As a crypto enthusiast and DApp dev, IMO this (and indeed most crypto projects especially ones that are really nothing more than ERC-20 or BRC-20 tokens) raises major red flags for me. IMO, it is sketchy moonboi shit.
If a hype-drenched crypto project is brand new and is already aggressively marketing itself with no discernible real world utility or reason for the disbursement of “governance tokens”, solely fixated on “number go up”, it is usually a scam/pump and dump.
Taking a look at the Initial Token Allocation for this project definitively allows me to make conclusions about the team’s honesty and trustworthiness.
So without further ado: check out the super sketchy token allocation (they try to break up different groups of insiders to try and hide the fact that most of the token goes to insiders and private investors…compare that to Ergo and it seems incredibly greedy in contrast): ITA
17% — StarkWare Investors
32.9% — Core Contributors: StarkWare and its employees and consultants, and Starknet software developer partners
50.1% granted by StarkWare to the Foundation, earmarked as follows:
9% — Community Provisions — for those who performed work for Starknet and powered or developed its underlying technology, e.g. via past use of the StarkEx L2 systems. Crucially, all Community Provisions will be based on verifiable work that was performed in the past. For example, to the extent Community Provisions will be given to past StarkEx users, allocations will be determined based on verifiable usage of StarkEx’s technology that took place prior to June 1, 2022.
9% — Community Rebates — rebates in Starknet Tokens to partially cover the costs of onboarding to Starknet from Ethereum. To prevent gamification, Community Rebates will only apply to transactions that occur after the rebate mechanism is announced.
12% — Grants for research and work done to develop, test, deploy and maintain the Starknet protocol
10% — a strategic reserve, to fund ecosystem activities that are aligned with the Foundation’s mission as explained in the previous post in this series.
2% — Donations to highly regarded institutions and organizations, such as universities, NGOs, etc, as decided by Starknet Token holders and the Foundation.
8.1% Unallocated — the Foundation’s unallocated treasury is in place to further support the Starknet community in a manner to be decided by the community.
Do you count the core devs (who maintain/write the core protocol), the foundation (preferably a DAO or voting based organization that is responsible for earmarking the funding for the upgrades and projects for the community), and treasury (that distributes mining/staking rewards and collects the fees for later distribution) as fair distribution? I do (depending on the structure of the aforementioned organizations obviously). Just wondering where you sit on that issue and any of projects that you can point to that have that ideal token allocation you speak of.
I haven’t found a more fair ITA than Ergo but then again, the Ergo project seems to have trouble paying/attracting really solid core devs other than the founder, Kushti.
Edit: took out some mention of my favorite project. Want to be impartial here.
Ideal allocation is 0% foundation, 0% team, 0% VC, 0% anyone. Protocol starts at some date in the future, these are the rules, this is how much will the block reward be. This is how will block reward behave in 5years from now, and this is how it will be in a decade. Mine away, sell on the market for profit. Keep at this for at least a decade. There is no other way to have a fair distribution. Everything else is likely a unregistered security token.
As a dev myself, it’s a pretty hard sell to get collaborators as it is. I can’t imagine that I’d be able to find ANY if I were to roll my entirely own cryptocurrency with fully realized tokenmonics on consensus algorithm on day one. Sounds like your idea couldn’t possibly be implemented in a staking context as well.
Do you know of any projects that did it this way (Bitcoin, IMO, doesn’t count since the devs DID end up taking a huge stake in it for themselves)
It is hard to justify having yet another cryptocurrency anyways, as you will fall into the same trap everyone fell in post ethereum - running a unregistered security and living afraid of legal consequences. Lying to the community and spending a fortune on lawyers while the VCs who gave you a push end up with any real money.
It is not my idea anyways, it is something I remember from back in a day. I was interested in the cryptocurrency scene back in 2012, 2013… When things were different. The distribution method I have explained was deployed by Peercoin, the very first proof of stake coin. A brief look shows it is still being distributed in the same fashion and github is active. So clearly there is developer interest.
I’ll sincerely take your example/suggestions to heart moving forward on my own project. I had different ideas about what a fair distribution is and this really turns that on its head. This idea satisfies many of the more egalitarian instincts I have.
If you are interested in cryptocurrency perhaps it is worth to cooperate on an established, known to not be illegal security project rather than starting your own.
None of them do what I’m trying to do but thanks for the advice. I’m working on a DApp in the Cardano ecosystem that uses data from an Oracle on Ergo. Not sure if you consider Cardano or Ergo illegal securities but the SEC hasn’t come after them YET.
I have never heard of ergo but if they had an ICO they probably did start an illegal security. Cardano has all the elements of a security. So it is just a matter of time, SEC is taking it slow. I believe the SEC is trying to set a series of legal precidents to be able to take down the ‘root of all the evil’ - Ethereum. Copycats will easily fall later on.
I suppose, if it comes to that, nothing is stopping devs like me from hard-forking Cardano’s open source code and launching that fork with a 100% public initial token allocation. I’ve honestly already been considering that option for a while now.
Hopefully you’re wrong and it never comes to that… but I’d be ready if it did, for sure.
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