Kite hasn't issued tokens yet, but it seems that the table is already full of 'insiders' who have obtained chips in advance. Just how deep is this water? Today, I will take everyone to explore.
Recently, discussions about Kite in the community have been heating up. Many people are holding back, waiting for the airdrop to come down and make a fortune. However, amidst the frenzy, a key question has been overlooked by most: the early chip distribution of Kite may pose a huge risk of being overly concentrated. To see clearly what is happening in this game, we cannot only focus on the token economic model announced by the officials; we need to dive into the on-chain data, examining both the addresses of early participants and the flow of funds to uncover the real story behind Kite's chips.
The first point of suspicion is the high degree of correlation between early interaction addresses. I spent several sleepless nights running scripts to track the earliest batch of addresses interacting during the Kite testnet phase and discovered some disturbing patterns. Hundreds of addresses exhibited a high degree of consistency in their activation times, interaction paths, and even the source of their gas fees. The behavior of these address clusters is as if orchestrated by a single person, likely a professional "scientist" or institutional studio conducting mass operations—a classic Sybil attack. Although the project team hasn't announced specific airdrop rules, if a large portion of the airdrop falls into the hands of these "professional players," ordinary users will face immense selling pressure after the tokens are listed. Furthermore, according to official documentation, the team, advisors, early contributors, and investors collectively control 32% of the tokens. This is a significant percentage. If scientists take a large share of the early community airdrop, how much will retail investors receive? How will the project's future decentralized governance be guaranteed? These questions are all very serious.
The second aspect concerns the potential risks revealed by the flow of funds. Further analysis revealed that some highly active address clusters initially sourced their funds from withdrawal addresses on a few centralized exchanges. This suggests that large investors or institutions may be orchestrating this. The biggest risk of this early concentration of tokens is market manipulation. Once the tokens are listed and circulating, these whales have the ability to influence price movements and cause significant volatility by controlling large amounts of tokens. For ordinary participants like us, it's like playing cards in a game where information and capital are unequal—the outcome is predictable. Centralization is one of the most common attack vectors in the DeFi space, potentially leading to issues ranging from price manipulation to project "rug pulls."
Of course, pointing out these risks is not to completely negate the Kite project. Kite does have its merits in terms of technological narrative and ecosystem building. However, a healthy project with long-term value inevitably needs a relatively decentralized and fair asset structure as its foundation. Overly concentrated assets are like a Damocles' sword hanging over the project's head, potentially bringing devastating damage to the community and ecosystem at any time. Kite is just a microcosm, reflecting the current struggle of the entire industry between the ideal of decentralization and the reality of capital efficiency.
You might want to check out the projects you're following. What kind of chip distribution do you think is truly healthy? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.
Disclaimer: The content of this article is for personal research and analysis only and does not constitute any investment advice. The cryptocurrency market is extremely risky; please conduct your own due diligence before making any decisions.
