The meme market is still being relayed on the chain, but it has just changed from one chain to another, and from one angle to another.

Why is Meme so attractive? Perhaps it can be summed up in three words: great opportunities, which is closely related to its issuance method and initial circulation.

Therefore, this article will sort out the development history of token issuance in the cryptocurrency circle over the years.

From the Bitcoin-based fork to the current main click-to-earn platform in the TON ecosystem

Let me first briefly sort out some of the token distribution methods I remember🔻

1. Fork/copy based on BTC
2. ICO Public Offering
3. Interactive free airdrop
4. Hold NFT to get airdrops
5. Fair Mint of Inscription Narrative
6. The rise of the points system (airdrop)
7. Tap-to-Earn, the mainstream of TON ecosystem

In addition to the above distributions, there are some special asset issuance and token distribution methods that require special conditions, such as:
1. KOL round/community round
2. Image NFT issuance
3. Personal Key Issuance under the FT Framework

These are almost the main ways of issuing tokens/assets in the entire history of Web3 development. Next, I will expand on each of the examples I listed with specific cases.

In addition, these examples are all what I have seen and heard personally. Some of them are what I am currently participating in or have participated in in the past. They are only used as content cases and do not contain any behavioral suggestions.

1. Fork/copy based on BTC🔻

This was a popular method 17 years ago. At that time, the mainstream cryptocurrencies were trying to change BTC and fork the BTC source code around this. The more famous project was BCH, which promoted Bitcoin's big block theory and hoped to improve its performance by expanding the block size of Bitcoin.

In addition, in some fork activities in the past, the hard forked chain usually airdrops the original chain in equal proportion to gain community support. However, after 21 years, it is rare to hear that any chain does this and makes a big move in the market.

In addition to the forked BCH, there is LTC, which takes the source code copy route. Litecoin (LTC) is a code copy based on Bitcoin. It also had the slogan "Bitcoin is gold, Litecoin is silver" back then. It borrowed from BTC in terms of code and modified the algorithm, and also modified the block speed.

By the way, Dogecoin was created based on Litecoin’s code, not Bitcoin. If we use a father-son relationship diagram to refer to the three, then Bitcoin is the grandfather, Litecoin is the father, and Dogecoin is the son.

These forks are often obtained through the POW consensus mechanism.

2. ICO Public Offering 🔻

ICO actually has a long history in the cryptocurrency world, but its heyday was from 2017 to 2019. Projects from this period, such as BNB, TRX, and LINK, are still among the top 20 in terms of market value.

During its development stage, TRX was accused of plagiarizing Ethereum’s Java library in its source code. This incident was even reported in the news, and it was even dissed in the news. Even the white paper was accused of plagiarism in the early days.

These are all old history, and I bring them up to express that TRX adopted the ICO+code copying method to promote early construction.

In addition, generally speaking, the ICO public offering was mainly the first round of public offering before 2021, and the subsequent institutional entry would then open up the subsequent financing rounds.

After 21 years, ICO is generally the last round (not necessarily ICO, it may be various other O)

3. Interactive free airdrop 🔻

This is the biggest difference between Web3 and Web2. After all, no company will give its users up to 20% of the shares, but this is a common occurrence in Web3.

In the early days of the industry, the project airdrops were not that complicated. You could get them almost as long as you participated in the use. The first airdrop I knew was the main body, but the one that impressed me the most was UNI, because I had this thing, and at that time I thought: Wow? It turns out that this can really make money

However, with the development of the industry, the requirements for airdrops are gradually becoming higher. We will talk about this in detail later.

4. Hold NFT to get airdrops🔻

This has a higher threshold than free airdrops. Compared with the airdrop method based on interactive traces, holding NFTs can, to a certain extent, directly use your own funds to obtain more potential airdrop rights through hoarding (of course, if it is a task NFT, it is another matter)

For example, ENS and the recently popular APE use this method to distribute a certain share of tokens.

I am currently participating in such activities. For example, I hold Myshell NFTs, and I am also betting on the expected airdrops. I also bet on the expected airdrops of the AZRA series of NFTs that @jasmy_BNB recommended at the beginning of the year.

This kind of token distribution often appears in projects that emphasize IP. Of course, there are also community activities specially launched by projects, which will open a special NFT series of activities to achieve this step. For example, Manta once held an event similar to "NFT stamp collecting" before going online to distribute a small number of tokens.

5. Inscription Narrative Fair Mint🔻

I think this is the biggest innovation in this cycle. It has opened up a paradigm that is different from all previous token issuance methods. Regardless of whether this method is sustainable, it at least provides some reference for subsequent projects.

In fact, those who have worked in the community know that projects driven entirely by the community, especially those that may have some main directions, will be very slow and difficult if the community makes decisions and votes. This is also one of the main reasons why many inscription projects end up in vain.

Here are some of my observations from most communities: It is not common for two heads to be better than one, but the herd effect occurs frequently. Stupidity in a group tends to spread quickly in a short period of time.

As for the runes, I saw something similar to the early fork dispute of Bitcoin. Similarly, airdrops were given to community members who interacted with the inscriptions, but I didn’t see any major movement at the moment.

6. The rise of the points system 🔻

This is the most PUA design in this cycle. I don’t know which project started it first, but I know that all the projects in the re-staking sector do it this way.

The Ethereum re-staking sector, what kind of changes the narrative itself brings to the industry will not be discussed for now, but the projects around this ecological spectrum have changed the benefits available to the wool group and further raised the threshold

The project airdrop bonus has been completely turned into a serious POW+PUA method

But I can understand that, after all, as the market looks forward to the airdrop of first-level projects, more and more people are pouring in, and the project owners need to balance the interests of the community.

But the most stupid ones are those projects that inexplicably kill ordinary users, and the most stupid ones are those projects that call users electronic beggars. I won’t name them, but it’s really disgusting to see people whitewashing such projects.

7. Tap to Earn🔻

With the rise of the TON ecosystem, the Tap to Earn paradigm has entered the mainstream vision of the market. Simply put, it is to earn points through simple clicks, and finally get token airdrops based on the points.

Therefore, Tap to Earn is the main distribution action currently launched in the TON ecosystem, and its core is actually a points system.

Another popular project that also adopts Tap to Earn is Grass, which is also a hot project.

But I first learned about the Tap to Earn model when some domestic platforms started to become popular.

The most famous Tap to Earn project is Pi Network. The most amazing thing is that it has been almost six years since the project was established, but it has not yet been officially launched. I don’t know what it is testing.

Many people may think that it is just a project for clicking, but Tap to Earn itself is just an action of token distribution. The core projects are different, such as TON ecosystem under the name of game, Grass under the name of Depin and global computing power network, and L1#PiNetworkbased on the improved Stellar network.

In general, we can divide the above token distribution methods into two categories:
(1) With capital cost
(2) No/low capital cost

The implementation of forks, replication and ICO public offerings often involves certain capital costs, and this part of the community stake itself carries a cost anchor.

Interactive free airdrops, inscription fair mints, and Tap to Earn all have no or low capital costs, so the cost anchor of this part of the community chips is very vague.

In addition, regarding the points system, especially the points system activities generated around re-pledge, it is in exchange for liquidity, not actual capital loss. I think the cost anchor point of this part is also very vague.

If we apply these two things to the secondary market, looking back, it seems that the fact that the community's chips have a certain cost anchor is more beneficial.

Low-cost distribution methods such as Tap to Earn seem to lower the threshold, but in fact they bring greater pressure to the industry's secondary market, which is a disadvantage for holders in the secondary market.

I think this is also one of the main reasons that prompted Binance to announce that Launchpool will be used as a pre-market trading chip to be traded in the market, making the vague cost anchor point in the market clearer.

Note: In the above case, I only considered individual participation, and did not consider the actual cost of batch script interaction in the studio.

In addition to these ways of distributing chips, there are two other special asset issuance methods that are worth mentioning:
(1) Community/KOL round
(2) Image NFT issuance
(3) Personal Key Issuance under the FT Framework

I will briefly explain them.

- Community round
(1) Community rounds were very common during the ICO boom before 21 years ago. At that time, the project and the community team leader mainly cooperated and gave a portion of the chips to the team leader for sale. The community team leader made a profit by increasing the chip cost of a single token and giving it to community members for subscription.
(2) This method has not been discontinued. Some small VCs still operate in this way, and some even include some value-added services. What’s more, some institutions also exit through this method.
(3) For community members who subscribe to these shares, although the form is somewhat similar to ICO, there is still a problem because this is usually not the number of rounds recognized by the project party itself. Early ICO subscriptions can directly participate in the discussion and decision-making of the project, while community round subscribers can often only contact the contractor.
(4) This is also the fundamental reason why some community-run projects have been delayed in going online and community rights protection targets have made mistakes. Since the chips are not issued through official channels, you have no idea how many times the chips you received have been passed on, and how many times they will be passed on if there is a problem.

-KOL round
(1) It is somewhat similar to the community round, except that the main body of the chips has changed from a community to an individual KOL. Of course, there are also KOLs who bring their own communities together to share the risk.
(2) As far as I know, the amount of KOL round chips is far less than that of community round chips, and is generally less than 20,000 U.
(3) The characteristics of the KOL round are that the unlocking is faster than that of institutions and the valuation is slightly lower than that of institutions, but this range is also very limited. The issuance of these quotas in this round is usually accompanied by certain publicity obligations.
(4) Therefore, there are also those who use KOL promotion as a bargaining chip in exchange for their labor.

-Image NFT issuance
(1) This is not only another major trend after the DeFi trend, but also a symbolic node for Web3 to formally distinguish between homogeneous tokens and non-homogeneous tokens.
(2) The issuance of NFTs has made some images, artworks, music, and even warrants that can be included on the chain become narratives that can be hyped and derived.
(3) $APE, which has been very popular recently, has a NFT series that is the top collection series in the NFT track.

-Personal Key
(1) This is the asset issuance method in the Socialfi market in 2023. Social applications led by FriendTech have set off a wave of this paradigm.
(2) The act of issuing keys by individuals is somewhat similar to issuing coins by individuals. However, because it is placed in a social scenario, the issuance of this asset is limited in nature. Also, because the model design is a negative-sum game, it is an asset model that is destined to lose money in the long run.
(3) This paradigm actually materializes social relationships into assets. Subsequent applications are based on the improvement of this model, allowing the concept of [social currency] to take root in the social market in 2023.

The above is the way tokens and assets are distributed/issued throughout the development history of Web3, which I have sorted out based on my own memories.

I personally noticed some logical errors in the article, for example, copying code for distribution is not actually an individual issue, but it is still one of the main themes in the past.

Also, this article does not focus on the difference between POW and POS in the token issuance method. I simply summarized POW in the section on forks.

If you have any additions, please feel free to discuss in the comments section~