Parsec Weekly #54
Celestia as the new (3,3) and Solana Saga's to follow a similar reflexive loop
Why Celestia could become the new (3,3)
The launch of $MANTA (as the first L2 to leverage Celestia for Data Availability(DA)) and a thread from Taiki Maeda got me thinking more deeply about the 2nd order implications of the $TIA staking-airdrop farming strategy which has emerged as of late.
While I for one have tried to remove some of last cycle’s etchings from my mind, the (3,3) meme first popularised by OlympusDAO is not too far down memory lane.
Videos like this would emphasise the notion that due to the high APR, if one were to stake OHM, the price of OHM itself would not make a difference... that you would make money either way, up or down. Clearly this was not the case, we had not in fact created a perpetual motion machine powered by maths and viral marketing! Ultimately, we all know how the story of OHM and other such (3,3) games ended.
As an infrastructure provider on the DA layer right at the bottom of the stack, a ton of projects are building on top of Celestia and in harmony with the Cosmos ethos, it appears that many will be airdropping a small portion of supply to $TIA stakers to align incentives, distribute supply and bootstrap a community. In fact, following Celestia’s mainnet launch in November, we have already seen 2 instances:
1. Dymension (DYM):
AltLayer (ALT):
Given the large number of chains and rollups which will be leveraging Celestia for DA, it is likely that $TIA stakers will be the beneficiaries of multiple airdrops as these teams launch tokens. As we see these play out over time, $TIA likely becomes the defacto “airdrop farming coin” to buy and stake to receive “passive income”.
If one is holding a coin less so for price appreciation but more so for the yield (in the form of airdrops) it produces, it is therefore logical to assume that buyers are relatively price insensitive. The more airdrops which $TIA stakers receive, the more the market buys into the “airdrop farming coin” narrative and the more price insensitive they become. This *could* look something like a reflexive loop which would ultimately lead to a very high $TIA price and simultaneously an extreme dilution of the airdrop farming opportunity.
Clearly the mechanics are significantly different to an OHM and I, for one, feel very positively about what Celestia are doing from a technical standpoint. That said, from a markets perspective, one cannot discount the “airdrop farming” narrative potential and consequent price insensitivity of future $TIA buyers should this play out. This will be an extremely interesting space to monitor, especially if we see borrow/lending markets for $TIA emerge...
Why the Solana Saga could be one of the best investments of this cycle
-kezfourtwez
In line with Charlie’s thesis above, Solana Saga’s could follow a very similar reflexive loop.
Back in mid-December while Bonk was experiencing its face melting rally to a $1.5b market cap, the idea of a new ‘free money trade’ sparked and sent a wave of collective consciousness across the crypto space’s communication channels - resulting in the remaining supply (which was a large majority) of the previously unsuccessful Saga’s, selling out in less than 24 hours.
On the 16th of December someone had remembered that a portion of the Bonk supply had been reserved for Saga owners, then they’d figured out that the airdrop ($750 at the time) was worth more than it cost to buy the phone ($600). This spread like wildfire and the orders started streaming in, within hours they’d reduced the limit to one per customer, and by the end of the day all 20,000 had been sold.
The next spark to the collective consciousness came after a few other builders on Solana pledged to also airdrop to Saga holders - and so a thesis was born, the perfect distribution model.
20,000 unique holders*, 20,000 of Solana’s most active power users receive tokens, NFTs and early access to new apps and protocols, in return for a well rounded distribution mechanism and a cost effective way to bootstrap a community.
The reflexive part is that the more success stories that companies see via airdropping saga holders, the more likely other builders are to follow suit.
A week after the sellout, unopened Saga’s were selling on eBay for $5000. People were paying a pretty premium, pricing in potential future airdrops based off this reflexive thesis.
And that’s the story of how I ended up with 289 worthless NFT’s :))
They can’t all be winners, and shooters are going to shoot. So far the most successful airdrop has been the Saga Monkes, with a current floor price of 9.74 SOL ($922). Meaning the value of the phone is currently sitting at nearly 3x the original cost. Somebody created a great website to track this progress at checkphone.xyz
Just a few days ago and off the back of the Saga’s success, Solana Mobile has announced and begun taking pre orders for a 2nd version of the device. From selling only a few thousand of the 1st edition in 12 months, to a 24h hour sellout for the remainder of the 20,000 units, to receiving 30,000 pre orders in for the 2nd in 24h.
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trhdh