Free 💰💰💰 for OpenSea Users

On Christmas Eve, every user who had previously purchased an NFT on OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace in the metaverse, was airdropped a token that traded under the ticker $SOS.

The token acts as governance for OpenDAO, a new DAO that is rewarding OpenSea users for their contributions to the crypto community – since it appears a token from OpenSea will not be here in 2022. “$SOS is grateful to all NFT creators, collectors and markets for nurturing the entire NFT ecosystem. Special thanks go to OpenSea for its leadership in promoting NFT trading. To pay tribute, we have chosen OpenSea collectors to conduct our airdrop,” wrote OpenDAO on its website.

The $SOS token was a relatively fair drop. 50% belong to OpenSea users, 30% went to staking and liquidity incentives, and 20% of $SOS are being kept to fund OpenDAO’s treasury. The snapshot was taken on December 23rd, with the distribution weighted via total transactions and transaction volume.

According to Reddit co-founder and Web3 enthusiast Alexis Ohanian, the implications of the $SOS airdrop are radical. “These airdrops (like $ENS before it) flip script on how EVERYONE will value their time + spending u’re finally rewarded 4 using. It’s bringing incentives that I love (as a founder/investor) to the COMMUNITY that makes it all work,” wrote Ohanian on Twitter.

However, not everyone was enthused by the airdrop due to the distribution mechanics – which heavily favored whales. Variant Fund’s Spence Noon pointed this out on Twitter, writing, “The $SOS token distribution was just about as naive as you can get. Airdrops based primarily on transaction volume (ETH DAI USDC) mean whales/wash sellers have a disproportionate share of tokens, i.e., the top 100 holders own 74% of supply. Noble mission but truly community-owned?”

In addition to concerns over token distribution, Fabda Rice, the CEO of Quadrata Network, outlined five red flags regarding OpenDAO’s smart contract in a Christmas Eve tweet thread. Rice cited issues with the number of wallets holding 50% of the supply and a wonky “claim” feature as reasons he is advising “caution.”

Despite some worries regarding distributions and smart contracts, the overall response to the $SOS airdrop appears to be positive. On-chain analytics from Dune show that over 257,000 addresses have claimed $SOS – which is more than 1/4th the amount of addresses that have made at least one transaction on OpenSea (and it has been less than a week since token drop). Since launch, the token has skyrocketed upwards of 1,000% in price and currently sits at a market cap of $250 million+. According to OpenDAO, $SOS is now available on 15 different exchanges, such as Hotbit, BKEX, LBANK, and HOO.

While the token launched without plans (outside of rewarding users), OpenDAO has already announced a partnership with X, a cross-chain NFT marketplace, which will be dropping 25% of its tokens to the $SOS community.

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