Hop was built to be core Ethereum infrastructure and serve as a public good. We’re decentralizing the governance of Hop Protocol by turning it over to Hop DAO where it can be community owned and operated.

Hop DAO will govern the ongoing growth and direction of Hop Protocol. Over the coming weeks, our team at Hop Labs will be transitioning control of Hop Protocol to the DAO. The Hop DAO will govern day-to-day functions including:

• The layer-2 networks and non-Ethereum chains that Hop supports

• The tokens that can be bridged with Hop

• The Bonder whitelist

• The distribution of $HOP incentives

• Grants for facilitating the growth of the Hop ecosystem

• Management of the treasury funds

• Ongoing funding for Hop Labs and other service providers

• And more ✨

The Hop DAO will initially be governed with a delegate model à la ENS and others. We invite members of the Hop community and the broader Ethereum community who are interested in stewarding the long-term growth and prosperity of Hop Protocol to apply as a delegate here.

The Hop Foundation has been established in the Cayman Islands to represent the DAO in a legal capacity. The Hop Foundation is required to follow any demand of the Hop DAO as established by token vote unless the demand is deemed illegal. The Hop DAO can also remove, replace, or appoint directors of the foundation by token vote.

Hop Labs, will become the first service provider to the Hop DAO and will facilitate ongoing research, development, and marketing efforts. Our team has worked hard to stay lean and put as much $HOP as possible into the hands of the community rather than taking the easy option of raising a large war chest through a private sale. As such, Hop Labs will be held accountable by Hop DAO and will rely on it for ongoing funding from the start.

There will be an initial supply of 1,000,000,000 HOP tokens distributed as follows:

• 8% airdropped to early network participants

• 60.5% to the Hop DAO treasury

• 22.45% to the initial development team (3 year vesting, 1 year cliff)

• 2.8% saved for future team members

• 6.25% to investors (3 year vesting, 1 year cliff)

The airdrop distribution aims to achieve as broad of a distribution as possible and reward early liquidity providers who filled an essential role in Hop’s growth.

The airdrop will be distributed as follows:

• 3.35% to users of the Hop bridge (min. 2 bridge transactions and $1,000 of volume)

• 2% to Liquidity Providers

• 2% to Bonders (1-year lockup)

• 0.1% to the top 500 Hop Discord participants and 79 Twitter users who were early evangelists for Hop

• 0.05% to external Hop contributors

• 0.5% to past Authereum users with deployed accounts (We wouldn’t be here without you all. 🙂)

Hop bridge users that meet the minimum requirements above will receive a base airdrop amount with a multiplier ranging from x2 to x1 based on how early they used the bridge and a second multiplier of x3, x2, or x1 for making a minimum of $3k, $2k, or $1k of transfer volume respectively. The snapshot for liquidity providers and bonders was taken on April 1st at 12:00 am UTC.

Once HOP token is live, there will be a minimum 6-month period to claim, after which any remaining tokens can be reclaimed by the DAO. Eligible Discord and Twitter participants that do not submit an address before the DAO is live can still submit their address and receive tokens through a governance proposal at the end of the 6 month period.

Check your eligibility here.

A healthy token distribution is of utmost importance to any DAO and has never been harder to achieve than it is today. Sybil attackers are running rampant and are getting more sophisticated as methods to filter them out improve as well. These Sybil attackers stand directly at odds with a healthy distribution and attempt to take tokens that should be in the hands of positive-sum users.

Faced with the choice of not giving HOP to historical users or potentially putting a large share of the network into the hand of Sybil attackers, our team spent the past two months identifying and carving out large-scale Sybil attacker addresses from the distribution. We’re happy to report that out of 43,058 initially eligible addresses, 10,253 have been identified as Sybil attackers and removed from the distribution. Now we’re calling on you to help track down any addresses we may have missed.

Over the next two weeks, we are accepting reports of Sybil addresses that have not yet been uncovered. When Hop DAO is live, we will make a proposal to reward those who reported Sybil addresses with 25% of the tokens saved — subject to a 1 year lockup. Reports will be reviewed, and rewards will be tallied on a first-come, first-serve basis.

• Each report must eliminate a minimum of 20 related addresses.

• Reports must show high-quality research and be easy to verify by the Hop Labs team.

• Reports that have a non-negligible probability of eliminating legitimate users will not be considered.

• Reports related to the Hop liquidity provider airdrop will not be considered since the liquidity provider airdrop was based on the amount and time liquidity was provided and does not need Sybil resistance.

All reports should be submitted via a Github issue here.

If you are a Sybil attacker who targeted the Hop airdrop with a large number of addresses, you are welcome to report yourself before someone else does. Those who self-report and have not already been eliminated will be included in the proposal to receive 25% of the tokens they may have otherwise received. If someone reports you first, you will receive nothing. You may submit a list of signatures from each of the addresses in your report as proof that they are under your control.

Happy hunting 🏹

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A special thanks to the ENS team who, in large part, inspired our token, airdrop, and governance design. We used their token and governance contracts as a starting point for the HOP token and Hop DAO contracts and borrowed elements of their claim flow UI in our own. Thank you for all that you do. ❤️