Taiko Airdrop Controversy: A Project That Claims to Be Fully Decentralized and Founders Who Admit to Lack of Transparency in Rules
The airdrop is not over yet. Will Taiko's reputation turn around?Author: flowie, ChainCatcher
Editor: Marco, ChainCatcher
In the early hours of May 23, Taiko announced the airdrop query page and the TKO token economic model. However, due to the airdrop being far below expectations and the lack of transparency in the airdrop rules, Taiko faced significant criticism from community users.
It's not new for a project to be criticized over airdrop issues, but the strong statements made by Taiko co-founder and CEO Daniel Wang completely ignited the anger of community users, putting him in the spotlight.
Wang first posted on X, stating, "To avoid unnecessary disputes, we will not disclose the detailed TKO genesis airdrop rules. Our goal is fairness, but we cannot satisfy everyone. Congratulations to those who received TKO, and apologies to those who did not."
Soon after, as the criticism and even insults on the X platform grew, Wang seemed to be provoked and spoke again on Discord:
- Zero tolerance for any related insults;
- Taiko is a partner of Galaxy, not an employment relationship; rankings on Galaxy are not a reference, and participation in Taiko-related activities on Galaxy carries little weight;
- If you did not receive an airdrop, it is because others had higher scores;
- The lack of transparency in rules is because transparency cannot resolve disputes, and the definition of "fairness" is highly subjective.
With these remarks, Taiko was completely engulfed in a public relations crisis. Some users complained, "This is the worst PR response I've ever seen," while others called on major exchanges to firmly resist such opaque crypto projects.
Taiko: An Ethereum Layer 2 Born with a Golden Key
Since its establishment in early 2022, Taiko has attracted significant attention, as its core team is almost entirely composed of the original members of the well-known Ethereum Layer 2 ZK-Rollup protocol Loopring.
The three co-founders of Taiko, Daniel Wang, Brecht Devos, and Matthew Finestone, all come from the Loopring team.
Daniel Wang, the co-founder and CEO of Taiko who spoke in the community, is also the founder of Loopring.
Loopring was the first ZK-Rollup deployed on Ethereum, and in 2020, Loopring went public on Coinbase, becoming the first Chinese project to be listed on Coinbase. It later also listed on exchanges like Binance and OKX, enjoying great success.
Before joining Web3, Wang served as the technical head at ZhongAn Insurance and JD.com, as well as a technical director and senior software engineer at Google. He has co-founded companies like Yunrang Technology and Coinport.
With a background in traditional Web2 giants, being a serial entrepreneur, and experience in both Web2 and Web3, Wang is undoubtedly a type of founder favored by investors.
After its establishment, Taiko quickly attracted investments from numerous well-known investment institutions.
According to RootData, in about two years since its establishment, Taiko has raised a total of $37 million, with investors including traditional firms like Sequoia China, Yunqi Capital, BAI Capital, GGV Capital, as well as well-known exchanges or market makers like OKX Ventures, GSR, Wintermute, and crypto-native capital such as Hash Global, IOSG Ventures, and Generative Ventures.
Taiko is a Type-1 zk-EVM (reference article: “Vitalik: The Future of Different Types of ZK-EVM”), which is a fully decentralized, Ethereum-equivalent ZK-Rollup.
The zkEVM that Taiko aims to build was originally part of what Loopring intended to do, but during the development phase, Wang and the team believed that Loopring was an application-specific scaling solution, while Taiko aimed to build a general-purpose scaling solution. Mixing the two would cause significant confusion, leading Taiko to develop independently from Loopring.
Why Did the Taiko Airdrop Cause Discontent?
On December 27, 2022, Taiko launched its first public testnet, Alpha-1. In January of this year, Taiko announced the launch of its sixth testnet, the final testnet Katla.
Over the course of a year and a half, Taiko has released six testnets, along with multiple Galaxy tasks.
Despite the long timeline and numerous tasks required for participation, with a star-studded founding team and prominent capital backing, Taiko has always been a key project for "airdrop hunters," and community users had high expectations for it.
According to official data disclosed by Taiko in February, after the release of the six testnets, Taiko had over 1.1 million unique wallets, over 30,000 decentralized proposers, and more than 14,000 decentralized validators, indicating high user engagement.
Currently, according to Taiko's official announcement, the total supply of TKO is 1 billion, with the genesis airdrop accounting for 5%, primarily distributed to Taiko users and the Loopring community.
However, after the announcement of the airdrop during this testnet phase, some users found that despite participating in multiple testnets and Galaxy tasks, they ended up with zero airdrop rewards. While some users did receive airdrops, the amounts seemed to be far below expectations.
For community users, what is even more frustrating than spending a lot of time interacting and receiving nothing is not knowing where they "failed." The lack of transparency in Taiko's airdrop rules has raised questions within the community.
The task points recorded on the Galxe Galaxy platform reflect user interaction behavior and have long been regarded as a rough estimate of airdrop eligibility.
However, some community users claimed that different accounts with the same Galaxy score had vastly different airdrop results. Additionally, the project team did not disclose detailed conditions for the witch and snapshot, leading to reasonable suspicions of insider trading.
In response, Wang emphasized on Discord that Taiko is a partner of Galaxy, not an employment relationship; rankings on Galaxy are not a reference, and participation in Taiko-related activities on Galaxy carries little weight.
For participating users, since the weight of Galaxy tasks is minimal, why does Taiko continue to release numerous Galaxy tasks to guide user participation?
After announcing the token airdrop, will Taiko still release new tasks on Galaxy? Will users continue to participate?
The Airdrop Is Not Over, Will Taiko's Reputation Turn Around?
With each airdrop, there are naturally those who are happy and those who are worried; it is not new for users to criticize the project for not meeting airdrop expectations.
While many users received zero airdrops this time, many others received substantial rewards.
Taiko has also disclosed airdrop-related data, stating that 300,000 addresses have claimed over 50 million tokens. Some users received between 3,000 to 9,000 TKO tokens, which, based on the current AEVO premarket price of $5, would amount to approximately $15,000 to $45,000 in value.
Airdrops during the testnet phase are generally just an appetizer; Taiko has indicated that another 10% of tokens will be allocated for future airdrops.
In March, Taiko stated that the mainnet would launch within three months after the Cancun upgrade. With the mainnet approaching, after the first airdrop, will Taiko learn from the experience and turn its reputation around in subsequent airdrops?
