Shi Khai & Emerson from LongHash Ventures here. We’re investors in Safe, Safe Guardians, and active long-time users of the product.
Taking a step back, we believe a solid airdrop satisfies 3 aims:
Aim 1: Reward value creators that led to the success of today
We believe the current proposal has satisfied this aim. High-value assets stored and transacted on Safe has signalled confidence that built the network and Lindy effects that have made it the default multisig in Web3 today.
While we could include stables like USDC, USDT, and DAI, we agree with @lukas that it would open a Pandora’s box. i.e. what about FRAX, aUSDC, USDC-DAI LPs?
NFTs and other highly volatile tokens should also be excluded as there is no highly accurate way to value them.
Aim 2: Curate initial community & governance participants in a programmatic way
Any airdrop should also provide potential contributors with a strong vested & economic interest to contribute. These potential participants for Safe could include:
- Power users: Safe owners with high gas spend
- Safe power apps: With gas spend originating from Safes
- DAO experts: Addresses that have submitted proposals for the top 10% of DAOs by treasury volume on Safe
This proposal accounts for power users, and Safe power apps could be curated through the 5% Ecosystem allocation, but DAO experts with a strong track record of governance participation could make a significant impact on Safe in the long run.
Aim 3: Incentivise further contribution to the project DAO
Airdrops can never please everyone. To welcome contributors, however, Safe can open up a reserve amount for further manual retroactive grants. This provides an opportunity for people to make the case for how they have contributed and, importantly, how they will contribute (as per points 1 and 2 above). This can include L2s, as @tschubotz has pointed out.
These grants should be governed by a committee or subDAO, and also serves as the first small step towards decentralized governance for Safe.
In sum, we believe these changes could have a significant impact towards distributing governance power & incentivising contributions for a more actively involved DAO:
- To curate DAO participants in a programmatic way: Account for DAO experts
- To incentivise commitment to DAO contribution: Open a reserve amount for potential contributors