Namada PGF: Introducing the World’s First Donor Drop

UPDATE: Donations are now closed. The Donor Drop hit its cap within 30 minutes of going live!

Today the Namada community makes history with the launch of the first ever ‘Donor Drop’, which will benefit the public policy advocacy organization Coin Center. The Donor Drop is the first use of Namada’s native and on-chain public goods funding (PGF) system and a testament to what community driven decentralized organizations are capable of. Here’s the forum post written by an active community member kicking things off.

After some discussions on the specifics of this campaign, the Namada community approved a signalling proposal for the donor drop as the network’s second on-chain governance proposal and first public goods funding related proposal on December 19th, 2024. Signaling proposals are used to measure community sentiment and intent–in this case, the intent to fund the Donor Drop. This signalling proposal was submitted by the Luminara team after a period of community discussion on the Namada community forum and in the community Discord, and received strong support in the voting period.

As part of this campaign, according to the signaling proposal, eligible ETH donations to Coin Center could be rewarded with an airdrop totalling 1 million NAM, up to a total donation cap of 30 ETH. A second governance proposal will be necessary for the Namada community to vote on and approve the airdrop of NAM, which will then occur automatically by the Namada network from the blockchain’s on-chain PGF fund. 

The donor drop represents an exciting new experiment in token distribution strategies that benefit the public by incentivizing contributions to goods and services. The Namada community is pioneering this model and demonstrating the potential of decentralized communities to support initiatives that benefit the broader cryptocurrency space, and ideally beyond. 

This is an independent initiative organized in a decentralized way by the Namada community, powered by the Namada protocol’s native on-chain governance system. Coin Center does not need to be directly involved in the Donor Drop, and the Namada community does not need to be directly involved in the Coin Center donations. 

About Coin Center

Based in Washington, D.C., Coin Center is a non-profit public policy advocacy organization working to protect the rights of users and developers in the cryptocurrency space. They do crucial work to promote sensible public policy and regulation, and contribute to legal battles against the criminalization of software development. 

Thanks to their work, the US legal system recognized that decentralized protocols and smart contracts are not owned by anyone, and thus are a new type of infrastructure. As one of the fiercest advocates for the decentralized blockchain space, Coin Center is a fitting beneficiary of Namada’s first PGF proposal. 

How to participate

According the the community discussions on the forum and on Discord, donations will be recognized to be included in the proposal submitted for the Donor Drop if they meet the following criteria:

• Donations must be in ETH on Ethereum mainnet. They must be between a minimum of 0.03 ETH and a maximum of 0.30 ETH
• Donations must include your public Namada (tnam) address converted into hex in the transaction memo field
• Donations must be received before the 30 ETH cap is reached, or before Jan 24 at 15:00 utc–whichever comes first
• Donations must only be sent to Coin Center’s confirmed ETH address: coincenter.eth (0x15322B546e31F5Bfe144C4ae133A9Db6F0059fe3)
• Donations are open as of 15:00 UTC Saturday, January 18th 2025.

Members of the Namada community, spearheaded by the development work of Zenode, have independently developed a dedicated user interface to support participants in the Donor Drop. This app guides users through the process of submitting an eligible donation. It’s important to note that this dapp is not an intermediary, but merely helps support participants, who will be solely responsible for making direct donations from their Ethereum account.  You can use the interface here.

Important notes

• Be sure to avoid scams. Be sure to only send funds to the confirmed Coin Center address above. Beware that scammers may try to impersonate Namada accounts to solicit donations to fake addresses. This is a helpful app for guiding participants and observing donations built by the community and not audited by the Anoma Foundation: https://drop.luminara.icu 
• In order for Donor Drop funds to be distributed, the Namada community will need to pass a funding proposal with the list of participating donor tnam addresses. This process is determined in a decentralized way via on-chain governance. For this reason, there is no guarantee that airdrop funds will be distributed, that the conditions of the proposal will mirror those mentioned in this blog post or in the signaling proposal, and that the campaign will be a success. Note that your donations to Coin Center are final, irrespective of whether or not there is an airdrop of NAM.
• A recorded donation is not a guarantee that it will be recognized with an airdrop. The Namada community will make the final determination of eligibility, , if any, and under whatever conditions they deem fit for the proposal that gets accepted, if any. You should not use  multiple accounts or bots: the community could decide to filter some addresses out to prevent abuse. 
• Since donations are not mediated, donations cannot be refunded, even if you make a mistake. Participate at your own risk.
• This campaign is organized by the Namada community and is not directed or organized or endorsed by the Anoma Foundation.

A strong start for the Shielded Ecosystem

The Donor Drop is an exciting experiment in demonstrating what Namada’s PGF system is capable of. This is just the beginning of Namada’s journey with community governance, so this is just the first of many such proposals for goods/services that benefit the public. By pioneering the Donor Drop model, Namada makes it possible for other communities to follow and adopt similar models for token distribution and on-chain treasury allocation. 

Shields up! Let’s show the world what the Namada network and community can do.