Asset-Agnostic Blockchain Namada Launches Its Largest Airdrop Yet Awaiting Its Mainnet Launch

Namada, an asset-agnostic multichain privacy blockchain, has announced the launch of its Retro Public Goods Funding airdrop to thousands of community members including, researchers, developers, ATOM and OSMO stakers, and contributors in the Trusted Setup held last year. Anoma Foundation, the leading custodian of Namada, announced a 65 million $NAM token drop to these community members “to acknowledge and thank them for building and funding public goods” on Namada. The recipients of the RPGF Drop include 7,094 researchers and developers, ​​191,715 on-chain accounts and Bad Kids NFT holders, and 2510 contributors in the Trusted Setup.

The 8 Best Airdrop Sites for Free Crypto Airdrops

“If we want to live in a flourishing world of public goods, we must design and use economic systems which support them not only in rhetoric but also in material compensation,” Christopher Goes, co-founder of Namada stated. “Namada depends upon many public goods which have come before, and this RPGF drop is part of our attempt to give some ownership back to the creators and supporters of those goods and do our part in realising such a world.”

Simply, public goods on Namada refer to non-excludable non-rivalrous items which provide benefits to all the users e.g. languages, open-source software, research, designs and more. The RPGF Drop will reward all users who helped build public goods on the platform, with the claiming period open from 6th December 2023 and closing on the 28th of December 2024, at 9 AM UTC. Eligible participants can submit their Namada genesis accounts through rpgfdrop.namada.net. The submitted accounts will be included in the Namada genesis block proposal with the corresponding claimed $NAM tokens. 

Understanding why $NAM counts on Namada

Namada’s mainnet launch date is fast approaching and the latest airdrop aims to recognize the public and open-source developers for their contribution in the fields of privacy, zero knowledge technology and more. The native $NAM token can be staked to secure the Namada network, either by individuals or organisations who want to operate validators. Users who don’t want to operate validators can delegate their stake and contribute to the security of the network.

Additionally, the token can also be used by any community member as a deposit when submitting their governance proposals. The $NAM token also allows holders to vote democratically via an on-chain governance system for PGF stewards, who control the expenditure from the PGF treasury to fund public goods. 

Finally, $NAM tokens are also used to pay for transaction fees involving any asset on Namada, including fees for transactions from transparent to transparent accounts, transparent to shielded (shielding), shielded to shielded and shielded to transparent accounts (unshielded). The tokens can also be used to pay for the instructions specified in shielded actions, including paying for fees directly from the shielded set (shielded fee payment) for actions on Namada, app chains through IBC, or dApps through the Ethereum bridge.

The eligible RPGF distributions to the Namada community

The RPGF distribution round will include six main sections of the Namada community, specifically, key developers of the Zcash infrastructure including wallets, cryptographic libraries, ZIPs, as well as Rust dependencies that were crucial for Namada. Contributors to ZK protocols, proving systems and cryptography solutions, decentralised privacy protocols, as well as contributors to ZK learning resources and members of etheresear.ch in ZK-related topics, are eligible for the RPGF distribution.

Other contributors who are eligible for the RPFG drop include stakers of $ATOM and $OSMO tokens, voters and donors of ZK Tech and Crypto Advocacy projects on Gitcoin’s GR rounds, and participants in the Namada Trusted Setup Ceremony, held last year. 

To be considered as a developer or researcher in the Zcash and Rust developer ecosystem, participants must have submitted at least 2 commits on Namada’s GitHub repositories, or posted at least once on the etheresear.ch forum in zk-s[nt]arks, Cryptography, and Privacy categories. More $NAM allocations will be distributed to users with higher commits and posts. The snapshot of commits was closed on November 30th at 10.45 AM CET. 

Other allocations in the RPGF airdrop include the Gitcoin donors, who will share 17 million $NAM tokens in proportion to their donations, with a minimum donation to be considered set at $100. The shielded community (or stakers of $ATOM and $OSMO) and holders of 1 NFT of BadKids collection on Stargaze will share 20 M $NAM tokens. Snapshots of stakers and NFT holders were taken on Nov 1 and Nov 14 respectively. 

Finally, participants in the  Namada Trusted Setup Ceremony, held on November to December 2022 will also get a share of the airdrop, sharing 500,000 $NAM tokens.