You have a pending SOL, RFND token to claim: Token return or project transformation the way out?

Original | Odaily Star Daily

Author | Wenser

As the ZK airdrop gradually comes to an end amidst dissatisfaction, airdrops such as LayerZero and Blast are on their way. However, perhaps they all pale in comparison to the enticing ‘refund tokens’ that can be received simply by taking action with the wallet.

Previously, the Claim Your SOL project in the Solana ecosystem initiated the claim of ‘rental fees withheld by the Solana network’; now, RefundOnBase, a popular project in the Ethereum L2 network, has also launched a similar concept of ‘token refund’. The difference is that this project refunds a certain amount of RFND project tokens based on the amount of Gas consumed by users on the Ethereum network.

Odaily Planet Daily will briefly introduce and compare 2 projects in this article for readers’ reference.*** (Note: Odaily Planet Daily is for information sharing only and does not constitute investment advice. Users should pay attention to asset security and choose investment targets carefully.)***

Claim Your SOL: You have a SPL account closing rent, please check

According to the official website of the Claim Your SOL project, every time a user receives an NFT/token in their wallet, the Solana network will create a specific SPL token account for it. When the user sends or sells the NFT/token to someone else, the token account will have 0 NFT/token units. In other words, the SPL account remains in your wallet but is useless, and to create an account, users need to pay rent withheld by the Solana network, which is approximately 0.002 SOL (about $0.3), and if users take no action, these rents will also remain idle.

Claim Your SOL: “Your account closing service intermediary”

Claim Your SOL What this project does is to help users close selected SPL token accounts, and the released rental deposit will be sent to the user’s wallet balance. To give an example, it is like you go to Solana Bank to transfer money to someone else, and each transfer (i.e., interaction with a token contract) incurs an ‘account opening fee’. This project acts as an intermediary that can help you close the account, so you can receive an ‘account closing rental’. Of course, since it is an intermediary, it also needs to ‘profit’ - 20% of the account closing rental will be used as donation funds to support the maintenance and future development of the project’s website.

Official website introduction interface

The natural fission brought by the commission rebate mode

It is worth noting that when users claim account closure rent for SOL, they need to go through a ‘full declaration’ of the project and sign the transaction before they can receive the locked SOL rent, the specific operation method can be viewed by clicking on the website.

In addition, the project also has a commission mechanism. Sharing the corresponding invitation link can get 20% of the donated SOL amount returned to the invitee. (Note: If you don’t want to share this part of SOL with the inviter, you can also directly click on the official project push or official website link to enter).

Impressive Record: Nearly 20000 locked SOL Released

As of the time of writing, the Claim Your SOL official website shows that there are currently 11.75 million accounts participating, with 19,207 SPL token account rentals for SOL released, which can be said to be remarkable. After all, this is $2.785 million in “idle funds,” and it is also a considerable liquidity in this volatile market.

Official website interface

RefundOnBase: Gas consumption in exchange for tokens, please take this RFND

Coincidentally, the Claim Your SOL project based on the unique conditions of the Solana ecosystem may have also inspired the Base ecosystem project team, giving rise to RefundOnBase. After all, ‘the world has long been troubled by high Ethereum gas fees,’ and as one of the representative ecosystems with low gas cost on the L2 network, the Base ecosystem also has the innate advantages and soil environment of ‘returning tokens based on gas fees’.

RefundOnBase: As long as you have used Ethereum, you are our user

According to the official website of the project, users can receive RFND token rewards by spending more than 0.3 ETH Gas on the Ethereum mainnet. Currently, there are 10873 wallet addresses linked; more than 18000 users have logged in to participate; 199 payment accounts; and the cumulative gas consumption has reached 657.43 ETH.

The official website display interface is for reference only.

Introduction to the underlying operation principles and tokenomics

Similarly, according to its official website, the RFND token is deployed on the Base network, and claiming the corresponding token does not require any Gas fees. The contract address is 0x26FB8F2F3b26C750ee34005C1930dEb232940CFe, the buy/sell tax is 0, the maximum supply of tokens is 100 billion, and there is a 1-year lock-up position.

Rough tokenomics

According to the information on Dexscreener website, the price of RFND token has been falling after a brief break above $0.000005, and the current price is temporarily reported at $0.00000018, with a remaining market capitalization of only $185,000.

Official website interface information

Experience lesson: Token refund mode is different from Meme coin

To some extent, it can be said that the current RFND has failed, after all, the currency price is close to zero, and the website operation is not stable. And this is not the first attempt of Ethereum and L2 ecosystem.

In December 2023, Frame, a project initiated by Electric Capital, also attracted a lot of attention in the market. Under the banner of “building a blockchain network for creators and collectors”, the project will provide corresponding FRAME token airdrop feedback based on the number of NFT projects and gas costs that users participate in, including top NFT players such as Zeneca and Lasercat from both domestic and foreign countries.

However, as time has passed, the last post of the project has been stuck on January 30 this year, although it is said on the surface that “the mainnet launch and airdrop claim deadline are postponed after listening to community feedback,” but in terms of the result, this project can be declared dead.

Therefore, we can also draw some phased experiences and lessons from these two projects:

• Token return projects are greatly influenced by the blockchain network ecology, and it is very difficult to “create such a mechanism without a corresponding network mechanism”;
• The tokens of token return projects are difficult to become Meme coins, whether from the perspective of artificial planning or from the perspective of Meme properties, they are somewhat lacking;
• Token return projects heavily rely on the operational and marketing rhythm of the project, making it very easy to fall into the situation of ‘dumping the token after receiving it’, and then the project spirals into death.

In this regard, we can also glimpse into the previous article “Three-day surge 50 times, revealing the Base chain data DAO token RDAT”, RDAT’s death is not only due to the project party’s negligent operations, but also because of the “speed decay” of the relevant narrative.

Summary: Keep watching, the token refund project is far from over

Despite the many issues, the token refund project has clearly not declared an end to this track. If more projects continue to explore from various perspectives, combining different market environments and operational rhythms, perhaps they can also create a unique wave in the cryptocurrency field.

After all, as a popular Meme coin project in the current hot track, it may also be one of the subsequent considerations for the transformation of token return projects.

And this means infinite possibilities.