Waves, a major custom tokens blockchain valued at more than $310 million and currently the 44th-ranked cryptocurrency overall, has successfully turned itself into the most efficient and low-cost platform for airdrops — thanks to its top-of-the-line infrastructure and unique scaling solutions.
Airdrops are the New ICOs
Initial coin offerings once reigned supreme in the cryptocurrency space – but with increased regulation, the heyday of ICOs is likely coming to an end. However, when the old goes out, the new comes in, and airdrops are the new hot topic in the industry.
In cryptocurrency, the term ‘airdrop’ refers to the strategy of distributing newly-created tokens to a group of users of another major digital asset in an attempt to instantly gain both a user base and an active community.
Bitcoin’s numerous forks have famously operated this way. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) was airdropped to existing Bitcoin (BTC) holders by using the same private keys and addresses on a new blockchain – though Bitcoin is far from alone in this practice.
A whole slew of initiatives have chosen to provide existing coin communities with an airdrop of tokens in an attempt to persuade and incentivize them to utilize a new blockchain project. Beyond the ‘fork’ strategy, a group of developers are able to create a blockchain token and ecosystem on top of smart contracts or a ‘2.0’ protocol like Waves, Ethereum, or Cardano, and simply distribute tokens to all of the host blockchain’s existing users.
Large-Scale Airdrops Are Not Cheap
Airdrops are an easy way of pushing a blockchain project to the global cryptocurrency community amid the legal issues and regulatory uncertainty surrounding the ICO sector. As a result, smart contract protocols like Ethereum have seen a dramatic increase in demand from projects seeking to conduct airdrops. However, these frequently consume a significant chunk of the capacity of a blockchain network, leading to delayed transactions and other unintended consequences.
Additionally, running a large-scale airdrop is an expensive endeavor, requiring developers to cover the transaction fees needed to send their tokens to a broad group of cryptocurrency users. This process alone may cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Waves, however, boasts a robust and unique consensus algorithm called Waves-NG, which is capable of processing hundreds of thousands of transactions in an incredibly short timespan. In its flagship test run on 26 December 2017, the Waves blockchain protocol cleared 330,000 transactions – 170,000 of which were processed within 20 minutes. According to Waves’ developers, it is currently possible to process up to 10 million transactions per day – making Waves one of the fastest blockchain platforms in the world. As explained by the Waves team:
Waves’ consensus algorithm is Waves-NG, which is capable of processing an order of magnitude more transactions than most other blockchains – quickly and at low cost. Standard fees are 0.001 WAVES per transaction (around $0.005 right now) but it gets even cheaper thanks to the mass-pay function, which is purpose-built exactly for this reason.
July is Full of Waves Airdrops
The Waves team is carrying out two airdrops in July — both of which are meant to celebrate the World Cup.
A total of 200,000 SOCCER tokens and 100,000 MTN tokens will be airdropped to users, with 50,000 MTN tokens out of the 100,000 MTN total being provided to the players and coaches of the national team of Russia. Should Russia win the world cup, Waves claims the total prize fund could reach $3 million.
Waves will buy back all these tokens, meaning that the two airdrops essentially operate as a World Cup raffle event:
Waves will buy back Soccer Tokens not later than 60 calendar days after the end of the soccer championship, provided that the user submits a relevant order for selling Soccer Tokens on the Waves DEX. The order must be submitted within 25 (twenty-five) days of the end of the soccer championship.
The Waves platform is one of the most well-established platforms for initiatives to carry out large-scale airdrops, thanks to its scalability and high throughput capacity. It is capable of handling millions of transactions on a daily basis – and the Waves development team will continue to improve on its consensus algorithm and scaling solutions to provide an even more highly-scalable ecosystem for developers and blockchain projects.
What do you think of Waves? Do you think the platform is indeed the best place for airdrops? Let us know in the comments below!
Images courtesy of Waves
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