The Stealth Criteria Marketing approach to Initial Token Distribution

A problem in determining who should be initial stakeholders in a project is challenging to solve. Some of the consequences for not getting it right could be pump and dumps, market manipulation, FUD, etc. On the other hand if the initial stakeholders are carefully selected then as the project grows the people who believe in the project will be in a position to guide it to success.

Most approaches involve mining (which typically leads to centralization over time due to market forces), sharedropping (which can self select stakeholders based on whether or not they subscribe to the overall concept), but the new undercover approach is more specific. The undercover marketing approach involves carefully selecting the stakeholders based on specific magic criteria. The demographic selection is based on magic criteria unknown to the population in advance.

Magic criteria could be character attributes, or any unannounced selection attributes, such as understanding of technology, ideals, reputation, or could even be comical such as wearing a certain color hat on Wednesday or being at the right place at the right time. This criteria could be kept secret or announced after the selection process is over or it could simply never be revealed. What is important is that there is clear evidence that the initial stakeholders all meet the same magic criteria.

Buzz agents

In this approach an undercover recruiter/issuer would scan the scene for individuals who meet the specific magic criteria required of an initial stakeholder. All who meet the criteria would then have to be approached individually, separately, and offered a stake. This offer could be protected by non-disclosure agreement or not.

These initial stakeholders would then be assigned the role of bringing in others like themselves. They would become undercover recruiters/issuers who would find at least two other persons who are similar in criteria to themselves. At the end of this process this would make up the initial undercover marketing team and shares would be distributed.

The unique twist

To put a unique twist to this marketing, the rules could be set that each individual buzz agent must come up with their own variation by adding an unknown criteria to the minimum criteria, or by taking something away. So that there is difficulty for the outside observer to determine what the initial criteria is.

References

Kirby, J. (2012). Viral marketing. Connected marketing, 87-106.