Written by: Luke, Mars Finance
The Plasma airdrop ultimately distributed 9,300 $XPL to each participant. Calculated at 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 put the spotlight on its key backer—Founders Fund. This top VC, founded by Peter Thiel, has earned the reputation of being the “treasure map” for crypto airdrops thanks to its precise early investments in projects like Starknet, Avail, and Plasma.
Their success is clearly not accidental. Behind it is a clear investment philosophy and decision-making system. So, what is the core of this system? How does the decision-making team at Founders Fund think? After igniting Plasma, what other projects in their hands, aligned with their “doctrine” and with high airdrop potential, are worth our close attention?
“Brain” and “OG”: The Dual-Core Decision-Making of Founders Fund
Founders Fund’s strong momentum in the crypto space comes from the perfect complementarity of its two core figures: one provides top-level philosophy and grand narrative as the “brain,” while the other is responsible for deep frontline involvement and tactical execution as the “crypto OG.”
Peter Thiel: The “Brain” and Soul of Investment
As the founder and spiritual leader of Founders Fund, Peter Thiel’s personal philosophy is deeply imprinted on every investment decision of the fund. His “contrarian thinking” and pursuit of “monopolistic technology,” as conveyed in Zero to One, form the cornerstone of Founders Fund’s investment approach. Thiel himself, as the godfather of the “PayPal Mafia,” has a long-standing obsession with creating a new generation of financial networks independent of traditional systems. This high-level thinking ensures that Founders Fund always focuses on foundational protocols and infrastructure capable of reshaping industry paradigms, rather than chasing short-term application trends. He sets the direction for the fund: to seek out teams solving the hardest problems and with the potential to create an entirely new future.
Joey Krug: The Frontline “Crypto OG”
If Thiel provides the philosophical guidance of “why to invest,” then partner Joey Krug solves the tactical questions of “who to invest in” and “how to invest.” Krug is a true OG in the crypto world, as the co-founder of the decentralized prediction market Augur, with hands-on experience building and operating a successful DeFi protocol from scratch. Before joining Founders Fund, he was co-CIO at Pantera Capital, accumulating extensive crypto investment experience. Krug has emphasized that he places great importance on a team’s “shipping velocity”—the ability to continuously turn ideas into products. His deep industry background and keen judgment on technical execution ensure that Founders Fund’s grand narrative is precisely matched with the most capable teams.
The combination of Thiel’s top-level design and Krug’s frontline insight forms the dual-core decision-making engine that makes Founders Fund invincible in the crypto space, allowing them to both grasp the grandest technological waves and identify the most capable “surfers” riding those waves.
Founders Fund Crypto Investment Doctrine: Portfolio Overview
This table aims to integrate the scattered projects observed by users and the findings of this report into a structured analytical tool, clearly demonstrating Founders Fund’s investment model of prioritizing infrastructure, early involvement, and targeting high potential.
Alpha List: High-Potential Projects Worth Special Attention
Based on the above investment doctrine, we can clearly screen out the next batch of high airdrop potential projects from the Founders Fund portfolio.
1. Polymarket: The King of Prediction Markets
Project Overview: 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 a key hub for obtaining information and judging trends in the crypto world and beyond, with consistently high daily trading volumes and monthly active users.
Airdrop Expectations: The issuance of a token by Polymarket is almost an open secret. First, as a decentralized protocol requiring community governance and value capture, a token is a necessary component of its ecosystem. Second, and most crucially, its filings with the US SEC explicitly mention “warrants,” which in investment agreements are usually considered as granting early investors the right to receive tokens in the future. After recently receiving positive regulatory signals from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the main obstacles to compliant token issuance have been cleared.
Reasons to Watch: The community widely expects that Polymarket’s airdrop may follow the model of Starknet and Avail, conducting large-scale retrospective airdrops to early and deeply engaged platform users. This is a project with a mature product, a large user base, and a clear business model. The launch of its token will be a highly anticipated value realization event.
2. Sentient: AI+Crypto Frontier, Carrier of Grand Narrative Value
Project Overview: Sentient’s vision is extremely ambitious—it aims to build 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 use blockchain technology to create a permissionless, community-owned AI economy.
Airdrop Expectations: For a protocol aiming to build a global decentralized network, a token is indispensable. It is not only the core tool to incentivize AI model contributors, computing power providers, and data validators, but also the sole vehicle for network governance and value distribution. With up to $85 million in seed funding, Sentient has ample “ammunition” to build a vast ecosystem and execute large-scale community incentive plans (including airdrops).
Reasons to Watch: Sentient perfectly fits Founders Fund’s philosophy of investing in “revolutionary technology.” Its airdrop will go beyond mere wealth effects, serving as the initial distribution of ownership in the future decentralized AI network. For users bullish on the AI+Crypto sector, early participation in its ecosystem and becoming a network contributor could yield extremely high returns.
3. N1 (formerly Layer N): Next-Generation Financial L2, Reimagining Infrastructure Value
Project Overview: N1 is a high-performance rollup network (L2) designed specifically for financial applications. Its goal is not to be a “one-size-fits-all” general-purpose chain, but to provide extreme 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 Founders Fund, N1 has attracted attention since its inception. L2 public chains issuing tokens and incentivizing early users, developers, and ecosystem projects through airdrops has become an industry standard. Tokens are not only used for decentralized governance but are also the core weapon for capturing network value and competing for liquidity and users with rivals like Starknet and Arbitrum.
Reasons to Watch: N1 represents the trend of specialization and refinement in the L2 sector. Following Starknet’s successful path, N1’s airdrop is highly likely to be closely tied to the depth of interaction with its testnet and early usage of its future mainnet. For users familiar with L2 interactions, this is an opportunity not to be missed.
4. Opensea: The Unresolved Giant Airdrop
Project Overview: As the “OG” and pioneer of the NFT marketplace, Opensea has almost defined the entire sector. Founders Fund participated in its seed round as early as 2018, demonstrating its forward-looking vision for the “digital ownership economy.”
Airdrop Expectations: The community has been calling for Opensea to issue a governance token for years. The main driving force is that, facing competitors like LooksRare and Blur that have rapidly risen through “vampire attacks” and token airdrops, Opensea needs a powerful tool to reward its massive historical user base and incentivize future platform loyalty. Issuing a token to achieve community governance and value sharing is seen as an inevitable choice.
Reasons to Watch: Opensea’s airdrop opportunity is different from new projects. It does not rely on testnet interactions but may become an unprecedentedly large “retrospective” airdrop, with reward criteria possibly covering years of trading history, total trading volume, held NFT collections, and created collections. Although long anticipated, its potential massive scale makes it a “sleeping giant” that no NFT player can ignore.
5. Infrastructure Matrix: Caldera, Citrea, Helius
In addition to the three star projects above, Founders Fund’s portfolio also hides a group of “water sellers”—key infrastructure providers offering core tools and services to the entire crypto ecosystem, all of which have an inherent need to issue tokens.
Caldera: A “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 poised to become the “AWS” of the future blockchain world, with huge potential for its platform token.
Citrea: Focused on Layer 2 solutions for the Bitcoin ecosystem. As the Bitcoin ecosystem revives, L2 projects that bring programmability and scalability to the Bitcoin network are becoming market focal points. Issuing tokens to incentivize ecosystem development and ensure network security is a necessary path for its growth.
Helius: A leading infrastructure provider in the Solana ecosystem, offering developers key services such as APIs and nodes. Although more B2B-oriented, many core infrastructure providers ultimately issue governance tokens to share protocol value and governance rights with the broader ecosystem.
Conclusion
In a market weary of fleeting MEME narratives and once again seeking sustainable value, Founders Fund’s investment playbook offers a clear and proven path. It reminds us that, beyond the noise of hype cycles, the projects truly committed to building foundational technology and solving core problems are the bedrock that can endure bull and bear markets and accumulate lasting value.
Following the footsteps of smart money is essentially following 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 engaging in any project.
