Original Article | Odaily Planet Daily
Author | Azuma
On June 5th, Beijing time, the Solana ecosystem’s LST staking protocol Sanctum officially released the basic information about the token economic model and explained some detailed plans about points activities and airdrop schemes through subsequent community AMA sessions.
As the top project in the Jupiter LFG Launchpad’s second round of voting projects, Sanctum has always attracted high attention in the Solana community. Over the past month or two, Sanctum has achieved a significant increase in its data with the help of the first season’s points activity, Sanctum Wonderland S1. As of the time of writing, the TVL is temporarily reported to be $10.3 billion, making it the fourth-ranked DeFi protocol in the Solana ecosystem.
Project Overview
In April, Sanctum announced the completion of its seed round extension financing, with Dragonfly leading the round and participation from investors such as Sequoia, Solana Ventures, CMS Holdings, DeFiance Capital, Genblock Capital, Jump Capital, and Marin Digital Ventures. Although the amount of this round of financing was not disclosed, Sanctum revealed that the total financing amount for the project had reached $6.1 million.
Different from traditional liquidity staking protocols, Sanctum’s approach is more like helping Solana build a more unified liquidity staking paradigm to solve the liquidity fragmentation problem of major staked tokens (LST, such as Sanctum’s own INF, as well as jitoSOL, mSOL, bSOL, and other tokens) within the Solana ecosystem.
By building a unified liquidity layer around the liquidity staking scenario, Sanctum can use multiple modules such as Reserve (providing instant unstaking services for all LST), Router (supporting the mutual conversion of two LSTs that usually have no trading path), and Infinity (supporting the mutual conversion of all LSTs) to help users achieve fast and lossless redemptions or convert between major LSTs with minimal slippage.
Token Economic Model
Last night, Sanctum’s founder FP Lee simultaneously disclosed the project’s token economic model.
Sanctum’s protocol token will be named CLOUD. In addition to having basic governance utility, FP Lee mentioned that potential partners may need CLOUD to qualify for Sanctum’s validation program, adding practical value to CLOUD.
The total supply of CLOUD will be 1 billion, with the specific distribution as follows:
Community Reserve 30%: The community reserve should be strategically used to expand Sanctum’s market share, and the community will ultimately decide how to use this reserve.
Strategic Reserve 13%: The team will use this reserve to develop the Sanctum ecosystem, such as for future acquisitions, strategic investments, ecosystem partners, donation programs, and liquidity provision.
Team 25%: Locked for one year, then released linearly over 24 months.
Investors 13%: Sanctum has previously sold some tokens at valuations of $50 million and $60 million, mostly in 2021. These tokens will also be locked for one year and then released linearly over 24 months.
Initial Airdrop 10%: To be distributed to the community at CLOUD TGE.
LFG Launch 8%: Used to inject initial liquidity for CLOUD in Jupiter’s Launchpad.
LFG Donation 1%: This portion will be donated to Jupiter LFG, as per Jupiter’s usual practice of airdropping to LFG voters.
From a circulation perspective, CLOUD can achieve a maximum initial circulation rate of 18% at the beginning of TGE, including 10% for the initial airdrop and 8% for the LFG Launch, but any unsold tokens in the Jupiter Launchpad will be returned to the strategic reserve.
Points Activity
At present, Sanctum’s first season points activity has officially ended, attracting over 300,000 addresses to participate.
However, some details about the first season points activity are still pending confirmation, including information on the utility of “cupcakes” and the final points situation for users. Sanctum stated that they are still finalizing the data, so the scores displayed on the front end may change slightly.
As for the second season activity, FP Lee originally planned to launch it immediately after the first season ended but later decided to postpone it to provide users with a different participation experience and conduct a more elaborate design. The specific launch time for the second season is currently unknown but will be after TGE.
Airdrop Scheme
Currently, it is confirmed that 10% of CLOUD tokens (100 million) will be distributed to participants in the first season activity. FP Lee also revealed that there will be some witch screening to distinguish between “farmers” and “true believers.”
As for the timing of TGE and the airdrop, there is no specific timeframe yet, with the official mention that eligibility for the airdrop will be disclosed in the coming weeks and open for collection.
Additionally, although the 10% CLOUD tokens used for the initial airdrop are included in the initial circulation range, FP Lee mentioned the possibility of additional rules for specific distribution designs to ensure that “true believers” have a certain liquidity advantage—for example, setting 50% of the airdrop portion for immediate unlocking and the remaining part to unlock within 7 days—but this plan is still pending confirmation.
Where to Trade?
Apart from airdrops, another direct channel to obtain CLOUD is to participate in Jupiter’s LFG Launchpad.
A total of 8% of CLOUD will be injected into Jupiter’s Launchpad pool as initial liquidity, with FP Lee mentioning that the initial price curve of CLOUD will start at $50 million FDV, which is quite attractive.
Furthermore, FP Lee emphasized that they will not pay listing fees to any centralized exchange (CEX) because “he would rather give that money to the community.”
In conclusion, FP Lee welcomes CEX to voluntarily choose to list CLOUD but will not pay to force it. This may lead to CLOUD temporarily not being able to land on more mainstream CEX in the initial TGE phase, making the on-chain market the main battlefield for CLOUD.