This article is written by all ambassadors and core team members. In addition to that, Hoon, our product manager, wrote this topic to solve common misunderstandings. Lastly, special thanks to our ambassadors. You helped a lot to summarize this article.
Summary
All our decisions maximize our ecosystem for long-term benefits. Our aim with the launch of Shiden Network was to learn as much as possible to assist with the launch of Astar Network. We collected data and feedback from the community that highlights some changes we need to make for a healthier launch strategy for Shiden’s sibling. We will implement on-chain governance and eliminate the sudo key as soon as possible. After meetings with ambassadors and the core team, we decided on the following vesting scheme for lockdrop participants. Our first supporters in 2020, who locked ETH for 1000 days, have 7 months linear vesting with 10% released at launch. Those who locked ETH for 30 days, 100 days, and 300 days have 15 months linear vesting with 10% released at launch. We decided on 2 categories because people who chose 30, 100, 300 days have already unlocked ETH. We recognize the impact this might have on those affected, however, we believe this is the right strategy to ensure the long-term benefits to the ecosystem and its supporters. Please take your time to read the whole article.
Astar Goal
The Story
Our primary focus is to win the Polkadot auction because this is the most important milestone from day1. Astar aims to be in the top 3 of the first batch parachains being deployed on Polkadot. We have been developing Astar/Plasm for more than 2 years to become a Polkadot parachain. In our original plan, we focused on the crowdloan and decided on Astar’s launching strategy, including lockdrop vesting after winning the auction. Astar needs to be a parachain to have a token with utility/value.
What are lockdrops?
Before starting, let us explain why we did lockdrops and the things we needed to deal with. The lockdrop purpose was to distribute tokens to early believers and make this project as much decentralized as possible. It was beyond our expectation that >7,000 participants committed a total of >150K ETH into lockdrop 1 & 2. Since we wanted to do a community-driven project, we have distributed tokens to lockdrop participants first. Everything was and is transparent as it gets. A decentralized but ensured timelock of assets is something that only the blockchain can do. We used this method to prove that the people were willing to put their opportunity costs for the future of Web3.0. We asked for your time, not your ETH. We believe that time and opportunity make the future. All ETH are locked in a smart contract and never was and will ever be in control of the team. Since ETH is locked on the smart contract, we have no control over the smart contract. It is technically impossible to withdraw before the lockdrop period ends.
In general, the lockdrops were successful and gave us the decentralized support required for a healthy DAO and ecosystem. Creating the best infrastructure for developers to build in the Polkadot ecosystem. We believe in the vision about building with the community’s trust instead of their money with a public sale. A lockdrop works the same as a crowdloan. After some time, you get your initial investment back. At the time of the lockdrop, there was no plan to launch on the Kusama network, and no one knew when Polkadot would launch. Many parameters were missing, and a few thought Polkadot would reach its current size. We received VC investments from Binance, Fenbushi, and other great names in the Web3 space during the first seed round of investors. Polkadot launched in May 2020, and this launch was the start of building towards the next milestones. Since then, our community has grown thanks to our core developers, ambassadors, ecosystem members, and investors exponentially. All of us are in this together, and let’s build together in the years to come.
What we learned from Shiden Network Launch
In June 2021, we launched Shiden Network, an experimental mainnet of Astar Network. The Shiden launch allowed us to understand how our token economics works in the market and test as many features as possible before implementing them on Astar Network. The biggest insight we got through Shiden is that our initial community liquidity (25%) was so huge compared to other Kusama parachains like Moonbeam (around 10%) and Karura (around 5%). The on-chain data shows this was one of the driving reasons behind the selling pressure, and we feel this deters new supporters from trying the dApp staking store. It was a challenging moment for us because we believed distributing SDN tokens without vesting is good for community members, but it turned out there is still a lot of confusion about the purpose and value of Kusama-based projects.
Solution regarding vesting for lockdrop participants
We need liquidity as much as we need our holders to experience the journey and the growth that will come. We figure out that vesting the ASTR tokens will be a better option for people who care about our long-term ecosystem benefits. After 360 degrees feedback from our community, supporters, and analysis of on-chain and market data, Our core team and ambassadors decided to have the vesting for lockdrop participants for both the long-term and short-term benefit of the project. The short-term benefit will help attract crowdloan support which in turn could secure a top 3 position which translates to easier CEX listing and recruitment of application developers to our ecosystem. The long-term benefit will provide time for the ecosystem to flourish without constantly early selling pressure. The vesting is based on the lock period chosen during the lockdrop.
The reason for the short vesting period for 1000 days lockdrop participants is that they took the biggest opportunity cost. Their ETH is still locked in the smart contract, and they can’t do anything with that. Also, the 7 months from the date of release marks around 2 years from when the ETH was locked. The vesting is in line with the vesting period as participants in the Astar Crowdloan Event. As for 300, 100, and 30 days participants, their ETH has been unlocked and claimed back.
We have to emphasize that all the locked/vested ASTR can be used for dApp Staking, CrowdStaking and used to onboard your permissionless collator. Each one of you will be able to earn block rewards. The utility of the tokens is very important.
Final words
Don’t need to add more words to this. Let’s build the future of Web3 together.