A brief analysis of the airdrop probability of 11 VC investment projects

2023-09-04 18:00

Read this article in 8 Minutes

AI summary

View the summary

Original title: "Which VC's projects love airdrops the most?"

Original author: ardizor

Original translation: Odaily Planet Daily

Editor's note:

For retail investors in the crypto market, airdrops have always been the most attractive topic. L1/L2, DeFi, NFT, GameFi, social... users who are enthusiastic about airdrops will try to interact with more projects in various fields, and then leverage potential profits at a lower cost.

However, although the industry also makes judgments on the airdrop expectations of specific projects, there seems to be a lack of a clear and logical set of criteria for screening more feasible airdrop targets.

In the following text, overseas KOL ardizor has compiled a list of active VCs in the industry and sorted out which projects these VCs have airdropped to the community. Finally, the airdrop rates of various VCs' investment targets are compared. The conclusion may be of some reference value to users who are keen on airdrops.

Below is the translation of the original content by ardizor, as compiled by Odaily Star Daily. For the sake of readability, some modifications have been made.

Recently, I (ardizor in first person) wanted to figure out which projects invested by VCs prefer airdrops, and what are the differences in airdrop rates among different VCs?

Here is my analysis process.

I have selected 11 well-known VCs in the industry and created a database. Afterwards, I conducted a large-scale sorting of all the investments disclosed by these VCs in recent years and selected the projects that have already been airdropped.

In order to obtain more accurate data, I have referred to the records of the following major databases:

Crypto Fundraising: https://crypto-fundraising.info

DefiLlama: https://defillama.com/raises

Cypherhunter: https://cypherhunter.com/en/discover/

Crunchbase: https://crunchbase.com

The final result is shown in the following figure.

Coinbase Ventures has invested in 15 projects that have conducted airdrops, including well-known projects such as The Graph, Biconomy, Gnosis Safe, and Aptos.

Binance follows closely in terms of quantity, with 12 projects in its investment targets that have already been airdropped, including Sei, Maverick Protocol, Space ID, and other Binance Launchpad projects - this is also where Binance's advantage as the industry's top CEX compared to other VCs lies.

Further down the line are two top VCs, a16z and Paradigm, with 9 and 8 projects respectively that have been airdropped. Representative airdropped "works" include Uniswap, dYdX, Optimism, and more.

Going forward, the following VCs are Polychain, Multicoin, Pantera, Jump, Blockchain Capital , Variant, etc. The number of projects that have been airdropped in their investment targets ranges from 3 to 7.

The last one in the form is Sequoia, and among its investment targets, only Hooked Protocol has conducted an airdrop. It seems that the "traditional" top VC in the Internet industry does have some differences in the field of cryptocurrency.

So, is this analysis over? Not quite. In order to determine which VC investments favor airdrops, I decided to use a simple division (number of airdropped projects / total number of investments) to calculate the airdrop rate of various major VCs' investment targets.

The final conclusion is shown in the following figure:

With a relatively low number of transactions, Binance tops the list with a 15.4% investment target airdrop rate.

Following closely behind is Paradigm at 11.6%, which is another VC with an airdrop rate of over 10% for its investment targets.

Due to the relatively higher number of investments, Coinbase Ventures, which topped the previous list, has seen a drop in its investment target airdrop rate to 6.9%, placing it in the middle of the list. Other VCs with similar situations include a16z, Multichain, Jump, Polychain, and more.

Sequoia Capital still has the lowest airdrop rate among investment targets, with only 1.7%.

Summary

Above is the data statistics and analysis conclusion made by ardizor.

It should be noted that the above content only provides a rough analysis method. Obviously, this method will be objectively affected by many factors, such as VC may not disclose all investment situations, and the preferences of major VCs in terms of style (such as some VCs prefer non-currency-based infrastructure projects) and cycle selection are also different. The statistics also do not include specific airdrop amounts.

But it has to be said that Ardizor's analysis still provides a relatively clear picture of the airdrop market (even if it's just one perspective) for users who are enthusiastic about airdrops, which may help them make choices when facing a large number of interactive targets.