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Now that the first phase of Blast has ended, DistrictOne (D1) has grown rapidly over the last three months, boasting 112k registered users, 35k daily active members, and 160k followers on X. D1 has become a unique social experience for the Blast community, projects, and influencers to come together, meet new friends, and explore new opportunities. However, this growth has not been without challenges and misunderstandings from the community. Here’s a detailed breakdown addressing key concerns and outlining our future potential, reaffirming our strong commitment to building the best Web3 social hub as a long-term goal. None of this is investment advice.

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Why We Built Meme Labs and the 800k Gold Allocation

The decision to build Meme Labs was strategic. About two months ago, during a meeting with Pacman and the Blast team, we emphasized that meme coins could be highly effective for user acquisition on a new chain and highlighted the need for robust infrastructure on Blast to support it. We believe D1 is the ideal platform to incubate and develop this initiative, given its strong social function and ability to create a cohesive environment for launching and growing meme coins. With the advent of the Blast Jackpot, our development efforts accelerated, involving numerous all-nighters to launch Meme Labs before the Blast TGE. We allocated 800k Gold to the new feature Meme Labs to aid its market adoption. This decision mirrored Blast’s approach of setting aside allocations for new apps on the mainnet. In fact, the 800k Gold allocation and mechanism were carefully discussed between D1 and the Blast team. The mechanism was advised to avoid incentivizing the holding of meme coins, as it seemed to be a Gold proxy for holding assets, which works similarly to the Blast Jackpot. Despite being an edge case, the 800k allocation and incentive mechanism were ultimately approved by the Blast team​​. Looking back, we still think it was a good decision in principle to allocate some Gold to help accelerate build-up, experiments, and market adoption. It didn’t breach the rules of Gold distribution and is supposed to be good for Blast and D1, although it didn’t sound great for those who wanted to farm Gold with minimal effort and resources. Communication might be improved, as a lot suggested, but the challenge came when we didn’t know how much Gold D1 would get when we got to the end, how much is enough to incentivize Meme Labs, and having clear, crystal-clear communication at the same time. So, the biggest lesson learned is don’t incentivize new features with Gold; it just doesn’t work the same as with your own token. The Blast community wants apps with predefined Gold-farming formulas; however, apps are being judged post-epoch, and results and consequences all come after. See the gap here?

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Sybils Detection

We spent significant effort on keeping the system clean and detecting sybils. Our algorithm and methodology are enriched and improved each epoch, involving cross-chain fund sources, on-chain transaction patterns, in-app behavior clustering, device tracking, and more. We zeroed out 7-18% of accounts as sybils or illegal farming, which is within the industry standard of 10-20% sybils seen in LayerZero, ZKsync, and Starknet. We also provided an appeal process, with under 3% of appeals being successful. Appeals accounted for 10-15% of the accounts we zeroed out, reflecting the accuracy of our detection. However, as noted in Starknet’s airdrop reflection, sybil detection remains a challenge for most crypto projects, and it’s never perfect, including D1 and Blast. D1 could have done much less easily, but we did the right thing to protect our users, partners, and, most importantly, the Blast ecosystem. We have effectively guarded the first gate in Gold distribution.

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The Promise of 100% Gold to Users and Rumors of D1 Self-Farming

By misunderstanding why we allocated 800k to Meme Labs and killed thousands of accounts, there have been rumors that the D1 team set these up to self-farming Gold, which triggered serious concern in the Blast team and community. We want to categorically state that these accusations are false. Our team has always adhered to the highest standards of integrity and transparency. As the app that had the fairest distribution of Gold and was transparent by publishing details of distribution to each account for every single piece of Gold, we are committed to ensuring that all operations are conducted fairly and transparently, and we welcome any audit or investigation by a certified third party to prove our adherence to these principles.

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D1’s Potential

Despite the challenges we are facing, we still strongly believe in D1’s potential. For example, D1 is the best app to integrate other dApps like YOLO game and Fantasy.top, where users can bet and trade against each other, creating an interactive and addictive experience. D1 should also be a place for collaborative games with social boosts, offering a perfect environment to discuss and bet on events like the Euro Cup results (prediction markets). Additionally, D1 is an ideal platform for launching and trading favorite assets, allowing users to get information and capture trade opportunities in one place. Moreover, D1 will serve as a social oracle, providing feedback to various dApps like DeFi or gaming, so each blockchain address would represent an avatar of who they are. D1 aims to revolutionize how users swap between assets, leverage trade, lend, and managing assets in a socialized model.

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Strike For Long Term Success

We are committed to learning from Phase 1, improving our processes, and continuing to innovate and build for long-term success. The community’s support and patience are invaluable, and we look forward to achieving greater success together. We also extend our heartfelt thanks to the Blast team for their unwavering support throughout this journey. Published: 10 July 2024