Starkware Airdrop Evaluation – Kerman Kohli

Following on from my final article across the a number of airdrops by Optimism, I needed to check out Starkware’s airdrop since I managed to extract the info on the similar time. The important thing distinction between Starkware and Optimism’s airdrop I needed to review was how the declare mechanism would impression that standards. This information is roughly a month stale now however received’t be too far off from the precise numbers given the airdrop was finished a number of months in the past.

The important thing distinction between the 2 approaches had been Optimism mentioned “we are going to personally ship the airdrop to your pockets” the place as Starkware says “come to us to say your airdrop”. The case for the previous is that it’s simpler for customers and saves on gasoline. My private philosophy is that for those who’re doing this on a low price chain (that’s what your valuation relies on proper?!) then price shouldn’t be a difficulty and the least somebody can do to say free cash is click on a button.

That being mentioned, lets check out the Starkware drop. Sadly the info was extraordinarily difficult to get as a result of:

1. Starkware didn’t publish information breaking down how individuals claimed the airdrop after the airdrop

2. Starkware doesn’t have commonplace EVM format addresses (they’re for much longer than 20 bytes) which suggests I needed to hack to get information obtainable on-chain.

In any case, right here’s the official chart round how the airdrop was allotted:

To get the info I wanted, I mainly used:

• 0x06793d9e6ed7182978454c79270e5b14d2655204ba6565ce9b0aa8a3c3121025 as my airdrop to get all of the declare occasions from

• 0x00ebc61c7ccf056f04886aac8fd9c87eb4a03d7fdc8a162d7015bec3144c3733 as my beginning block hash

• 0x04718f5a0fc34cc1af16a1cdee98ffb20c31f5cd61d6ab07201858f4287c938d because the contract to get STRK balances from

A few of enjoyable snippets of me having to get balances by means of many for loops and byte hacking to get the info I needed.

In any case, on the time of extraction, I discovered 519,282 occasions on the declare contract. There have been a complete of 1,304,079 claimers which means solely 39.8% claimed the airdrop. The remaining customers had been mainly used as advertising and marketing collateral — which I feel is an efficient end result! Some could say this was dangerous but when you may get the message out to the broadest base of individuals whereas nonetheless not gifting away every little thing, you’ve type of discovered the candy spot. The large standards made most individuals really feel included which generates good-will amongst the neighborhood.

So mainly what I did was get all of the addresses from the declare occasions that I bought after which ran a script to get all their steadiness on the time of me operating the script. I might then see what the buckets of balances had been by segmenting them out. I want I might have additional understood these customers however the restricted information made this a way more difficult train.

With out additional ado, listed below are the outcomes! I used lower than 100 STRK as a threshold because the smallest airdrop given was a 111.1 STRK. Right here’s a breakdown of the quantities:

• StarkEx Customers: 111.1 STRK every

• Open Supply Builders: 111.1 STRK every

• Starknet Customers: Vary from 500 to 10,000 STRK, with various multipliers

• Starknet Group Members: Vary from 10,000 to 180,000 STRK

• Starknet Builders: 10,000 STRK every

• Ethereum Staking Swimming pools: 360 STRK per validator

• Solo Stakers: 1,800 STRK per validator, as much as 3,200 STRK for these with increased danger profiles

• Ethereum Builders: 1,800 STRK every

• Protocol Guild Members: 10,000 STRK every

• EIP Authors: 2,000 STRK every

To additional defend my selection of the 101 bucket, the full quantity by held this group is: Whole recipient quantity for '<100' bucket: 1,896,317.6861687868 / lower than 3%.

General, not an excellent airdrop! A 13.5% retention fee is near the business norm (which is dangerous). Nevertheless, given a traditional Github person like me was given 1800 STRK, my deeper take at that is that the airdrop is worse than you’d hope! Only one.1% of customers who got something substantial, retained! I’m a bit on the fence because the interpretation for this airdrop can go each methods. Nevertheless, lets have a look at different information factors to assist decide whether or not this airdrop was successful or not.

A simple proxy is token. Right here’s the three month chart of the STRK token. Down 50%, but additionally there was an enormous market sell-off. Not nice however a minimum of it’s not down 90%?

Lets look from one other angle: TVL. Not less than our pals over at DeFi Llama can assist with this train.

TVL rose to round $320m after which dropped to round $210m which is fairly good retention. Nevertheless, we don’t know the way a lot Starkware gave out to get these numbers. Fortunately I’ve the numbers. That numbers is 67,078,250.942674.

• If we assume a median token worth of $1.50

• We will re-express this equation as Starkware spent $100,617,376 to accumulate ~$300m in TVL

• Or put one other method, about $3 in STRK tokens to accumulate $1 in TVL

My subsequent query is what are the person counts like so we are able to perceive a CAC mannequin for this equation. I re-drew my chart above with percentages into person counts.

Alright so giving Starknet the good thing about the doubt right here and solely counting the lower than 100 bucket. We’ve spent near $100m to accumulate 519,282 customers. This interprets to ~$200 per person. Now if we re-express this when it comes to retained customers (above 101 tokens), we get $1,341 per retained pockets.

That is decrease than what we noticed on the Arbitrum airdrop and others the place retained CAC is within the excessive 1000’s of {dollars} and even tens of 1000’s of {dollars}. Whereas Starkware’s airdrop wasn’t nice from a retention perspective, it was respectable from a CAC perspective relative to others I’ve seen. My thesis for that is just like what we noticed on the Optimism airdrops:

Starkware was comparatively considerate in how they gave plenty of tokens to plenty of totally different teams and the info reveals that clearly. It is a widespread theme I’m seeing in airdrops that carry out effectively versus those who don’t.

So why don’t extra initiatives don’t select numerous person attributes to airdrop tokens to customers? Effectively it comes right down to the truth that amassing, analyzing and drawing conclusions from information is tough — particularly when you could have vasts quantities of it. Starkware managed to make use of a comparatively easy standards that also ensured range though there are methods to get much more focused with the fitting instruments.

I’ve many ideas on this that I’ll be writing in upcoming articles however for now, I’ll depart you with this clue to the airdrop puzzle: information is the most important limitation, though in methods only a few can see.