After reading the Liquidswap airdrop announcement 10 times, I found that LSD is a golden shovel, which will unlock the airdrops of 4 blue chip projects (and open a buyback mechanism)

After reading the $LSD airdrop announcement 10 times, I found that LSD users will benefit from it

It took two days to interpret the announcement. After the "Analysis" was released last night, it was included and pinned on Medium. The summary is as follows:
"Robots are also human beings", saying goodbye to the industry's PUA model in the past three years;
· Opening the veToken mode will unlock 4 major airdrops;
Launched the "buyback and distribution" plan to once again drive Defi Summer
The specific contents are as follows:

Today I saw the announcement that Liquidswap, the largest DEX in the APTOS ecosystem, will issue an airdrop on July 30th. I am very interested in its airdrop allocation mechanism and future potential. It can be said that its allocation mechanism has slapped many projects in the face and is worthy of reference for many projects that have not yet issued coins.
The most important concept of this airdrop is that "robots are also people". A low-income account that has interacted with 5 transactions and generated a transaction volume of 250 US dollars will receive the airdrop. In addition, the project has cleared the insider trading in advance, which shows its sincerity.
Today we will look at:
Why is Liquidswap's airdrop distribution mechanism worth learning for most projects?
How many airdrops and U values ​​can a low-income account or premium account get?
Why is LSD called a golden shovel?
After receiving an airdrop, should we keep it or sell it?
1. LSD airdrop distribution mechanism: everyone has a share of airdrops, which is worth learning for most projects
The total amount of Liquidswap token $LSD is 42 million, 15% of which is used for airdrops + staking incentives. This time, 5% of the total supply will be airdropped, and the remaining 10% will be distributed to users in the form of staking rewards and airdrops. In other words, the project will issue at least 2 airdrops, which is the tradition of the APTOS system.
1. How is $LSD distributed?
The official announcement shows that the airdrops are distributed according to the following categories:
27% is allocated to community NFTs, meme tokens, product testers, and ambassadors, with a snapshot date of July 10, 2024;
49% is allocated to early traders and liquidity adding users, with a snapshot date of April 7, 2024;
24% is allocated to late users, also looking at transactions and adding liquidity, with snapshot dates from April 7 to July 10, 2024;
From this we can see once again that you must take advantage of the airdrop early.
If it is an early NFT or meme issued by the official, we'd better hold a little bit, so that we can increase the coefficient. $LSD is allocated to these three types of users to increase different coefficients:
NFT and meme holders — 10%
Traders, liquidity adders, testers, ambassadors, and other users who complete tasks — 20%
Lumio whitelisted addresses — 10%
2. Liquidswap is not a game for big players — basic participation is
Although Liquidswap has protection measures for low-income users, it is definitely not a game for big players. Liquidswap divides users into three categories:
(1) Robot address - robots are also human (ironic to those public chains that only know how to PUA users) (good news for multiple accounts)
For ease of understanding, here we translate "robot address" into "low-income user". As long as there are 5 transactions, more than 250U or LP with 100U for more than one year, there will be low-income guarantee. For other projects, don't think about it, such wallets are basically Sybil and Passed.
Liquidswap, as the first coin issuance project of Pontem, the developer studio behind APTOS, may not be willing to go along with the previous L2, so it has launched an airdrop mechanism of "robots are also people". As long as the account is not associated with the project party and meets the minimum living security conditions, you will get the airdrop.
Delete insider trading. Robots are also human beings and do not use PUA. Just these few points are enough for other projects to learn for a lifetime.
https://pontem.network/posts/liquidswap-lsd-token-first-airdrop
The airdrops allocated to low-income users are not many, generally less than 50 LSD, but since the project does not pass the low-income guarantee (addresses that receive less than 1 LSD will be deleted), it is good news for users with multiple accounts. If low-income users only increase transaction volume, according to the average transaction cost of 0.2%, the cost of increasing 500U transaction volume is about 1U. I think the minimum amount a group member can get is 10 SLD. How much is it worth? I will analyze it below.
(2) Whale users (not liked by the project)
It should be noted here that several projects that launched airdrops in 24 years are "killing big investors". This may be a trend in the future of airdrops. Project owners do not like "big investors". If you have a lot of money, you can become a "big investor", which requires you to have great courage.
However, in the Liquidswap airdrop, big investors are not having an easy time either. The announcement said that some people have inflated the transaction volume in the project. For the sake of fairness, the project party will only issue a maximum of 8,400 LSD to those users who have inflated the transaction volume. This may be the most stringent aspect of the Liquidswap airdrop, no doubt about it.
The original text said that "tokens exceeding the upper limit are redistributed to all wallets below the whale upper limit."
The original text says that the “most valuable users” are called “middle-class users”. Let’s see what they are specifically and what inspiration they can give us.
(3) Middle class
In the "Liquidswap Airdrop Announcement", the project party mentioned the word "middle class". It might be translation software or cultural differences. It took me a long time to understand what the "middle class" in the announcement meant.
The meaning of middle class is:
The Announcement does not directly state the standards for maintaining a high-quality account. Instead, the text reveals “community users” and “non-community users.” Community users (colored) bear greater costs than non-community users (gray):
The main focus of Liquidswap this time is: Are there any NFTs or memes? Are there any transactions? Is there any added liquidity?
The main costs here are in transactions and adding liquidity, so community users may be the "carefully maintained accounts" that the official implies.
This can be seen from the "Community" column on the official website, ecological bounties, ambassadors, and tasks. Wallets that interact frequently are the ones that are carefully maintained.
2. How much airdrop value can low-income and premium accounts get?
How many U you can get has always been the biggest concern of the airdrop group. How many U you can get depends on the price of the token.
The total amount of $LSD is 42 million. According to the 3-year release schedule of $LSD, only 10 million tokens will be released in the first 10 months, and only 8 million tokens are expected to be released in the first month. For the convenience of calculation, here we calculate that 10 million $LSD will be released in the first month.
$LSD will be launched on centralized exchanges such as KUCION, Bitget, and MEXC at 8:00 pm Beijing time on July 30.
Previously, $LSD had its IEO on KUCION. According to previous data, the FDV of the first KUCION was around 20-30 million US dollars. It can be inferred that the listing price of $LSD is between $0.47-0.71, and the MC is between 4.7-7.1 million US dollars, which is a relatively low market value.
The above article introduces the possible airdrops that low-income accounts, high-quality accounts, and whale accounts may receive:
Low-income account: 10-100 LSD/account, 20 accounts, estimated minimum income of about 100-1000U (calculated at $0.47/SLD);
Careful account: 100-500 LSD/account, 20 accounts, the estimated minimum income is 1000-5000U;
Big investors can calculate it themselves.
The above allocation is summarized according to the screenshots posted by the community, and takes into account the fact that the first LSD airdrop accounted for 5% of the total supply, 69% of which was released before launch, and the rest was released linearly within 4 months.
The issuance of LSD is limited, and the initial circulation volume is not very large. Liquidswap's project owner, Pontem, also has a chain abstraction project, Lumio, that is going to issue coins. The market value of Pontem's first coin issuance project, $LSD, will not be too bad. According to the current dynamics of the project, $LSD will become a golden shovel.
3. Why is LSD called a golden shovel?
Liquidswap ($LSD) is the largest DEX in the APTOS ecosystem, and it is also the first coin issuance project in the 24th APTOS ecosystem airdrop season. Just like $JUP in the SOL ecosystem, it will connect most of the projects in the ecosystem that are about to issue airdrops.
Let’s see how $LSD works as a golden shovel?
1. $LSD still has 10% of airdrops to be issued
Liquidswap announcement shows that the remaining 10% of the airdrop will be provided in the form of staking rewards and future airdrops.
(1) $LSD inner loop
After the Liquidswap token is issued, the veToken governance model will be launched. To put it simply, users can mint veLSD by staking $LSD. The lock-up period ranges from 1 week to several years. The longer the lock-up period, the more veLSD and voting rights you will get.
From the perspective of the internal cycle, staking $LSD will mint veLSD, and in the future the Liquidswap project will issue airdrops based on the amount of veLSD held.
This is the golden shovel in a narrow sense, and many people can only see this.
(2) $LSD outer loop
For example, when many people see staking $LSD, they think that this is just an activity launched by the project party to attract people to lock up their funds. It is normal to think so. After all, small investors do not need such high faith.
But if we want to upgrade from "novice" to "intermediate white" in Web3, and from "in debt" to "on the land", we still have to figure out the essence of the matter, because when a project becomes popular, there will be many imitations. Whether you will be harvested by the imitations depends on your level in the circle. If you are not so experienced, the probability of being harvested is much greater.
The eToken governance model is to gradually transfer the governance of the project to veLSD holders, who will actively participate in the governance of the protocol, including proposing proposals and voting.
Here, obtaining a share of the locked-up profits is just an additional item. Voting governance is the highlight and the most easily overlooked area.
In voting governance, the income of designated staking pools or liquidity pools can be increased, and users can also use their abilities to contribute to the ecosystem. If you hold tokens in a pool, you are a stakeholder.
If you have just joined, you may not feel it before the $LSD platform grows. When TVL gets bigger and bigger, the platform becomes a traffic pool. Various projects will come to discuss cooperation. Which platform the community will cooperate with, how to cooperate, and how to distribute rewards are all decided by voting. Your vote can sometimes be crucial.
As the platform's pool grows larger, the rewards will become more abundant, allowing more users to stake $LSD and convert it into $veLSD. This is the core advantage of veToken.
Once this advantage is highlighted, the $veLSD in your hands will also be valuable and can be used on cooperative platforms to generate more revenue.
Now that we understand the above logic, let us introduce the second benefit that $LSD, as a golden shovel, can bring to users.
2. $LSD’s parent company Pontem will launch its own abstract public chain - Lumio (King Bomb)
In the previous tutorial "Crypto Dongle Compilation Airdrop No. 284: APTOS Series's Second Round of Largest Airdrop — Pontem Network (Complete Tutorial)", I gave an in-depth analysis of Pontem and Lumio. This is a blockbuster project. You can click the link to read it.
Pontem is a strategic partner of Aptos, creating Dapps and infrastructure for Aptos, including development tools, EVM, AMM, etc., to promote the widespread use of its Aptos blockchain. It can be said that Pontem has both the technology and the funds, so it is no problem for Pontem to build a Lumio public chain.
Lumio has not yet been launched, and there is not even a test network. It is estimated that after the team has arranged the tasks of Liquidswap listing, market value management, joint marketing, etc., they will promote Lumio. The promotion of Lumio will also be carried out through airdrops. The most important way for the public chain to empower the project is the DeFi model, which is the most effective way to increase TVL.
The existing DeFi is Liquidswap, Pontem’s first coin issuance project. It can be predicted that one of the indicators for obtaining Lumio airdrops in the future is to pledge LSD to obtain $veLSD. The more $veLSD you hold, the greater your weight coefficient in Lumio (of course, Lumio will also have its own coefficient bonus, not just this one)
3. $LSD will receive airdrops from the popular project Movement
Lumio announced that it will build a Dapp on Movement, one of the large airdrops. In the future, the incentive conditions of Movement will basically include $veLSD holders.
https://x.com/movementlabsxyz/status/1811463140070293695
(IV) APTOS Second Round of Airdrop
Aptos technology is superior to Solana, but neither the token nor the community has flourished like Solana. Not only Solana, for example, Aptos’ valuation is almost the same as Celestia ($3 billion), and the latter has about 400,000 active stakers, almost 4 times that of Aptos.
If Aptos wants to break out in this bull market, it must grasp user needs and retain users.
Aptos only airdropped 3% of tokens in the first round. Even with this 3% of token distribution, a single wallet can get 1000-3000u of airdrops. It should be noted that these wallets only completed a few tasks on Galxe, cast a few votes on Gitcoin, and issued a few NFTs.
Users are looking forward to a new round of airdrops from Aptos, and Aptos seems to have realized this, so in the second half of 2024, many projects in the ecosystem that have not yet issued coins began to move.
In particular, Aries, the largest lending platform on Aptos, launched an incentive plan to issue APT rewards.
Without Aptos' authorization, Aries would not make such an announcement, and at most would issue its own tokens as rewards to users.
Liquidswap ($LSD), as the largest DEX platform on Aptos, is naturally indispensable for the second round of Aptos community incentives. According to the veLSD mechanism, Liquidswap belongs to the second round of Aptos airdrops and will be distributed to veLSD holders (staking $LSD, minting veLSD).
To sum up: After the $LSD token is launched, the official will first release a veToken governance model. Users will pledge $LSD tokens to obtain $veLSD. Users holding $veLSD will directly unlock the airdrop of tokens from the four blue-chip projects.
4. If you hold $LSD tokens airdropped, should you sell them or not?
$LSD may become the golden shovel of the MOVE system, but those are all empowerments of the "external cycle". Except for his fellow brother Lumio who will work hard to promote $LSD in the future, the empowerment of several other projects may not be able to reach full health, so the project's own "internal driving force" is still needed.
We can confirm from the side that Liquidswap ($LSD) is cultivating its own "inner drive", for example:
Recently, Aave announced that it will launch a “fee switch”, a new security module, and an AAVE Nomics update…
After the news that Aave will enable the fee switch mechanism was announced, the price of AAVE climbed from $85 to over $100. It also caused a lot of discussion among developers. Many people in the industry interpreted it as "defi summer again", and they hope to use this mechanism in their own projects. According to Chinese habits, it can be translated as: "Defi Spring Again".
There is a lot of content, I suggest you read it yourself, the link is as follows:
https://governance.aave.com/t/temp-check-aavenomics-update/18379
Aave launched the "Buy and Distribute" plan, which mainly involves Aave taking out the surplus from the protocol and purchasing AAVE assets in the secondary market to reward ecosystem users.
Liquidswap ($LSD) currently has a TVL of 43M and an average daily trading volume of 10M, accounting for more than 70% of the Aptos ecosystem transaction volume. This generates a large amount of transaction revenue, which will all go into the protocol. Liquidswap said that it will launch a "purchase and distribution" plan in the future, using protocol revenue to purchase $LSD tokens in the secondary market to reward users in the ecosystem.
This is a very obvious "internal driving force". Liquidswap's own internal circulation will keep the demand for $LSD at a very active level.
The supply of $LSD in the first year is very limited, only about 10 million, less than 25% of the total tokens. For the subsequent airdrops, most users are expected to choose to pledge, so that the circulation of $LSD in the market will be even less. If the "purchase and distribution" plan is launched, $LSD will have a lot of room for imagination.
If you hold $LSD airdrop, it is recommended to decide based on the situation. If the pledged amount is not large and the token is falling, you can sell it first and then take it back after the price goes down. If the trading volume after listing is not large, it means that everyone is reluctant to sell, and you can wait for a while. If there are continuous positive factors, you can wait for a better price.