RedStone Airdrop Reward Mechanism Contradicts Promotion, Spark Community Outrage?

On the evening of March 5th, RedStone's airdrop query portal was opened, triggering a storm of controversy within the community. Since its pre - market debut on Binance on February 28th, RED, the native token of RedStone, has been subject to Binance's new price limit mechanism for three consecutive days. After the price limit was lifted, it briefly soared above As of now, it's trading atis valued atabout 87 cents, with a market cap of34 million, while the fully diluted market capitalization amounts to $860 million.

RedStone, as Binance's latest launchpad project, has attracted a large number of participants in its airdrop activities, garnering significant attention from the community. As a cost - effective price oracle provider, the project has maintained an unblemished record without major pricing glitches since its establishment. It has also secured support from well - known investment institutions such as Coinbase Ventures and Blockchain Capital. However, following the launch of the airdrop query page last night, community sentiment has plummeted, with some netizens even accusing it of being a scam project. So, what exactly led to this situation?

At first glance, RedStone's token economics, with a 10% community airdrop ratio, seems quite generous. However, this figure fails to reflect the harsh reality on the ground. On various social platforms, numerous community users have complained that despite participating in years' worth of tasks, such as mining activities in seasons S1 - S3, hundreds of Zealy tasks, and Spring Festival events, they have not received any airdrops. The reason behind this lies in RedStone's official statement.

According to the official announcement, only users with specific roles in the RedStone Discord are eligible to receive tokens. Eligible roles include Vein Master, Deep Miner, Professor, and IRL (those who participated in offline activities). Alarmingly, less than 2% of the nearly 230,000 community members in the RedStone Discord have any of these roles! This extremely low eligibility rate has left the vast majority of community members feeling disappointed and frustrated.

The paltry token distribution alone may not be enough to enrage community users to such an extent. However, the blatant inconsistency between the actual reward mechanism and the project's previous publicity has made many users feel that their efforts have been wasted, which is likely the core of the problem.

During previous promotional campaigns, the project team clearly stated, "Your points will be the key determinant for future airdrops!" But in reality, even some of the top 10 users in RSG points, such as the 5th and 7th ranked, are ineligible to receive RED tokens simply because they lack the required Discord roles. Among the more than 170,000 people on the rankings, only 2,296 addresses are eligible. The entire community has approximately 200,000 members, yet in the end, only around 4,000 individuals meet the airdrop criteria, and many of them receive only a few hundred tokens. Compared with other mainstream projects in the market, RedStone's allocation logic is highly selective.

For example, in the case of the DYDX airdrop, tens of thousands of participating and eligible users could generally obtain a certain amount of governance tokens. Their distribution mechanism focused more on broad user participation. Similarly, projects like Optimism have clear, fair, and transparent airdrop rules, aiming to include a wider range of ecological users. In contrast, RedStone's "special role" threshold seems overly narrow, which has seriously damaged its ability to build long - term community engagement and trust.

What has really angered community members is the perception that RedStone's event design smacks of high - intensity PUA marketing. By continuously releasing tasks to attract user participation, it created the false impression that as long as users worked hard enough, they would be rewarded. However, in the threshold setting, hidden barriers were quietly set up, effectively excluding ordinary users who had invested a great deal of time and resources at the final stage.

This approach goes against industry norms. In the cryptocurrency industry, airdrop projects usually strive for wider user participation in their distribution mechanisms. For instance, in the airdrop of [Another well - known project], the team ensured that a large number of active users could get a share of the tokens, which not only increased user stickiness but also promoted the healthy development of the ecosystem. In contrast, RedStone's actions have made the community feel deceived.

The project team may have intended to implement a more refined incentive mechanism in the airdrop distribution to ensure that core users receive a higher proportion of rewards. However, this approach has undeniably ignored the efforts and expectations of the vast majority of participants.

In the long run, airdrops are not only a promotional tool to attract users but also a crucial indicator for measuring the transparency of project governance and the health of the ecosystem. The current controversy has undoubtedly sounded a wake - up call for the entire industry: Only by establishing a fair, open, and reasonable incentive distribution mechanism can users truly feel the value of their participation, thus driving the continuous prosperity of the entire ecosystem.

As the RedStone airdrop controversy unfolds, it remains to be seen how the project team will respond to the community's concerns and whether they can take steps to rebuild trust. This incident also serves as a warning to other projects in the cryptocurrency space, highlighting the importance of transparency and consistency in reward mechanisms. If projects want to succeed in the long term, they must respect the efforts of community members and establish fair and reasonable rules. Otherwise, they will face the same fate as RedStone, with a damaged reputation and a disillusioned community.