Talk about the two candy distribution methods of "fork" and "airdrop"

Recently, a wave of "forking" has begun to prevail in the digital currency circle, and a new term called IFO (Initial Fork Offerings) has been born.

Before talking about IFO, let me first talk about the two candy distribution methods: "fork" and "airdrop". The community generally believes that these two concepts are the same. In fact, we can think that "fork" belongs to the category of "airdrop", but "airdrop" does not necessarily mean "fork".

The similarities and differences between “forked coins” and “airdrop coins”

For example, Bitcoin Cash (BCH), which was born on September 1, 2017, was forked from Bitcoin (BTC). Bitcoin (BTC) holders can obtain BCH at a 1:1 ratio.

The “candy” distribution activities of competing coins such as Stellar, OmiseGo, and Byteball Bytes are airdrops, but not forks.

(The difference between “forked chain” and “airdrop chain”)

Airdrops usually take the form of snapshots, and the ratio is not fixed. It can be 1:1 or any ratio, but forks are usually in the same ratio (except for the case of modifying the total amount).

The similarity is that the purpose of both is to obtain the most accurate users.

The biggest difference is that forked coins are highly mandatory, and this mandatory nature is mainly reflected in exchanges, wallet providers, etc.

For example, when Stellar was conducting an airdrop, except for a few exchanges that had listed the currency, other exchanges did not need to provide the "candy" collection service. The birth of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) overturned this situation. Initially, many exchanges including Coinbase refused to provide this token, but after users filed complaints, these exchanges compromised. Some immediately chose to support BCH transactions, while others selected a date and opened the withdrawal service after the expiration.

Why does this happen?

One is that the forked coin not only inherits most of the Bitcoin (or Ethereum) code, it also inherits all the data of the Bitcoin blockchain before the fork, and the distribution is also direct, which makes the forked coin more attractive than the general altcoin (also reflected in the price). The dispute between the "real Bitcoin" and the "real Ethereum" also comes from this. Therefore, forked coins such as BCH and ETC are easier to develop than general altcoins because they will gain support from some community members.

This forces exchanges to take these forked coins seriously, because if they ignore them they will face complaints from supporters or risk user losses.

From this, we can say that the difficulty of listing forked coins on exchanges will be much lower than other types of currencies.

An "airdrop" does not necessarily inherit all the data of the Bitcoin blockchain. For example, the Super Bitcoin (SBTC) project that Li Xiaolai's team is about to launch is not a forked coin in the strict sense. It only takes a snapshot after the Bitcoin height reaches 498,888, and then conducts an airdrop. To obtain this currency, a signature claim operation is required because this blockchain does not inherit Bitcoin's previous data.

Since they do not inherit transaction data, currencies like SBTC are not much different from general competing currencies.

About IFO (Initial Fork Offerings)

The IFO proposed by the community generally refers to the initial issuance of a certain token through a fork. People will classify Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Diamond and even SuperBitcoin under this term. The author believes that this is actually not quite accurate. First of all, SuperBitcoin, which is an "airdrop" currency, is not a forked currency. To be precise, it should be classified as IAO (Initial Airdrop Offerings).

Then, fork coin projects that do not involve pre-mining should not be classified as IFOs, because only when the project party engages in pre-mining can it have economic incentives. Otherwise, there is no difference between the project party and the general public, and the word "Offerings" cannot be mentioned.

Talking about the pros and cons of IFO

Putting aside specific projects, let's talk about the pros and cons of IFO.

According to the above definition, IFO is a forked coin project with pre-mining behavior. Obviously, for the project party, it is equivalent to a disguised ICO, which means that IFO basically has all the advantages and disadvantages of ICO.

In addition, it is much easier for IFO to acquire users than ICO. "You give me a certain coin, but I don't want it" rarely happens in the currency circle.

But unlike ICO, the coins obtained by IFO users are basically at zero cost. Therefore, if you want to develop such projects, the project initiators must have certain strength, otherwise it will basically end in failure.

At present, ICOs with fundraising attributes have been completely banned in China. How long can similar IFOs exist?