Is the future lies in earnestness?

As is often the case with projects with a linear airdrop distribution, Sanctum has had a mixed reaction from the community.

Without going into details, the average user only got a tiny bonus on investments, about 1% for a month of holding liquidity on the platform. With some simple maths, we can see that the APR is around 12%, which is roughly the same as we can get for holding stablecoins in lps.

But it's only the first impression. In reality, it's a lot more complicated and it has prompted me to reflect on some issues, and I am eager to share my thoughts. These observations are not exclusive to Sanctum, but extend to the broader realm of drops and LSTs.

If you read FP_Lee's blog as closely as I do, you know that the top 10% of wallets earned 96% of all EXP. If team use a simple linear distribution, it means that those top 10% of wallets would get 96% of all tokens allocated for the drop. That would make the rich even richer and the regular people supporting the project would get very little.

The most obvious solution in such a case is to do a distribution by tiers. This would be a great way to reward the top wallets without offending the average users. From the user's point of view, this format is one of the most interesting. But this only works in a perfect world.

The truth is, lots of projects have one big issue that gets in the way of the whole ecosystem developing. Sybils. In the process of searching, In my search, I've seen many recommendations from regular Influencers to make several small accounts instead of one main one. What to speak about industrial farmers, putting hundreds of accounts into projects in the hope of tiered distribution and the desired base reward. As the LayerZero experience has shown, no system at the moment is able to detect and screen them all.

It's also important to remember that one of the team's main job is to keep people engaged long-term and to give a token to someone who's genuinely interested and is unlikely to sell them and disappear as soon as they can.

A lot of people are unhappy that a few influencers are getting the same percentage as regular users of the platform. But that's not the issue right now. If all 10% were distributed to users, they'd only get double the number of tokens. So it's not 1%, but 2% on investments for the month. Even with that, 96% of the entire allocation would still belong to the top 10% of wallets. People wouldn't have become more loyal to the project from this, and it wouldn't have helped its development in any way. Most people would have sold their allocation right after the claim.

When you take a closer look, it's easier to see the cause-and-effect relationships, and it's clear that giving good allocations to content creators has helped solve most of the existing problems. It's also great for marketing, as it'll encourage content creators to write more articles, draw more memes, and promote Sanctum further on their blogs.

Sometimes the ideal solution just doesn't exist and I believe that the decision made here is a solid one. In fact, the team hinted at distribution like this several times in their speeches. The main thing is to be able to listen.