Celestia is a proof-of-stake blockchain based on CometBFT and Cosmos SDK, which supports delegation within the protocol and starts with a set of 100 initial validators. Staking TIA as a validator or delegator allows participants to earn staking rewards from the network, with validators charging a fee to delegators in order to receive a certain percentage of the staking rewards.
4) Decentralized Governance: Voting on governance proposals and managing the community pool, which receives 2% of the block rewards.
TIA tokens are allocated to the community airdrop, investors, and the team, as follows:
20% allocated to the public community, with 7.4% for Genesis Drop and incentivized testnet, and 12.6% for future plans. This portion will be fully released upon launch.
26.8% allocated to research and ecosystem development, specifically for the Celestia Foundation and core developers for token research, development, and ecosystem planning, including protocol maintenance and development, rollup developer plans, infrastructure, and node operators. 25% of this portion will be unlocked upon launch, with the remaining 75% unlocked continuously from year 1 to year 4.
19.7% allocated to early supporters of rounds A and B, with 33% of this portion unlocked and released in the first year, and the remaining 67% unlocked continuously from year 1 to year 2.
15.9% allocated to seed round supporters, with 33% of this portion unlocked and released in the first year, and the remaining 67% unlocked continuously from year 1 to year 2.
17.6% allocated to early core contributors, including Celestia Labs members and the first core contributors of Celestia. 33% of this portion will be unlocked and released in the first year, with the remaining 67% unlocked continuously from year 1 to year 3.
Based on the above data, TIA’s initial circulating supply is 267 million tokens, with an opening circulating market value of $270 million, comparable to Flare Chain. Its total circulating market value is $1.1 billion, ranking 100th. The opening circulating market value is $860 million, comparable to Cardano, with a total circulating market value of $11 billion, ranking 7th. The total circulating market value of the Cosmos chain used by TIA is $2.5 billion, while the total circulating market value of the Polkadot chain in the same sector is $5.4 billion.
Comparing the operating conditions of various chains and the current market sentiment, TIA’s token market value is in a relatively reasonable position between Cosmos and Polkadot.
Evolution of Future Airdrop Methods
With the continuous evolution of airdrop methods, the relationship between project parties and users who seek airdrops has shifted from the previous mutually beneficial stage to the current zero-sum game stage. Project parties use the expectation of airdrops and the interaction with users to obtain huge transaction fee incomes. For example, projects such as zksync, Layerzero, or StarkNet, which are favored by millions of addresses, continuously attract users to consume gas or transaction fees through various “PUA” activities.
From the perspective of project parties, users who come for airdrops with multiple accounts do not have the promotional value required for airdrop operations. They only need to wait for the right time to abandon them. Therefore, project parties are more likely to distribute airdrops to users who contribute to blockchain technology or concept updates and have higher on-chain activity ratings, through rule-making.
In addition, from the perspective of “conspiracy theory,” there must be the project team’s own “rat’s nest” mixed in with each airdrop. For the sake of qualification and higher airdrop quantities, others have already inflated the on-chain data to the extreme. It is self-evident whether the project team’s rat’s nest addresses are included in the airdrop together or if they have taken a different path in formulating the rules, devising a simpler and more confusing way, as one would expect.
Furthermore, in the previous Optimism airdrop, in addition to active addresses on this chain, airdrops were also given to multi-signature, governance voting, and Gitcoin donation addresses. Recently, Sei conducted an airdrop targeting cross-chain active addresses. It is worth mentioning that zksync’s official personnel mentioned that the airdrop criteria may consider the activity of the corresponding addresses on the Ethereum main chain.
This time, Celestia’s airdrop incentive scope is more inclined towards real blockchain technology and project developers, as well as addresses with higher on-chain activity, rather than just targeting addresses on this chain as the community expected. There are constant signs that airdrops, as one of the project team’s operational activities, are gradually bidding farewell to the past crude and simplistic way of distributing tokens, and are seeking more genuine contributors and active users. Only in this way can the value of airdrops be maximized.
Summary
Celestia’s airdrop method has to some extent innovated the mindless distribution method of airdrops used by previous projects, targeting real development contributors and as many genuine on-chain active addresses as possible. In terms of the distribution of airdrop quantities, Celestia airdrops a minimum of 1000 tokens to individual development contributors, while for active addresses, even the top 10% of users in terms of on-chain activity on the entire network receive only around 100 tokens.
It can be seen that Celestia’s airdrop method is clever. On the one hand, it provides more token incentives to absolutely real and valuable industry contributors, and on the other hand, it targets addresses with relatively high on-chain activity on the entire network. Since the number of such addresses is large enough and the owners spread the word, they serve as traffic tools with strong advertising effects.
For users with development capabilities who want to capture the corresponding airdrop qualifications, in addition to previous contributions to blockchain technology, they also need to have a deep understanding of the project team’s development requirements and participate in activities. The majority of users who do not have development capabilities will fall into a prisoner’s dilemma, continuously enriching and updating the activity of their existing addresses, while also creating new addresses. Unable to win based on quality, they will seek to maximize their benefits through quantity.
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