Take a look at the top Wall Street VC Founders Fund behind Plasma: what other Airdrops do they have in hand?

Author: Luke, Mars Finance

The airdrop of Plasma ultimately distributed 9,300 $XPL to each participant. Based on the recent high of $1.45, this means an airdrop reward worth over $13,400—regardless of the initial investment.

This astonishing wealth effect has once again brought the spotlight to the key investors behind it - Founders Fund. This top-tier VC, founded by Peter Thiel, has almost solidified its title as the treasure map for airdrops in the crypto space with its precise early investments in projects like Starknet, Avail, and Plasma.

Their success is clearly not a coincidence. Behind this is a clear investment philosophy and decision-making system at work. So, what is the core of this system? How does the decision-making team of Founders Fund actually think? After the explosion of Plasma, what other projects are in their hands that align with their "dogma" and have high potential for airdrops that we should closely monitor?

"Brain" and "OG": The Dual Core of Decision-Making at Founders Fund

The strong momentum of Founders Fund in the crypto space comes from the perfect complementarity of its two core figures: one is the "brain" providing top-level philosophy and grand narrative, while the other is the "crypto OG" responsible for deep frontline involvement and ensuring tactical execution.

Peter Thiel: The "Brain" and Soul of Investment

As the founder and spiritual leader of Founders Fund, Peter Thiel's personal philosophy is profoundly imprinted on every investment decision made by the fund. The "contrarian thinking" conveyed through his book "Zero to One" and the pursuit of "monopoly technologies" form the cornerstone of Founders Fund's investments. Thiel himself, as the godfather of the "PayPal mafia," harbors a long-standing obsession with creating a new generation of financial networks independent from traditional systems. This level of thinking determines that Founders Fund's focus remains on foundational protocols and infrastructure that can reshape industry landscapes, rather than chasing short-term application trends. He has set a direction for the fund: to seek out teams that are solving the most challenging problems and have the potential to create an entirely new future.

Joey Krug: An In-Depth Look at the "Crypto OG"

If Thiel provides the philosophical guidance for "why to invest," then partner Joey Krug addresses the tactical questions of "who to invest in" and "how to invest." Krug is a true OG in the crypto world; as a co-founder of the decentralized prediction market Augur, he has hands-on experience in building and operating a successful DeFi protocol from the ground up. Before joining Founders Fund, he served as co-CIO at Pantera Capital, accumulating rich experience in crypto investments. Krug has emphasized that he places extreme importance on a team's "shipping velocity," which is the ability to continuously translate ideas into products. It is his deep industry background and keen judgment on technical execution that ensure Founders Fund's grand narrative can be precisely matched with the most execution-oriented teams.

Thiel's top-level design combined with Krug's frontline insights forms the dual core of Founders Fund's successful decision-making in the crypto field, allowing them to grasp the grandest technological waves while also identifying the "surfers" most capable of riding those waves.

Founders Fund Crypto Investment Tenets: Portfolio Overview

This table aims to integrate the fragmented items observed by users and the research findings of this report into a structured analytical tool, clearly demonstrating the investment pattern of Founders Fund that prioritizes infrastructure, early intervention, and targets high potential.

Alpha List: Key Potential Projects to Focus On

Based on the aforementioned investment tenets, we can clearly identify the next batch of projects with high airdrop potential in the Founders Fund portfolio.

1. Polymarket: The King of Prediction Markets

Project Introduction: As the absolute leader in decentralized prediction markets, Polymarket allows users to trade on the outcomes of global hot events such as elections, economic data, regulatory approvals, etc. It has become an important hub for obtaining information and judging trends in the crypto world and even in broader fields, with daily trading volume and monthly active users consistently remaining high.

Airdrop Expectations: The issuance of tokens by Polymarket is almost an open secret. First, as a decentralized protocol that requires community governance and value capture, tokens are a necessary component of its ecological closed loop. Secondly, and most critically, the documents submitted to the U.S. SEC explicitly mention "warrants," which are typically seen in investment agreements as granting early investors the right to receive tokens in the future. Recently, following positive regulatory signals from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), major obstacles for the compliant issuance of its tokens have been cleared.

Reason for attention: The community generally anticipates that Polymarket's airdrop may follow the model of Starknet and Avail, conducting a large-scale retrospective airdrop for early and deeply engaged users of the platform. This is a project that already has a mature product, a large user base, and a clear business model, and the launch of its token will be a highly anticipated value realization.

2. Sentient: AI+Crypto Frontier, a value carrier of grand narrative

Project Introduction: Sentient's vision is grand; it is committed to building a decentralized, open general artificial intelligence (AGI) network. In an era where AI computing power and models are increasingly monopolized by tech giants, Sentient seeks to create a permissionless AI economy that is community-owned through blockchain technology.

Airdrop Expectations: For a protocol aimed at building a global decentralized network, tokens are indispensable. They are not only the core tool for incentivizing AI model contributors, computing power providers, and data validators but also the sole carrier of network governance and value distribution. The seed round financing of up to 85 million dollars also provides ample "ammunition" for building a large ecosystem and executing large-scale community incentive programs (including airdrops).

Reason for attention: Sentient perfectly aligns with Founders Fund's investment philosophy of "revolutionary technology." The significance of its airdrop will go beyond mere wealth effects, representing an initial distribution of ownership for the future decentralized AI network. For users optimistic about the AI+Crypto sector, early participation in its ecosystem and becoming a contributor to its network may yield very high returns.

3. N1 ( Front Layer N): Next Generation Financial L2, Infrastructure Value Reappearance

Project Introduction: N1 is a high-performance Rollup network (L2) designed specifically for financial applications. Its goal is not to become a "one-size-fits-all" universal chain, but to provide exceptional performance and efficiency for financial scenarios such as high-frequency trading and derivatives settlement through a customized architecture.

Airdrop Expectations: As a project led by the Founders Fund, N1 has attracted attention since its inception. The issuance of tokens by L2 public chains and the use of airdrops to incentivize early users, developers, and ecosystem projects have become an industry standard. Tokens are not only used for decentralized governance but also serve as a core weapon to capture network value and compete for liquidity and users against rivals like Starknet and Arbitrum.

Reason for attention: N1 represents the direction of specialization and refinement in the L2 track. Referring to Starknet's successful path, the airdrop of N1 is likely to be closely tied to the depth of interaction on its testnet and the early usage of its future mainnet. For users familiar with L2 interactions, this is an opportunity not to be missed.

4. Opensea: The Pending Giant Airdrop

Project Overview: As the "OG" and founder of the NFT market, Opensea has almost defined the entire track. Founders Fund participated in its seed round investment as early as 2018, demonstrating foresight in the "digital ownership economy."

Airdrop Expectations: The community's call for Opensea to issue governance tokens has persisted for several years. The main driving force is that, faced with competitors like LooksRare and Blur, which have rapidly risen through "vampire attacks" and token airdrops, Opensea needs a strong tool to reward its vast number of historical users and incentivize future platform loyalty. Issuing tokens to achieve community governance and value sharing is considered an inevitable choice.

Reason for Attention: The airdrop opportunity from Opensea is different from new projects. It does not rely on testnet interactions, but rather may become an unprecedented "retrospective" airdrop, where the reward criteria could encompass years of trading history, total transaction volume, NFT collections held, and collections created, among others. Although the anticipation has been long-standing, its potential massive scale makes it a "sleeping giant" that no NFT player can afford to ignore.

5. Infrastructure Matrix: Caldera, Citrea, Helius

In addition to the three major star projects mentioned above, Founders Fund's investment portfolio also hides a group of "water sellers"—key infrastructure that provides core tools and services for the entire crypto ecosystem, which also have an inherent demand for issuing tokens.

Caldera: "Rollup as a Service" (RaaS) platform that allows developers to deploy their own dedicated Rollup chains with one click. As "application chains" become a trend, Caldera is expected to become the "AWS" of the future blockchain world, and the potential for its platform token is immense.

Citrea: A Layer 2 solution focused on the Bitcoin ecosystem. With the revival of the Bitcoin ecosystem, L2 projects that bring programmability and scalability to the Bitcoin network are becoming the focus of market attention. Issuing tokens to incentivize ecosystem development and ensure network security is an essential path for its development.

Helius: The leading infrastructure provider in the Solana ecosystem. It offers key services such as APIs and nodes to developers. Although it leans more towards B2B, many core infrastructure providers eventually share the value and governance of their protocols with the broader ecosystem through the issuance of governance tokens.

Conclusion

In a market that is exhausted by fleeting MEME narratives and is starting to look for sustainable value again, the investment script of Founders Fund offers a clear and validated path. It reminds us that, amidst the noisy cycles of hype, those projects that are truly dedicated to building underlying technologies and solving core issues are the foundations that can ultimately weather the bull and bear markets and sediment value.

Following the footsteps of smart money essentially means adhering to an effective strategy for discovering long-term value. This list provides clear direction for research and participation, but in the crypto world where opportunities and risks coexist, DYOR (Do Your Own Research) is always the first principle before getting involved in any project.