BLIP - Retroactive and Future Developer Token Grant

[untamedadam]

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Due to either a miscommunication in Blast’s documentation and correspondence or a recent policy change, many Season 1 developers anticipated a token airdrop for their teams that ultimately did not occur. This unexpected outcome has resulted in financial difficulties for some teams who were relying on these funds to cover upfront costs, such as expensive code audits. Furthermore, this situation has led to some dissatisfaction and controversy, which is gradually becoming public and potentially affecting Blast’s reputation among current users and prospective developers (see exhibits below).

This proposal seeks to resolve the controversy by mending relationships with Season 1 developers through a retroactive token grant, while also introducing a new token grant for Season 2 and future seasons.

As a wonderful side effect, this proposal places more governance power in the hands of Blast’s developers, a group with no current representation on the Blast Progress Council.

MOTIVATION:

This proposal aims to reward the pioneering efforts of Season 1 developers, resolve the lingering controversy surrounding promised team tokens, attract new developer talent, expand the Blast developer ecosystem, increase developers’ voting power, and establish a sustainable grant structure for Season 2. It comes at a crucial time when emerging Layer 2 solutions like BeraChain and Abstract by Pudgy Penguins are gaining significant attention and will undoubtedly compete for developer interest in the coming months.

PROPOSAL DETAILS:

We propose that Season 1 developers receive a retroactive airdrop of 1.25% of $BLAST token supply. So as not to dilute users, these tokens can come from Blast’s Foundation pool, its Core Contributor pool, or from activating blockchain fees and buying back tokens with the proceeds. There may also be vesting terms.

Of the 1.25%, we propose 1% be airdropped equally among all developer teams that distributed Blast Points or Blast Gold in Season 1 as well all developer teams that won Gold Jackpot. The remaining 0.25% will go to the top-25 projects, weighted by Gold and Points, as a performance bonus. Based on feedback here, additional projects may be added as well.

For Season 2, we recommend an additional 1.25% of supply to be distributed based on participation and potentially on $BLAST token holder voting. This voting can be done quarterly.

IMPLEMENTATION:

Executing this proposal would require finalizing a list of Season 1 developers with input from the Blast community. We’ve already created a preliminary list based on those who distributed Points and Gold and won Gold Jackpot (see Exhibit I). Afterward, it would require eligible developers to complete a form to receive their airdrop. Allocations will be made public so that all members of all teams know what was shared.

Season 2 tokens would be distributed differently. Perhaps $BLAST voting would play a part. Or perhaps grant tokens are distributed through the Points API under a separate category.

ASSOCIATED COSTS:

This proposal has no costs beyond time from the Blast Foundation and a re-allocation of tokens.

PRIOR PROPOSALS:

N/A

EXHIBIT 1 - LIST OF SEASON ONE DEVELOPERS + JACKPOT WINNERS

Season 1 Eligible Developers

EXHIBIT 2 - PUBLIC SENTIMENT ON PROMISED TEAM AIRDROP:

thegoldeneel.eth

Stats

CBB0FE

Blast Sniperz

etherlect

EXHIBIT 3 - PRIVATE SENTIMENT:

Many developers have spoken to me about this issue but did not want to be quoted publicly.

Anon developer: “I felt farmed by Blast”

Anon developer: “What Blast did was a clear bait-and-switch”

Anon developer: “My next project will be on Base because of this”

Anon developer: “Blast was extremely sneaky and misleading in their wording early on”

EXHIBIT 4:

Blast directly stating that developers can opt to keep tokens

Blast

[yieldenjoyer]

Forgetting devs completely was some nut job decision imo. Time to make it right.

If we need to vote on this, let’s get going already.

[etherlect]

Rewarding the efforts of the teams in S1 is an excellent way to maintain developer interest throughout S2. Given the short attention span in the crypto space, a one-year season is quite long. Therefore, it’s crucial to keep developers engaged and committed to their projects and Blast.

[kycrypto]

I’ve been very clear to the Blast team before.
If Blast doesn’t support developers beyond a handful of “haves”, developers will leave.

[yieldenjoyer]

Agreed. I believe vesting is necessary in this case. Just as S1 farmers need to maintain TVL on Blast to vest their tokens, S1 developers should remain engaged to receive their portion of the tokens. Teams that have already abandoned their projects should be disqualified.

[Bowtiednecktie]

As a user I love Blast, but that’s only because of the developers making the great dapps on here. It’s time to make this right and reward them for making Blast great

[Golden]

I agree developers work hard and need to be rewarded on top of user incentives. Clarity on the subject from Blast is necessary and if deemed initial allocation was simply to deliver to the Dapps users, special consideration for another reward should be made for developers to motivate further ecosystem development.

[Andrea]

This is well deserved for devs! let’s go Wolves.

[0xAerlion]

Broadly agree with the Proposal outlined by Adam - developers are the lifeblood of the ecosystem, and without them, Blast would not have had the various DApps that made engaging with the Blast blockchain as fun as it would have been (this was echoed by many, and credit should rightfully go to the devs).

Regardless, would like to drop the following for consideration prior to distribution:

1. What is the objective of incentivizing projects like Plur, who have officially sunset their product? Are we optimizing for retroactive ‘payment’ OR aligning the interests of developers with the long term future of Blast? If we go down this route, should we also be doing something about projects like DropletDAO who were Honorable Mentions in the Big Bang, but did not make it on this list as they were forced to abandon their project midway due to lack of dev/audit funds?

2. Personally would advocate for an vesting terms for the dev teams for the S1 retroactive airdrop, contingent with continued work / improvement on their product until the end of S2 to align interests.

3. Fully in favor of S2 dev grants in $BLAST, with quarterly token voting from the community as the basis of distribution. This balances the relationship between the users and the dapps, and we avoid some of the recurring themes with some problematic teams in the ecosystem.

[gwr]

I support Adam and think devs should be rewarded but I initially read it as the devs would get Gold to share with their users… for using their dapp.

There were plenty of other ways for the devs to get paid thru fees, sales, inflated tx costs, frens and family wallet Gold distributions etc.

That said, I fully realize that Blast S2 will not bring in the numbers as S1 did if the devs have minimal to nil incentives to build. So, this should be addressed in whatever way possbile for the health and future of the chain.

[etherlect]

I deleted the post by mistake, but you can see the edits @gwr

[Ulti]

I appreciate Adam raising this discussion for the many teams who spent thousands of hours helping to grow the Blast ecosystem.

Teams not only built products, but worked on marketing, news, partnerships, and importantly many unique experiences for users.

It is vital the ecosystem both uphold the set expectations for many developer groups, while also being clear about future incentives for builders in the ecosystem, and hope this moves forward to a vote for the community to support.

[JerryJonesIII]

Was not even aware of this tbh.

GOOD devs and teams should be rewarded.

I am in favor of your proposal, Adam

[JerryJonesIII]

100% agree. If top notch teams are not incentivized to build on blast, they will leave. And that will hurt everyone. Users, investors, my wife when i can no longer buy her nice things.

[Shino]

I do agree developer airdrop early marketing was weird.

I think gold was used as a tool to manufacture winners instead of supporting dapps, munchables and cryptovalley should have never been given that much.

It was kinda disappointing how jackpot felt very manual instead of random.

I do disagree with:

Many of the teams were incredibly unprofessional and lazy:

Almost every discord from a blast project is lacking proper moderation / security setup, you cannot ask a question ANYWHERE without being bombarded by drainer links in the SERVER.

Most of them just copy pasta something that doesn´t work and presented that as their blast project, nfts being the biggest culprit.

Most nft projects before blastr just used the promise of gold to mint out and then relied entirely in staking systems that would reward gold to whoever was stupid enough to lock their nfts. In most cases, these nft projects just pocketed the entirety of mint funds and went into lazy mode waiting for blast to do everything for them.

I do think a retroactive reward would be cool for those who deserve it, but i don´t think many teams deserve it, most displayed incompetency at the highest level. For the most part, teams that did bother reading docs and took advantage of native yield / gas refunds / marketing… Are totally fine and very profitable, they don´t need retroactive rewards ( at least most of them).

All of this just feels like teacher giving you all the tools necessary for success but since you wanted for someone else do to the work for you, you failed anyways.

[roidz]

how does this benefit BLAST token holders though?
It just creates more selling pressure…

[MisterTodd]

Based comment here. Many grifters and third rate projects who did not fulfill commitments should get nothing.

The reward is getting your Dapp launched and customers.

[tethniley]

Totally agree on this.
50% Dev airdrop is totally miscomm-ed with users being given back 100% of the gold allocs from the teams.

Just don’t give anything to D1 Team thanks.

[sharkmeme]

I definitely think that Blast should retroactively reward devs who built on their chain.

[JerryJonesIII]

This is a fair take. To ensure my other comments in this thread are crystal clear, I believe many teams should not be retroactively rewarded.

Only the best of the best. Even if they have reaped the rewards of native yield / gas refunds / marketing and user acquisition, I don’t mind seeing them get a little bonus. Many of us wouldn’t even be on Blast any longer if it weren’t for the top 5-10 dapps/teams.