In recent years, airdrops have emerged as a favored method to entice early adopters. Yet, in some launches, the promotional activity outshines the main purpose and, as SEI's experience shows, could even damage it.
Sei Network launched its mainnet on August 16th, which could be considered one of the major launches of the year. The project positions itself as the fastest Layer 1 blockchain, with a focus on decentralized exchanges and trading apps in NFTs, gaming, social, and DeFi.
Earlier this year, Sei secured $30 million from prominent crypto backers, including Jump, Distributed Global, and Multicoin. Moreover, the project garnered an impressive $120 million for its ecosystem fund from Foresight Ventures and various other funds.
Bolstered by a considerable bank balance and a pre-mainnet valuation of $800 million, the project expediently pledged an airdrop, which effectively attracted initial contributors. As of the time of this report, SEI boasts over half a million followers on X (formerly Twitter) and a thriving Discord community boasting more than 600,000 members.
However, subsequent to the mainnet launch and airdrop allocation, a significant portion of early contributors expressed feelings of being misled, igniting the trending #SeiScam movement on X.
There were many complaints, with the primary concern revolving around the size of the airdrop. According to the on-chain analytics platform Flipsidecrypto, up to this point, 273,000 people have claimed the airdrop, with an average airdrop amount of 93 SEI (~$14). The rewards were essentially deemed not worthwhile given the effort and time invested in the project.
Furthermore, the project faced allegations of promoting whale behavior; select users received over 5,000 SEI ($790) for merely bridging $10,000 to the network. This drew criticism from project ambassadors and early contributors who had diligently advocated for Sei during the past six months, receiving notably lesser rewards.
Does the team want to tell us anything about those who raised nodes in the Atlantic-1 phase? What about the ambassadors who wasted so much precious time promoting Sei? You offered airdrops to those who have no idea about SEI!
Source: Discord
Presently, the opportunity remains to bridge funds to Sei Network and receive airdrop tokens. However, it seems that rewards for bridging substantial amounts have decreased. Furthermore, there are numerous reports of transactions getting stuck and individuals waiting for hours to receive their funds.
In recent years, airdrops have evolved into a go-to strategy for attracting early adopters to nascent blockchain networks. Notably, projects like Aptos distributed substantial sums to their pioneering contributors last year, triggering an influx of airdrop hunters.
However, as underscored in Sei's case, the audience attracted by airdrops is not necessarily your user base, and it can overshadow your core product if something goes wrong.
Amid airdrop hurdles, Sei Network's mainnet launch proceeded smoothly, and its blockchain is now up and running, as confirmed by project’s explorer. Furthermore, the project swiftly secured listings on major exchanges like Binance and Coinbase immediately post-launch, underscoring support from key players in the cryptocurrency landscape.
Due to the high network load, bridging might still be slow. However, this can be seen as a positive indicator that users are still interested in exploring this new and emerging ecosystem. So, despite the early challenges, this is definitely a project worth Observing for the long term.