Grin and the Mythical Fair Launch

Grading Grin among a sea of cryptocurrency distribution models

By Hasu and Arjun Balaji

When Grin launched in early January after years of anticipation, it faced material pushback from prominent Bitcoiners who labeled it a “VC coin” and compared it to offerings from the 2016/18 ICO era. We think that criticism is unjustified as Grin’s launch was one of the fairest launches ever, if not the fairest.

What constitutes a fair launch?

Philosophers have debated questions of fairness for thousands of years, so we won’t pretend to have any new insight there. Instead, we will focus our analysis on what criteria for a fair launch have emerged over the short history of private currency markets.

The foundational principle we observe is that a fair launch offers equal opportunity — not equal outcome — to acquire a coin 1) over a long period of time 2) at a relatively equal price. This can be broken down across two dimensions: length of issuance and price equality.

(1) Length of Issuance

A long issuance schedule is important to give the market ample time to become aware of the project and discover a fair price. When 100% of the token supply is sold in a single 1-month time…