Airdrops as Apps - pplpleasr x ENS
Airdrops as Apps - pplpleasr x ENS
A fun community distribution mechanic, the NFT airdrop -- foolproof delivery with Manifold's app extension framework.
Last week, popular digital artist pplpleasr memorialized Ethereum Name Service’s 4th year anniversary with a unique NFT airdrop for members of the community. In true decentralized form, ENS collected over 2,000 community votes to decide on the airdrop format: an edition of 100 NFT airdrop.
Apart from the community engagement and tasteful collaboration with a crypto community favorite artist, what was unique and successful about this airdrop is that it came directly from @pplpleasr’s own creator contract.
Despite the airdrop NFT being free, @pplpleasr’s artwork is now trading on secondary markets for an average of 0.7 ETH (approx $1,700 USD as of writing). A win for ENS brand engagement, a win for @pplpleasr’s creator fan community, and a win for airdropped collectors.
So how did ENS and pplpleasr execute this drop?
Execution
First, pplpleasr deployed her own creator contract and NFT artwork on-chain, a free service supported by Manifold. By deploying her own creator contract, pplpleasr can mint NFTs directly from her own branded Ethereum address (see @pplpleasr’s unique digital ASCII signature in her contract). As a result, recipients of the airdrop can be 100% certain of the authenticity of pplpleasr’s NFT.
Second, ENS worked with our team to encode the rules of their airdrop, voted on by the community, in a simple Ethereum contract. The contract, or “app”, is then deployed on-chain and “installed” onto pplpleasr’s creator contract using the Manifold app extension framework for free. The added benefit is the entire community can audit the rules of the airdrop, meaning complete transparency.
With pplpleasr’s creator contract armed with ENS’ airdrop rules, pplpleasr can trigger the airdrop to the entire community with the click of a button from her own computer.
You can see her execute this airdrop as 2x50 NFTs with these two transactions: here and here.
Other details
In pplpleasr’s case, her airdrop extension allowed for minting of up to 100 tokens for the ENS’ 4th Anniversary event, with unique metadata hashes for each token created to number each edition sequentially.
It’s also possible to accomplish this by overriding the generated tokenURI metadata in the app contract. You can see this method applied here in separate airdrop that was performed by @toddg777 for the announcement of his fund’s recent milestone.
In both cases, every token created has the provenance of the creator’s core contract, but with logic and rules controlled by the app extension.
We believe airdrops continue to be an effective way for brands and creators to genuinely engage community.
Using the app extensions framework built into Manifold’s creator contract allows airdrops to be delivered completely transparently to community, cost-effective for brands, and foolproof to execute by creators.