Flipside Daily Mover: XLM
A coin per day, making big moves
XLM’s New Airdrop Targets ChatApp Keybase
September 10, 2019
XLM FCAS climbed 0.63% over the last 2 weeks. Developer Behavior ascended 2-points (0.22%) along with a 10-point (1.53%) spike in User Activity. Market Maturity declined 2-points (-0.3%). Price is down -16.50% over the same time period.
What is Stellar?
Stellar is a decentralized payments platform built on top of the Ripple protocol. XLM (Lumens) currently ranks 12th amongst all cryptoassets, with a market cap just over $1.16 billion. The project was founded in 2014 by Jed McCaleb, who was also behind the creation of Ripple in 2013 and the Mt. Gox exchange in 2010. Stellar has focused on financial inclusion through blockchain technology, facilitating cross-border payments with its various partnerships and integrations. Following the initial distribution of 100 billion XLM tokens over several years, new XLM are minted at 1% per year.
2 Billion Can’t Be Wrong
On Monday, September 9th, the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) revealed that they would be airdropping 2 billion XLM (worth more than $117 million at the time of this writing) to users of the messaging app, Keybase. Airdrops are a method by which crypto projects distribute assets, generally for free, to a target group of addresses based on predefined criteria. Stellar previously conducted a large-scale airdrop to a leading provider of cryptocurrency wallets, Blockchain, in late 2018. Yesterday’s announcement has been positioned as a way to drive Keybase user growth (who adopted Stellar in May 2019), as well as to expand utilization of XLM.
🌶️ Hot Take
The Keybase airdrop is an interesting development from a project who has been historically loose with the distribution of its assets. In addition to the Blockchain airdrop, Stellar partnered with Coinbase earlier this year to distribute 1 billion XLM through the Coinbase Earn platform. Meaning, while Stellar has previously invested heavily in financially oriented airdrop and giveaway strategies, this is a significant departure and expansion of its use case-focus.
Furthermore, this move to deepen integration and utilization on a messaging platform is a clear attempt to both out-maneuver existing projects such as Kin who have successfully demonstrated the viability of crypto micropayments in messaging platforms, as well as to stay ahead of emerging projects like Telegram Open Network (TON) (launching October 31st, 2019) who will look to corner the market for this viable crypto use case.
It has also been suggested that the airdrop was initiated partly in reaction to regulatory uncertainty, as XLM and its sister currency XRP have not been cleared of “security” designations. Expanding use cases, driving new users, and improving regulatory positioning, are by no means mutually exclusive, and it would appear Stellar is full-steam ahead on all fronts.
Want to receive the Daily Mover direct to your inbox? Sign up here.
FCAS Tracker is free and available now for investors.
The FCAS Tracker provides institutional and sophisticated retail investors a “Top Down” approach to tracking 500+ crypto project fundamentals. FCAS Tracker is currently free to a select group of new users as we continue to develop the product.
*The material contained in this email is not to be construed as an offer or a recommendation to buy or sell a security nor is it to be construed as investment advice.
