There were cool mechanics in both airdrops to stop sybil farmers, but some other things are jeopardizing the community.
People always look back at how a token was distributed and use that to establish the legitimacy of the different protocols/chains, and with all these gymnastics, some of us are concerned that you might be messing it up.
The 2 problems with the mechanics established in the airdrops:
1- Heavily skewed in favor of people already holding OP:
Lots of users might not be participating in governance because they did not get airdrop 1, or they simply do not care about it. But, are not these real OP users too, that should have the opportunity/invitation to participate in governance that these airdrops represent?
This mechanic is favoring the accounts that already got airdrop 1, or the ones who already have a lot of OP, heavily favoring centralization. This makes no sense.
2- Great disparity in the amounts of OP received per account
Even if were not true that not all accounts should have an equal invitation to the governance of the optimism collective (wich is a very debatable assumption in itself), i dont see how its a good idea that, for example, some accounts get airdroped 5000x the governance power over othersā¦ which is exactly what airdrop 2 did. (some users got 1, some selected few 5000xā¦ most got < 20)
I will put this in more practical terms, from my perspective:
Im a real user, and optimism is my main chain, and have over 500 txs. I got 80 OP, and I dont understand why some users have gotten 27k OP from the first airdrop, and those same got 5k from this second one now. Why do these people are 400x more valuable than me as a user? I dont think they even use the chain as much as i do. And most casual users from op received even less than meā¦its obvious they will be mad.
The disparity and centralization you are creating from the start is huge. And what its more worrisome is that its done at discretion, without any valid justification for it.
I dont know if āfairdropsā are the best, but at least you should be VERY close/striving to it. To have a wide and equal distribution as possible. If, lets say, you gave equal ammounts of OP to users who had meet x criteria, these airdrops would have been a lot more legitimate. Maybe not a fairdrop, but setting a 2x cap or whatever. I think both airdrops had good intentions from the team, but in reality they are heavily centralizing the collective at discretion, and taking away legitimacy of the project in the process.
Maybe its still early to fix the course, but that might imply, for example doing fairdrops from now on and not doing airdrops to any account that already received X ammount of OPā¦ wich will make OP whales mad. lol.