ESCH Airdrop Overview

Details describing how the ESCH airdrops were performed.

Ubiq conducted 8 opt-in airdrops over the course of 2 years.

Spreading the numerous distribution periods over a longer timeframe would help to ensure that participation would be more likely to come from people who were more involved in the community and aware of network developments.

ESCH is finite, and minting has been permanently disabled.

There will not be more ESCH created. After the 8 scheduled airdrops concluded, participating voters opted to permanently disable ESCH minting in UIP 7.

Text of the proposal can be found HERE.

UBQ owners were required to interact with a dapp to request ESCH tokens be minted to their signaling address.

Minting ESCH tokens to only addresses that interacted with the Escher dapp would help to ensure that participants would be people whom were more involved and aware of network developments. It would also help to familiarize UBQ owners with ways to interact with the chain beyond simple transactions.

ESCH was distributed only to non-exchange addresses that had a UBQ balance at the snapshot block.

Limiting ESCH distribution to addresses with user-controlled private keys meant that any UBQ held in exchange accounts would be unable to claim ESCH. This incentivized holders to maintain control of the UBQ in wallets that only they control, and prevented any exchange in possession of UBQ on behalf of their customers from being able to potentially acquire governance vote weight.

Distribution totals were settled by a snapshot at a predetermined, pre-announced block height.

Each airdrop had a window of time, generally ≈30,000 blocks in which claimers could signal for ESCH tokens. The balance of the signaling address could ebb and flow during this time, allowing the address owner to move UBQ to and from the address until the window closed. At the final block of each claim period, a snapshot would be taken of all signaling addresses, and the UBQ balance at that block would determine the amount of ESCH received based on the claim ratio.

Each airdrop event had a specific UBQ:ESCH ratio.

Each successive airdrop had a declining ratio of ESCH to UBQ awarded to claimants until the ratio reached the minimum of 1:1.

Airdropped tokens were not purchased by participants. The only UBQ spent by claimers was gas for contract interaction.

Owning a balance of UBQ in a user-controlled wallet was the only perquisite for eligibility to initiate a claim. There was no sale of ESCH tokens as part of the airdrops. The only UBQ spent by claimants as part of the process was the gas required to pay for the transaction fee to interact with the claim contract.