Written by: Asher, Odaily Planet Daily
Yesterday, Somnia posted on the X platform that airdrop qualification queries have gone live, and users need to connect their Somnia Quests wallet to check. However, it did not usher in a frenzy of 'another project to make money.' On the contrary, the query results left many genuine users disappointed—many found they had no qualifications at all, and public opinion immediately turned to questioning: this airdrop not only isn't 'small change,' but is even suspected of insider trading and opaque operations.
Project Introduction
Somnia is an L1 project dedicated to connecting the metaverse into a unified virtual society, aiming to achieve an open and unified metaverse, allowing users to move seamlessly through various experiences. Somnia creates infinite possibilities for builders by upgrading existing NFTs to provide transferable and reconfigurable content.
Somnia founder Paul Thomas said: "The launch of Somnia is not only a significant step for the metaverse but also changes the rules of the game for blockchain technology. Most blockchains are very suitable for the financial sector, and we have seen great innovations in the DeFi space, but the limitations of the sector have hindered the rise of more social and creative enterprises. The protocol we are releasing will realize the vision of an interconnected and composable metaverse, and I hope this will bring new community collaborations to the entire field."
The airdrop share is 4.1%, and only 20% is unlocked at TGE, with the remaining 80% fully unlocked 60 days after the mainnet tasks begin.
Somnia not only has an extremely low airdrop allocation ratio for early users, but also 80% of it is locked and requires completing mainnet tasks to unlock.
Yesterday, while announcing the launch of airdrop qualification queries, Somnia also revealed its token model. The total supply of project tokens is 1 billion, of which 5% will be allocated to the community, and 4.1% of this portion will be distributed to early users who interacted on the testnet.
To avoid triggering concentrated selling due to an excessive airdrop share at TGE, leading to dramatic price fluctuations, the team designed a phased unlocking mechanism: only 20% of the airdrop share is released at TGE, while the remaining 80% will be linked to tasks after the mainnet launch. Specifically, token unlocking will be gradually released in task cycles, and a corresponding proportion of tokens will be unlocked for each completed task cycle, with the entire process expected to be completed within 60 days after the mainnet launch.
In addition, all airdrop users will have a 90-day window to complete these tasks and claim their tokens. If they fail to complete them within the specified period, the unclaimed portion will be automatically reclaimed and injected into an ecological fund for future ecological construction and incentives.
Odyssey completed, test tokens received, KYC done, NFT purchased, but no airdrop qualification.
For most long-term active 'moochers' on the testnet, the real disappointment is not in the small allocation or the fact that only 20% of the airdrop share is unlocked during TGE. What they find hardest to accept is that they have invested a lot of effort, yet the query results show 'no qualification,' which is hard to believe.
Because of this, community sentiment has taken a sharp turn for the worse. Firstly, a large number of users expressed strong dissatisfaction with the opacity of the KYC mechanism and qualification screening. Many 'moochers' who insisted on participating in testnet interactions pointed out that the project did not disclose the complete token economics before the airdrop but required users to spend nearly $5 on KYC, only to find that the qualifications were extremely limited, making them feel like they were being 'scammed.' Especially with the obvious differences between the Chinese and English communities, many genuine participants in the Chinese community were disqualified, while more people in the English community received airdrops, further intensifying doubts about fairness.
Secondly, the community is angry about the airdrop distribution and threshold regulations. Some believe that since 225,000 people participated in the KYC tasks, it would be fair to symbolically give each person a small amount, even if it's not much. However, the reality is that even among the 65,000 who completed the KYC and reached the so-called score of 30 or above, only a small portion received qualifications. The vague rules and unfair distribution have left many users disheartened.
Finally, the emotions of old users are particularly intense. Many recall their contributions over several months or even half a year: checking in almost every day for six months, completing most of the Odyssey tasks, receiving test tokens, completing KYC as required, and even purchasing the NFTs released by the official, only to be met with the phrase 'no qualification.' This sense of being denied has made users extremely angry.
Founder response: Some accounts in the airdrop query results have issues and are being actively resolved.
In response to the massive negative sentiment from users who participated in early testnet interactions after the airdrop query went live, Somnia founder Paul Thomas posted on the X platform that there are indeed some account anomalies in the airdrop query results, and the team is actively addressing them, promising to release an announcement as soon as the issues are resolved, asking users to be patient.
However, many community members are not buying it, believing this is just an official excuse to alleviate the current overwhelming negative sentiment. Users want a clear and transparent explanation rather than just 'being addressed,' such as where the anomalies actually occurred, how many people are involved, and how they will be corrected. But these key pieces of information have not been mentioned by the founders.
Some users have bluntly stated that this response is merely a 'stalling tactic.' Rather than saying the team is actively addressing it, it feels more like they're delaying to avoid further escalation of negative sentiment. People worry that when the so-called 'announcement' comes out, the real issues may still not be addressed directly.
Amidst disappointment and suspicion, the community generally questions: if even the airdrop, which best embodies fairness, cannot be done transparently, then how many early users will continue to use Somnia after the mainnet launch?