The lay of the land in DeepOnion– How is DeepOnion planning to distribute coins moving forward?

There have been a lot of discussions following the new airdrop rules that DeepOnion implemented from November onwards. Let’s recap what happened over the last 4 months and touch the major topics that are discussed right now.

DeepOnion legacy signature campaign

For 15 weeks, DeepOnion ran a highly profitable signature campaign. Bitcointalk users had to wear the DeepOnion signature, corresponding their ranks, and post at least 10 high quality form posts. It was not easy to get accepted, users and posts were manually checked by the DeepOnion core team members. If you were in, however, you got a lot of bang for your bucks. We usually saw 400 USD worth of airdrops for lower ranked bitcointalk members and 1000 USD+ for the legendary members. Mind you, these were weekly payouts. It came with one caveat though — you were not allowed to sell more that 10% of your total airdrop amount, otherwise you were blacklisted. This generated loyal followers on one side and disappointed rejects on the other side. And it gave DeepOnion a tremendous visibility on bitcointalk (signatures and one of the highest frequented threads)

The problem with the old distribution

Meanwhile, the DeepOnion team realized that some users were abusing the system and cheating by participating with multiple accounts. Furthermore, the breadth of distribution so far has been limited to numbers lower than desired. This is why the new distribution rules were developed.

The new distribution — a move away from traditional signature campaigns

The new distribution model continues to be a signature campaign, but now everyone has to hold more than 100 Onions to be considered for the airdrop. Ranks in bitcointalk are not a factor any more. At the same time, activity on the official DeepOnion forum is rewarded via a second DeepPoints airdrop that constitutes 10% of the weekly airdrop.

The main targets of the new distribution method were getting rid of (new) cheaters and rewarding loyal holders of the coin. Well, there are two groups of users — existing users and new users. It is fair to assume that there are cheaters in the existing user group, they will continue to benefit from the new rules (without the hassle of maintaining multiple accounts active). On the new user side, you need to invest your Bitcoins now to get on board, which will root out new cheaters moving forward.

The interest factor — from a broad airdrop to rich getting richer?

Many of the complains about the new distribution were directed towards the compounded interest factor playing a dominant role in the distribution of the coin. Under this scheme, the divide between the wealthy Onion holders and new members becomes bigger with every coming airdrop round (whale accumulation). Signature campaigns can pay off plenty on bitcointalk, high ranking bitcointalk members that are not too liquid will hardly move to DeepOnion if they have to invest first and only can expect 7% on their 100 Onions.

What does DeepOnion really need?

DeepOnion needs what every successful coin needs — being traded on large exchanges, being attractive for investors, real world use cases and loyal users.

So far, about 21% of the pre-mine has been distributed. Larger exchanges will not list DeepOnion before the distribution is completed because they hate pre-mines that are controlled by a few hands only. Same applies at some extent for larger investors. So we probably have to wait for things to unfold in these areas until the distribution has been completed.

DeepOnion is on a good track regarding real world use cases, considering what has been released with DeepVault and what will be released with DeepSend.

So let’s focus on acquiring loyal users for now. I believe that a signature campaign like DeepOnion that ran for 4 months straight has run out of steam and will most likely not attract anyone else if continued. Everyone on bitcointalk should have heard of DeepOnion by now. We’ll have to rethink how to get attention in the crypto arena and ideally keep out the dumpers at the same time.

A hybrid scheme?

If the signature campaign does carry on, rewards should to be tied back to the bitcointalk ranks to be a success (e.g. a minimum amount, based on ranks). Other ways of further spreading the word are the upcoming public hero that can make a difference for the visibility of DeepOnion if scouted in line with the core targets of DeepOnion (I would suggest other channels outside of bitcointalk, e.g. youtube, facebook, maybe even celebrities outside crypto).

Why not consider a hybrid scheme that builds on several support factors? One part dedicated to holding Onions (interest), one part dedicated to DeepPoints, one part on creating awareness outside of deeponion.org.

There is no perfect solution, but the community feedback should be heard when deciding how to run the distribution moving forward.

But let’s all be constructive and keep out the heat, shall we?