Can the Seamless airdrop drive the wealth effect of the Base ecosystem?
SEAM is the first native project token of the Base ecosystem to be listed on Coinbase.Original | Odaily Planet Daily
Author | Azuma
In the early morning of December 12, Beijing time, the Base ecosystem's native lending protocol Seamless Protocol announced the launch of an airdrop plan, distributing 400,000 SEAM tokens to over 5,000 eligible addresses. Seamless Protocol added that the airdrop snapshot was taken on December 8, and the claim has been open since 4:00 AM today. Eligible addresses can claim SEAM at any time within the next three months.
At the same time, Coinbase also announced the listing of SEAM, with trading now open, currently reported at $14.61 as of the time of writing.
As the first native project token from the Base ecosystem to be listed on Coinbase, and the first native project among mainstream ecosystem projects to conduct a "large-scale" airdrop to the community, Seamless Protocol's TGE today attracted considerable attention.
Positioned as a native lending protocol operating solely on the Base network, Seamless Protocol currently supports borrowing and lending services for ETH (including cbETH and other LSTs) as well as stablecoins like USDT, USDC, and DAI.
Official information shows that Seamless Protocol's product code is forked from Aave v3, while the liquidity mining code is forked from Ampleforth Geyser v2. Both referenced projects have been operating stably for several years, with relatively good security.
In addition to basic services similar to Aave, Seamless Protocol has also created a lending model called "Integrated Liquidity Market (ILM)," which allows specific liquidity providers to offer controlled liquidity to authorized borrowing strategies—these borrowing strategies are securely embedded within smart contract code to ensure that liquidity is not misused. The biggest feature of ILM is that it allows borrowers to provide under-collateralized loans, thereby amplifying the capital efficiency of the entire DeFi ecosystem.
According to Defillama data, Seamless Protocol currently has a total TVL of approximately $20 million, ranking fifth within the ecosystem and second in the lending sector, only behind the established leader Compound, which has expanded to the Base ecosystem.
In terms of tokenomics, the main utility of SEAM is protocol governance, with a total supply of 100 million tokens, distributed as follows:
Core Contributors 8%: Allocated to core contributors responsible for developing the protocol;
Community Contributors 3%: Allocated to community contributors, part-time contributors, and advisors who have contributed to the protocol's development;
Ecosystem Support and Foundation 20%: Used for developer grants, ecosystem/partner funding, community management/operations, etc.;
Community Rewards 13.5%: Used for various community-directed rewards, such as third-party-led marketing, education, community incentive activities, airdrops, grants, and other community reward programs;
DAO 55.5%: Used for protocol liquidity mining and other community rewards.
According to the airdrop requirements disclosed by Seamless Protocol, the SEAM airdrop will be distributed to two groups of users: first, old users who have used Seamless Protocol and received OG points; second, users who have completed various tasks or participated in community growth activities such as AMAs on platforms like Galxe. Users can check their eligibility for the airdrop on the official website.
From the information above, it can be seen that the share distributed in this genesis airdrop accounts for only 0.4% of the total supply of SEAM, while the total allocation of tokens under the "community rewards" category is 13.5%. Therefore, it is not ruled out that Seamless Protocol may conduct follow-up airdrop plans (which seems to be a common practice among OP series projects).
Currently, another good way to acquire SEAM is to participate in the liquidity mining program that Seamless Protocol launched simultaneously early this morning. With SEAM incentives, both borrowing and lending currently offer considerable yields; for example, USDbC (bridged USDC) has a supply yield of up to 79%.
Finally, it is worth noting that the most significant aspect of Seamless Protocol's TGE is that Coinbase immediately announced support for SEAM at its genesis.
Although Base itself has emphasized that it will not issue tokens and has even delegated governance of the network to Optimism, various projects within the ecosystem have complete freedom to issue tokens, and Coinbase has ample motivation to support these projects rooted in its own soil.
In this way, Coinbase's reputation and liquidity advantage will become a significant boost for Seamless Protocol and more Base native projects in their early development, which could be a key factor in whether Base can unlock the wealth effect in its ecosystem and compete with other Layer 2 solutions in the future.
