Author: flowie , ChainCatcher
Editor: Marco, ChainCatcher
In the early morning of May 23, Taiko announced the airdrop query page and TKO token economic model, but because the airdrop was far below expectations and the airdrop rules were opaque, Taiko was questioned by many community users.
Being criticized for airdrop issues was not new, but the tough remarks made by Taiko co-founder and CEO Daniel Wang completely ignited the anger of community users and put himself at the center of controversy.
Wang Dong first posted on X, "In order to avoid unnecessary debate, we will not disclose the detailed TKO Genesis airdrop rules. Our goal is fairness, but we cannot satisfy everyone. Congratulations to those who received TKO, and apologize to those who did not."
Soon after, as more and more voices of doubt and even insults appeared on the X platform, Wang Dong also seemed to be angered and spoke again on Discord:
There is zero tolerance for any related abuse;
Taiko is a partner of Galaxy, not an employee. It is not considered in Galaxy's rankings, and the weight of participating in Taiko-related activities on Galaxy is not large.
If you don’t get the airdrop, it’s because others have more points;
The rules are opaque because transparency cannot resolve differences, and the definition of "fairness" is highly subjective.
As soon as this statement came out, Taiko was completely caught in the whirlpool of public opinion. Some users complained that "this is the worst PR response I have ever seen", and some users called on major exchanges to resolutely boycott this opaque crypto project.
Taiko: Ethereum Layer2 was born with a golden key
Taiko has attracted much attention since its establishment in early 2022 because its core team is almost the original team of the well-known Ethereum Layer 2 ZK-Rollup protocol Loopring.
Taiko’s three co-founders, Wang Dong, Brecht Devos, and Matthew Finestone, all came from the Loopring team.
Daniel Wang, co-founder and CEO of Taiko, who spoke in the community, is also the founder of Loopring.
Loopring is the first ZK-Rollup deployed on Ethereum. In 2020, Loopring was listed on Coinbase, becoming the first Chinese project to be listed on Coinbase. Subsequently, it was also listed on exchanges such as Binance and OKX, and it became very popular for a while.
Before joining Web3, Wang Dong served as technical director of ZhongAn Insurance and JD.com, technical director and senior software engineer at Google, and participated in the establishment of Yunrang Technology, Coinport, etc.
With a complex background in traditional Web2 giants, serial entrepreneurs, Web2+Web3, and having founded some good Web3 projects, Wang Dong can be said to be the type of founder most favored by investors.
Soon after its establishment, Taiko attracted a large number of investments from well-known investment institutions.
According to RootData data, Taiko has received a total of US$37 million in financing in the two years since its establishment. Investors include traditional investment institutions such as Sequoia China, Yunqi Capital, BAI Capital, GGV Capital, as well as well-known exchanges or market makers such as OKX Ventures, GSR, and Wintermute, as well as crypto native capital such as Hash Global, IOSG Ventures, and Generative Ventures.
Taiko is a Type-1 zk-EVM, which is a fully decentralized ZK-Rollup equivalent to Ethereum.
The zkEVM that Taiko wanted to build was originally part of Loopring's work, but during the development stage, Wang Dong and his team believed that Loopring was an application-specific extension, while Taiko wanted to build a general extension, and mixing them together would cause huge confusion. Therefore, Taiko was developed independently from Loopring.
Why did the Taiko airdrop cause dissatisfaction?
On December 27, 2022, Taiko released its first public testnet, the Alpha-1 testnet. In January of this year, Taiko announced the launch of its sixth testnet, the final testnet, Katla.
In a year and a half, Taiko has released 6 test networks and several galaxy missions during this period.
Although the time period is long and there are many tasks to participate in, Taiko has always been a key project of the "Mao Party" due to its celebrity founder and celebrity capital, and community users have high expectations for it.
According to official data disclosed by Taiko in February, after the release of the sixth phase of the test network, Taiko has more than 1.1 million independent wallets, more than 30,000 decentralized proposers and more than 14,000 decentralized validators, which shows the high enthusiasm of user participation.
According to Taiko’s official news, the total supply of TKO is 1 billion, with the Genesis airdrop accounting for 5%, mainly airdropped to Taiko users and the Loopring community.
However, after the announcement of the airdrops during the testnet phase, some users found that despite participating in multiple testnet and galaxy missions, they ended up being nothing but a sideline, with their accounts receiving zero airdrops. Although some users received some airdrops, the amount seemed to be far below expectations.
For community users, what is more frustrating than spending a lot of time interacting but getting nothing in return is not knowing where they “died” at all? The opacity of Taiko’s airdrop rules has aroused doubts from the community.
The mission points on the Galxe platform record user interaction behaviors and have always been regarded as an estimated credential for the approximate size of the airdrop.
However, some community users said that different accounts with the same Galaxy Score had very different airdrop results. In addition, the project owner did not disclose the detailed conditions of the witch and snapshot, so there is reason to suspect that the project owner was insider trading.
Wang Dong emphasized in the discord that Taiko is a partner of Galaxy, not an employee relationship, and will not be used as a reference in Galaxy's rankings. Participation in Taiko-related activities on Galaxy will not have a large weight.
For participating users, since the weight of the Galaxy Mission is not great, why does Taiko continue to release a large number of Galaxy Missions to guide user participation?
After the token airdrop, Taiko is still releasing new missions in Galaxy. Will users still participate in these missions?
The airdrop is not over yet, will Taiko’s reputation turn around?
Every time a project party makes an airdrop, naturally some people are happy and some are worried. It is not uncommon for some people to curse the project party because the airdrop is not as good as expected.
Although many users received zero airdrops this time, many users also gained good returns.
Taiko has also released data related to the airdrop, saying that 300,000 addresses have claimed more than 50 million tokens. Some users received TKO tokens ranging from 3,000 to 9,000. If we estimate based on the current AEVO premarket price of $5, the value they received is about $15,000 to $45,000.
The airdrop during the testnet phase is usually just an appetizer. Taiko said that 10% of the tokens will be used for subsequent airdrops.
In March, Taiko said that the mainnet will be launched within three months after the Cancun upgrade. With the mainnet approaching, after the first airdrop, will Taiko learn from its lessons and win a reversal in reputation?
