With the many ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) in today’s crypto ecosystem, there are also many airdrops. Their goal is to widely distribute tokens while also engaging the community and marketing the token sale.

The use of tokens can be a disruptive communication strategy. In a way, it’s a healthy exchange (win-win) that does away with “traditional” advertising campaigns like Facebook Ads, AdWords, and Twitter Ads.

(Let us note in passing that the price of the first Bitcoins was derisory. They were almost given for free at 0.07$ at the beginning of 2010. In a way, the distribution model of the first Bitcoins was quite similar to that of an airdrop today, especially in the earlier days of MtGox).

Mainly, there are two kinds of airdrop:

1. Tokens are given in proportion to the balance of the receiving wallet. For example, OmiseGo airdropped some of its OMG to ETH owners according to the size of their wallet balances.

2. Tokens are given as a reward for the completion of some task (join a Telegram group, follow the company on Twitter, share an affiliate link…). This was the case of Kleros’ airdrop in April.

These two systems of course have advantages and disadvantages, here is a brief rundown:

A New Model: The Gamedrop

The main disadvantage of an airdrop is that it can be easily manipulated by bots. Some malicious actor could create an arsenal of Telegram bots (with virtual numbers), Twitter, and Facebook, in order to siphon as many airdrop tokens as possible.

To prevent this attack while improving the user experience, a gamedrop may be a worthy alternative. It’s about putting into play an interactive process, often directly related to the project, where the best players are rewarded in tokens.

Also, playing is a serious exercise. If nature has selected the game, after millions of years of evolution, it appears playing is surely the best way to learn.

Idriss Aberkane: “All mammals play to learn. For them, playing is more than serious, it’s vital”.

The Kleros Gamedrop

In addition to being fun, a gamedrop is also a way to test a product or conduct an experiment. We designed the Kleros gamedrop in order to test the concept of the Schelling Point, which is a key pillar of our platform. Also, to educate users who are not familiar with it.

Basically, the Schelling Point allows a consensus to be reached between people who do not know each other and have no means of communication with each other. This concept was introduced by Thomas Schelling in The Strategy Of Conflict (1962). Schelling won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2005 for this contribution. A famous American television program, “Family Feud”, is based on this idea. It’s about finding the most popular answers for a given question.

Family Feud

In the Kleros gamedrop, game.kleros.io, the principle is the same. Four options are proposed to the player. It is up to you to choose the one that seems most coherent with others’ choices.

Kleros gamedrop

How do I play?

To play, you must have an Ethereum address with at least 0.1ETH. This partly protects us from malicious parties from conducting sybil attacks (even if it is far from a perfect solution). Moreover, to my knowledge, there is no similar game for the general public (or one that does not go through a survey phase as in Family Feud), the reason surely being it is difficult to prevent manipulation of the game by a large number of malicious players.

An on-chain version of this game (running on a Smart Contract on Ethereum for example) could solve this problem (since the blockchain is natively designed to guard against sybil attacks), of course, only if the game is “valid” in its game theory.

In the Kleros gamedrop, players who answered a question coherently will receive a fraction of the tokens (PNK) from those who answered incoherently. A wrong answer will make you lose 1 PNK which will then be split between those who answered coherently.

When you register with an Ethereum address, you will automatically receive 42 PNK. It is possible to increase this value by 10PNK by also joining our Telegram group or mentioning us in a tweet with @kleros_io and the #schellinggame tag. An affiliate link game.kleros.io?ref=<your Ethereum> address will also allow you to receive 10 PNK for each unique affiliate that registers.

It is also possible to contribute to the game by submitting questions on game.kleros.io/submit-question. If your question is validated, you will receive 10 PNK. The first version will be about the Blockchain ecosystem. The four options will consist of a very obvious option, an obvious one, a not very obvious one and a not at all obvious one, for a person who knows the “crypto” ecosystem well. And if possible, these options should be ranked randomly to avoid giving information on the possible correct answer for the player.

For example, for the question “What is the best speaker?” The proposals can be “Roger Ver (not very obvious)”, “Vitalik (very obvious)”, “Vlad (obvious)”, “McFee (not at all obvious)”. This ranking is subjective, it will surely be interesting to see the results.

The distribution of tokens in the form of real PNKs will take place after the first round of the Kleros token sale on July 15, 2018.

To conclude, the gamedrop method is an excellent alternative to an airdrop “by tasks”. It enables better protections against sybil attacks and increases user commitment all while offering a more attractive experience.

On the other hand, the creation of an application takes time and money, but the benefits make it worthwhile.

Try ours now at https://game.kleros.io !

Roadmap

21st-25th May alpha version:

10 best players each earn 1000 PNK

First 50 players earn 100 PNK

Reset balance and accounts.

27th May 3rd June — beta version:

10 best players earns their balance + 100PNK

The first 50 players earn 10PNK

The rest of the roadmap will depend on the communities interest in the game. If the feedback is good there may be other versions with different themes like the football world championship for example, otherwise, we will stop the experiment.

15 July distribution of PNK tokens — (The same day our token sale ends)

*The current program is still in Alpha status and will be updated as mentioned in the roadmap.