DFYN Community Whitelisting for Polkastarter IDO — Selection Process

8 min readMay 9, 2021

We received a total of 56,493 responses in the community pool for the Dfyn IDO on Polkastarter. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of applications for a small number of whitelist spots, 300 in total, meant that only a small percentage of those who applied could be whitelisted. To arrive at these 300 spots, our team followed a structured approach based on the conditions listed here. Although the majority of the selection process was automated using Python scripts, some stages in the process mandated manual intervention. In this post, we will delineate the entire selection procedure to make our approach transparent to the entire community. We will also share the entire data as well as the code so you can verify the authenticity of our selection procedure yourself.

Transparency is the currency of trust.
- Dr. Freda Lewis-Hall

Outline of the Process

1. Level 0 filtering (Mandatory)

Applications received from ineligible countries were dropped.
Duplicate entries were removed (with the first instance of each entry kept intact).
A total of 1,190 applications were dropped in the level 0 filtering process.

2. Level 1 filtering

In level 1 filtering, applications were removed if the applicant gave one or more incorrect responses to the three questions that were asked to check the applicant’s knowledge of the Dfyn project.
Given the importance of liquidity providers to the Dfyn ecosystem, this screening step was made not obligatory for Dfyn liquidity providers.
A total of 6,464 applications were removed after level 1 filtering, taking the total of eligible entries for level 2 filtering to 48,839.

3. Level 2 filtering

Applicants’ Twitter and Telegram handles were checked against the data to filter out applicants who are not following Dfyn on Twitter or are not a member of our Telegram main channel.
Level 2 filtering further screened out 20,314 responses.

4. Liquidity Providers

All the early adopters (LPs before the IDO announcement) that applied and passed the level 0 screening were directly given a whitelist spot.
Top liquidity providers as per the snapshot taken on May 4th, 2021 at 3:00 P.M. GMT were also rewarded with a whitelist sport. In fact, top LPs on the Dfyn AMM constitute the majority of the whitelist spots.

5. Route Holders

Due to the large number of $ROUTE holders across 4 avenues, namely, Matic network, Ethereum network, Galaxyfarm and Spacefarm, $ROUTE holders had to pass the level 2 filtering process as well to be in the running for a whitelist spot.
Snapshot of $ROUTE holders was taken on May 4th, 2:00 P.M. GMT.

Important Links

The complete data including the applicants’ responses, the interim data at each level, scraped list of Telegram and Twitter users, the list of liquidity providers and route holders as well as the initial whitelist have been uploaded to this Google spreadsheet.

This GitHub repository contains the entire python code as well as the step-by-step instructions for running it.

NOTE: To ensure that everyone’s privacy is respected, we have removed each applicant’s sensitive information from the spreadsheet including their name, email address, country of citizenship as well as their Twitter and Telegram handles.

Early Analysis of the Form Responses

It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.
- William Blackstone

Level 0 Filtering

In this process, we started out by declaring a list of countries (including all their alternative moniker) ineligible to participate in our IDO process and cross-validated them against our form responses. All responses where country of citizenship matched one of these ineligible countries were dropped.

Next, all the responses containing duplicate wallet addresses were dropped (with the first instance of each address being kept). The resulting data can be found here.

List of countries that were not allowed to participate in the IDO:

United States of America, Cuba, North Korea, Timor-Leste, Cambodia, Laos, Tanzania, Serbia, Tunisia, Uganda, Mali, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Zimbabwe, Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Crimea, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Burundi, South Sudan, Sudan (north), Sudan (Darfur), Guinea-Bissau, Kosovo, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ethiopia, Yemen, Sri Lanka, Belarus, and Venezuela

Level 1 Filtering

This process did not require any programming script. We used filters native to MS Excel to screen out all applications containing incorrect responses.

Step 1: Since we need to apply filters to multiple columns, don’t select any particular column and go to Data → Filter.

Step 2: Click the dropdown button beside the column heading and uncheck all the incorrect answers. This will ensure that only the applications with correct answer remain. Do this for all the three questions.

The level 1 filtered data can be found here.

Correct Answers

On which network is Dfyn live? → Polygon
Dfyn will use which Protocol? → XCLP
Dfyn will be a ? → Multi-chain DEX

Level 2 Filtering

Before doing the level 2 filtering, we used (a) python’s tweepy API to get all the followers of Dfyn on twitter and (b) the telethon API to get all members of the Dfyn_HQ telegram channel. The code for the same, along with the details for running it is available here.

Note: You need to get your own API keys from Twitter and Telegram to run the code.

All of Dfyn’s twitter followers on May 4th, 3:00 P.M. GMT can be found here and the list of all Telegram members can be found here.

After getting this data, we ran a loop to test each applicant’s Twitter and Telegram handle against this data. All the non followers/members were dropped from further consideration. The resulting level 2 filtered data is publicly available here.

Selection of Liquidity Providers

Early adopters

Early adopters play an important role in the success of any DeFi project. To reward Dfyn’s early liquidity providers on the Polygon (previously Matic) chain, we took a snapshot of liquidity providers on 29th April (before the announcement of Dfyn IDO on Polkastarter). This was done using Dfyn’s Graph API available here. The resulting list of all wallet addresses that provided liquidity to Dfyn before the IDO announcement can be found here.

Of these 694 addresses, only 71 were found to have been present in our level 0 filtered application list. All 71 of those liquidity providers were directly whitelisted. The list of these LPs can be found here.

Top LPs

Of the 200 whitelist spots reserved for LPs, 71 were assigned to the early adopters. For the remaining 129 spots:

Step 1) We took a snapshot of top 100 LPs on the Dfyn AMM from https://info.dfyn.network/accounts. The data for the same can be found here.

Step 2) We used Dfyn’s Graph API to get the top liquidity pools on the Dfyn network. The details of these pools are also visible at https://info.dfyn.network/pairs.

Step 3) Using the pair ids received from the Graph API, we ran a loop of another GraphQL query to get the top 20 liquidity providers in each of the top 60 pools. Since many liquidity providers were common in these pools, after traversing through about 45–50 liquidity pools, very few unique LP addresses were being discovered. Nonetheless, we decided to traverse through the top 60 pools. The list of unique LP addresses from top 60 pools can be found here.

Finally, we merged the list of LPs extracted in steps 1) and 3) using an inner join (to remove the repeated addresses) and ran it against our Level 0 filtered applications list. This gave us a total list of 154 LP addresses made available here. However, some of these addresses (25) overlapped with addresses of early liquidity providers, and therefore were dropped from this list. This way, we completed the quota of 200 LPs (71 early adopters + 129 top LPs).

Note: On receiving the POLS holder whitelist from Polkastarter, we noticed that three LPs on our whitelist were also present in theirs. To ensure maximum participation, we decided to give those three spots to $ROUTE holders.

Selection of $ROUTE Holders

The Router community has been a major force behind the popularity of Dfyn.network. It is only fair that $ROUTE holders be rewarded for showing constant faith in our team and our projects. Applicants holding $ROUTE on either of the following platforms were eligible for a whitelist spot:

Ethereum Network
Matic Network
Galaxyfarm Staking Contract
Spacefarm Staking Contract (either ROUTE-WETH pool or ROUTE-USDC pool)

After extracting the $ROUTE holders on all these 4 platforms, the addresses were matched against our level 2 filtered applications. The inner join of these datasets can be found here.

After this, all addresses with less than 100 $ROUTE were removed from consideration. From the remaining 109 holders, some addresses overlapped with the LP whitelist. Some holders were found to have submitted multiple applications with different ERC20 addresses but identical or similar email addresses/twitter usernames. Following the removal of the seemingly duplicate accounts, MS Excel’s RAND() function was used to order the remaining 90 or so tuples randomly, with the top 65 being chosen for whitelisting.

Current Whitelist

Following the selection of $ROUTE holders and Dfyn LPs, 15 whitelist spots were given to AMA winners, 7 to meme contest winners (initially 10 were chosen, but 3 were already whitelisted through other channels) and 4 to telegram sticker contest winners.

The dataset comprising the details regarding the initial 289 whitelisted spots can be found here. The remaining spots will be filled via more contests and community interaction.

Stay tuned!

Join the DFYN Telegram for official information regarding the IDO and the $DFYN token here.

Important Notes

Following the failure of some applicants to complete their KYC on time, reminder emails were sent out with an extension of KYC deadline. The whitelist spots of applicants who did not complete their KYC within the extended KYC period were assigned to $ROUTE holders who were dropped as part of the random selection process. The final whitelist comprising the addresses of new whitelist candidates is published here.
The POLS/Non POLS holder distinction has been taken into consideration for the whitelisting process only. During the actual IDO, there will be no dedicated POLS and Non POLS pools. The pools will be marked as Dfyn 1, Dfyn 2, Dfyn 3 and all whitelisted candidates (POLS holder or not) will be randomly assigned one of those pools.

About Dfyn

Dfyn is a multi-chain AMM DEX currently functional on the Polygon network. Dfyn nodes on various chains act as liquidity entry and exit points into the cross-chain liquidity super mesh that is being enabled by Router Protocol.

Website: https://www.dfyn.network/

Telegram: https://t.me/Dfyn_HQ

Twitter: https://twitter.com/_DFyn

Telegram Announcements: https://t.me/dfynofficial