Airdrop criteria

Token discussions
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Hi Mamas and welcome to our second airdrop thread.

For the newcomers, first of all, thanks for registering. Please don’t forget this forum is a community led effort, and at the time of writing is not affiliated with the Marginfi team or devs.

The feedback expressed on the first tokenomics/airdrop discussion was very interesting and appreciated. However, I believe we could achieve better results by discussing individual elements of the (potential) airdrop process. Today I’d like to focus discussion around the exclusion criteria for the airdrop. I’m eager to see what the community believes is the best way to set the minimum requirements for elegibility.

I’ll start by sharing my thoughts. I would personally exclude:

  1. Clear clusters of interconnected wallets abusing the points system. Here I’m not talking two brothers under the same roof who transacted once between them. I’m talking expert farmers who take advantage of the system to obtain large scale financial gains, ultimately ruining the experience for the actual users and supporters.
  2. Wallets with a negligibile amount of points. Here I’m not talking about users who lended or borrowed with a small capital. There is nothing wrong with using DeFi with a small capital. I’m talking about people who deposited a small amount for a very short period of time and then left the platform to never come back. I don’t agree with the “free for all” airdrop tier adopted by other protocols.
  3. Wallets who interacted for a very short time. I believe the airdrop system should apply a time weight to points to ensure a higer reward for longstanding users. At the same time, it should exclude wallets who deposited/interacted for a very short time. For example, a wallet with a 10M USD deposit that lasted 5 minutes in total should be excluded regardless of its size.

Please share your thoughts! We can then follow up with another thread for multipliers and other ideas.

Update: the post includes feedback on general airdrop criteria rather than just exclusion criteria, so I’m changing the topic title.

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excluding after jito farmers with less than 10k total points would be nice imo it will automatically exclude farmers with too many wallets (like in 100s)

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Agree with the clusters/minimum.

Other than that, I don’t think that it should be overcomplicated. Message from other forum:

  1. Drop 80% of the tokens to pre-JTO users per the points system.
  2. Drop 20% of the tokens to post-JTO users per the points system.

Everyone gets a piece of the pie. The farmers who are more likely to dump get a smaller cut. Users who are more likely to stick around get a bigger cut and stay involved in the ecosystem.

For the 80/20 split, this should apply to all points earned in the two periods.

Example with 1b tokens dropped:

  1. 800M weighted per the points as at 07/12.
  2. 200M weighted per the points earned between 07/12 and the announcement date.

This would keep everybody happy, and favour those that are more likely to stick around rather than just dumping the tokens.

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Hello edgar, so i have an issue with sybil protection. I have a lot of friends in nepal who do this have access to crypto in nepal because it is banned so hence they had sent me money to buy sol and lend on marginfi. What happens to their and my wallets now? I have great ranks on my and my friends wallets.

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I agree with all 3. It would be great if attention was paid to the pre-Jito period in historical terms.

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6

It seems that users with less than 100 points were not eligible in JITO, so we should also exclude users with fewer points.
It might be worth considering the threshold for excluding users based on points.

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Hey guys - super excited to be here and to see the stellar community conversation, holy shit! Note that I am contributing to this thread with my own opinions and not those necessarily representing the views of the core team, but definitely with the intention to foster substantive and ultimately impactful community conversation and with the view that marginfi is designed to be a decentralized protocol.

Airdrop exclusion criteria for a points-related airdrop is clearly an interesting and important topic. A few things I’m seeing in the thread:

Given that points are earned over time, many protections are simplistically baked in

Example:

  • Wallets who interacted for a very short time are naturally punished. The example used above - a wallet with a $10M USD deposit for 5 minutes - would earn 10M * 1/(1440/5) = 35k points, and that’s with a pretty sizeable chunk of capital.

Now, this isn’t to say that it may not be worth it to put further exclusion criteria in. In my experience, setting static parameters (especially if they’re given ahead of time) usually just leaves people to adjust their sybilling - e.g., if the airdrop criteria involved “deposited for a minimum of 1 day”, sybillers would deposit for 1.01 days vs. 5 minutes. In practice, this is not an effective approach.

A more effective approach, imho, if you want to add further protections on top of the time-based point accrual that already exists, is to go with some kind of relative target that naturally moves with userbase usage - e.g., “deposits at the 1% percentile deposit length will be excluded”. This serves as

  • A good balance of expectation management and defense vector obscurity (you can’t just write a bot to deposit for a day at a time)
  • A more proper alignment with real usage (the average user will have usage patterns that are naturally in qualification, without having to do anything special except be an average user)

Another example of where time-based point accrual is valuable:

  • Wallet clusters / wallet rotation is much less effective, because the same capital can only be earning in one place at a time. e.g., it doesn’t matter if you have a 100 wallets, your 100 wallets will earn the same amount as 1 wallet would if you’re rotating the same amount of capital across them.

A relative criteria cutoff may be effective here as well - if you’re rotating across 100 wallets, many are likely to fall into the 1% (or whatever tail percentage is set) deposit / usage timeline and be excluded

  • Note: Individual deposit timelines vs. overall usage timelines are interesting here (e.g. excluding wallets with <1% of overall usage time is probably better overall than excluding individual deposits of <1% deposit length, the latter being much harder to calculate and communicate to the broader community)

Overall, strongly agreed that not overcomplicating the criteria is absolutely critical to a successful drop - at the end of the day, a major part of this process is community expectation management, and people tend not to like things that are too complicated to understand.

pre/post JTO criteria is interesting and something that I’ll give more thought to

Curiuos to hear what you guys think of my thoughts!

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I like static prerequisites (obviously not given ahead of time) that are extremely easy to understand/communicate and that filter out low value accounts even before any points are considered.

For example something like having a balance for minimum x days, possibly with a minimum value if there are a lot of dust accounts.

Connext used mandatory qualifiers and I think they were simple and fair. I was filtered out by those by the way.

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Thanks for jumping in, @edgarpavlovsky. I appreciate your participation in the discussion, and I’m sure the rest of the community does too.

I agree with your line of thinking and I especially like the approach of "deposits at the 1% percentile deposit length will be excluded”. Not saying any number should be set in stone right now, but the concept makes sense. I’m also in agreement with the idea of keeping the criteria straightfowrard for all the users, especially considering the language barrier that many face when they interact with english-based content.

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Pre-Post JTO criteria may make sense, but in the end it’s probably not worth it to punish those users, given if marginfi drop is going to be a success, they would probably hold a part of the merit.

TVL went from 149.05m USD (7. December 2023) to 406.69m USD today. A 172% increase since JTO airdrop. Higher the TVL, higher the theoretical value of the protocol. That’s something to take into account imo.

“keeping the criteria straightfowrard for all the users” is a must.

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My thought about future airdrop is very simple - JTO criteria is quite good to use.

And someone above mentioned wallets who interscted for a short period of time with a 10m usd as an example - but you should also understand risks that person took depositing such a big amount of money.

My conclution is using tiers ( tier 1,2,3 …etc ) would be the best and simple choise.

Thank you.

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12

Hey @edgarpavlovsky, thanks for joining us here. I’ve been thinking about the JTO criteria, and how to balance early and late supporters rewards. @sungfive rightly highlighted the importance of Total Value Locked (TVL) growth, and it’s evident that those who joined post-JTO have played a significant role in driving the website’s success.

Your point on the points-based system is solid—it fairly acknowledges users’ contributions, essential for the protocol’s growth. And it is a balanced approach that ensures latecomer farmers and whales don’t disproportionately benefit. This way, we acknowledge the diverse contributions from both early and late supporters, maintaining a fair distribution.

I think it’s vital to consider the post-airdrop scenario. Both early and late supporters staying engaged is the key for the protocol’s sustained success. Balancing incentives for ongoing participation will contribute to the long-term health of the community and the protocol.

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Why do you wanna “split” points in two periods? There are no periods at all. There are just POINTS that are earned for the whole period of farming. Spliting, separating or divining is the worst method that can be used - everyone should be equal depending on how much they have deposited into the platform ( that shows the loyalty ). You deposit more - you earn more. And there should be no reference to time or smth.

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I agree with this thought, JITO users have contributed a lot to the liquidity, JITO airdrop has boosted the solana DeFI with lots of TVL. So, it’ll be useful to include them.

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Totally agree with you!

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I do agree that there is only one period. It shouldn’t matter when someone joined and started earning points when there is a point system in place. The point system already takes time into place. Sure a few late whales may make it into the drop, but you’re going to hurt many more average people. The pre/post jito date would be an even worse move in my opinion. For one, it seems to say everyone pre jito was not a farmer and only in it for the pure reasons while everyone post jito is a farmer and should be punished accordingly. People were farming prior to jito and they are farming now. Yes, the sol pump along with jito really turned heads. I believe it moved a lot of people from eth to sol and helped pump sol even more. Excluding or punishing those users sends a clear message of you will not succeed here and not wanted. They should be welcomed and not given a reason to move liquidity back to eth. Retroactively adding “periods” sends a bad message to the community in my opinion.

I think it should a simple tiered approach with a minimum point threshold. If someone has been here for 200 days lending $1 and borrowing $0 what have they really risked and done for the protocol? How much are they likely to contribute in the future? Using tiers to reward people for the points earned in a points system created by the team with a minimum threshold is simple and shown to be effective.

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17

Check this out also and tell me what you think
Posted it in the distribution forum but post it here too know what you think of it

Another idea or distribution method that can help is if you list the criteria and the criteria will be point based
E.g

  • if you deposited for certain period of time to a certain period of time you get 5 points
    -If you deposited from a certain amount to a certain amount you get another 5 points
    -If you got from a certain marginfi points to a certain marginfi points you get another 5 points

So if you are able to beat all the criteria you will be getting 15 points in total right
So anyone who has 15 points will get max allocation of the token
If anyone gets below 3-5 points you are disqualified and if you get from this point to this point you get a certain amount of allocation
That will really help and it will favour both the whales and traders will little funds IMO

NB im not saying this should be the criteria but this can help in deciding how you can distribute the token

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Hi Fredrake, I may not be following exactly. Can you please elaborate? It seems like you are recommending throwing out the current point system of time based only. For example, I’m reading it as if someone lent $1 for 200 days they should be rewarded more than someone who lent $30k for 50 days. I’m not saying that was your intention, just how I’m reading it. Before I comment I just want to make sure I understand.

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I think I see what you are saying. I’m going to create an arbitrary scenario to see if this what you were saying.

Airdrop criteria

  • Contributed for 30 days
  • Contributed for 60 days
  • Contributed for 90 days
  • Points Earned >= 50k
  • Points Earned >= 100k
  • Points Earned >= 500k
  • Took a loan out for greater than 10k
  • Supplied more than $10
    Etc etc

Then you count your points and
1 - 3 points get x amount
4 - 7 get x amount
8+ get x amount

Is this what you are getting at?

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Alright this is what I’m saying
I’m assuming that these are the criteria
-If you deposited from August/july to September you get 5 points
-If you deposited from deposited from $100-$1k you get 5 points
-If you deposited from 2k-10k you get 5 points
-If you deposited from 10k-50k you get 5 points
-if you got marginfi points ranging from 100-1k you get 5 points
-if you got marginfi points ranging from 1k-10k you get 5 points
-if you got 11k-50k points you get 5 points and so on
So now from the criteria I listed if you beat all criteria you will be getting 35 points which will give you the maximum allocation of $MRGN token
If you have less than 5 or 10 points you will not be eligible
This way you will favour both the whales and the ones with little funds

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