Taiko airdrop controversy: a project that claims to be completely decentralized and a founder who thinks its rules are opaque

Author: flowie, ChainCatcher

Editor: Marco, ChainCatcher

5 In the early morning of March 23, Taiko announced the airdrop inquiry page and the TKO token economic model. However, because the airdrop was far lower than expected and the airdrop rules were opaque, Taiko was questioned by many community users.

Originally, it was nothing new to be scolded for airdrop issues, but the tough speech of Taiko co-founder and CEO Daniel Wang completely ignited the anger of community users and pushed him to the forefront.

Wang Dong first posted on To those who did not receive it, I apologize to those who did not receive it.”

Soon after, as the voices of doubt and even abuse on the He spoke again:

1. There is zero tolerance for any related insults;
2. Taiko is a partner of Galaxy, not a part-time employee, and will not be used as a reference in Galaxy rankings. The weight of participating in Taiko-related activities on the Internet is not large;
3. If you don’t get an airdrop, it’s because someone else has more points;
4. The rules are not transparent because transparency cannot resolve differences. The definition of "fair" is highly subjective.

As soon as these words came out, Taiko was completely plunged into a whirlpool of public opinion. Some users complained, "This is the worst public relations response I have ever seen", while others called on major exchanges to resolutely boycott such opaque encryption projects.

Taiko: Ethereum Layer2 born with a golden key

Taiko has attracted much attention since its establishment in early 2022 because of its core The 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 are all from the Loopring team.

Taiko co-founder and CEO Wang Dong (English name Daniel Wang) who spoke in the community this time 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 launched on exchanges such as Binance and OKX. The scenery is unparalleled.

Before joining Web3, Wang Dong also served as the technical director of Zhongan Insurance and JD.com, the technical director and senior software engineer of Google, and participated in the founding of Yunrang Technology, Coinport, etc.

Having a combined background of a traditional Web2 manufacturer, a serial entrepreneur, Web2+Web3, etc., and having founded a good Web3 project, Wang Dong can be said to be the most favored founder by investors.

Taiko quickly attracted investment from a large number of well-known investment institutions after its establishment.

According to RootData data, Taiko has received a total of US$37 million in financing in about two years since its establishment. Investors include traditional investment institutions such as Sequoia China, Yunqi Capital, BAI Capital, and GGV Capital. There are also participations from 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.

And Taiko is a Type-1 type of zk-EVM (reference article: "Vitalik: The future of different types of ZK-EVM 》), which is a completely decentralized ZK-Rollup equivalent to Ethereum.

The zkEVM that Taiko wants to build was originally part of Loopring. However, during the development stage, Wang Donghe and his team believed that Loopring is an application-specific extension, while what Taiko wants to build is a universal extension. If they are mixed together, it will This caused huge confusion, so Taiko developed independently from Loopring.

Why does Taiko airdrop cause dissatisfaction?

On December 27, 2022, Taiko released the first public testnet Alpha-1 testnet. In January this year, Taiko announced the launch of its sixth testnet and final testnet Katla.

In one and a half years, Taiko has released a total of 6 phases of testnet, during which there were also multiple galactic missions.

Although the time cycle is long and there are many tasks that need to be participated in, Taiko has always been a key project of the "Mao Party" due to its star founder and star capital, and community users have relatively 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. It can be seen that User participation is very enthusiastic.

Currently, according to Taiko official news, the total supply of TKO is 1 billion, of which 5% will be airdropped by Genesis, mainly to Taiko users and the Loopring community.

However, after the airdrop of this test network phase was announced, some users found that although they participated in multiple test network and Galaxy missions, they were completely accompanied in the end and their account airdrops were 0. Although some users have received some airdrops, the number seems to be far lower than expected.

For community users, what’s more dissatisfying than spending a lot of time interacting but getting nothing is that they don’t know where they “died”? The opacity of Taiko’s airdrop rules has aroused community doubts.

The task points on the Galxe Galaxy platform record user interaction behaviors and have always been regarded as an estimated voucher for the approximate magnitude of airdrops.

However, some community users said that different accounts with the same Galaxy score have very different airdrop results. In addition, the project side does not release the detailed conditions of witches and snapshots. There is reason to doubt that the project side is a rat warehouse.

In this regard, Wang Dong emphasized in discord. Taiko is a partner of Galaxy, not a part-time employee. It is not used as a reference in Galaxy rankings, and participation in Taiko-related activities on Galaxy does not have a large weight.

For participating users, since the weight of Galaxy missions is not large, why does Taiko continue to release a large number of Galaxy missions to guide users to participate.

After releasing the token airdrop, Taiko still releases new tasks in the galaxy. Will users still participate in these tasks?

The airdrop is not over yet, will Taiko’s reputation reverse?

Every time the project team airdrops, some people are happy and some are worried. It is not new for the project team to scold the project team because the airdrop does not meet expectations.

Although many users received zero airdrops this time, there were also many users who received good benefits.

Taiko has also announced data related to airdrops. It said that 300,000 addresses have claimed more than 50 million tokens. Some of the users received TKO tokens ranging from 3,000 to 9,000. If estimated based on the current AEVO premarket OTC price of US$5, the value they received would be approximately US$15,000-45,000.

Airdrops during the test network phase are generally just appetizers. Taiko said that 10% of the tokens will be used for subsequent airdrops.

In March, Taiko stated that the mainnet would be launched within three months after the Cancun upgrade. The mainnet is coming soon. After experiencing the first airdrop, will Taiko learn lessons from subsequent airdrops and win a reversal of reputation?

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