The premine consists of 8% of the total supply of 21 million coins, meaning the premine consists of 1.68 million coins. Rather than allocating the entire premine to the bring-up costs, we decided to split the premine equally between compensation for bring-up and an "airdrop", where we freely give an equal amount of coins to a number of airdrop participants. This means Company 0 and its developers will have put roughly USD 415,000 into the bring-up since April, 2014 and receive 4% of the total supply, 840,000 coins (at USD 0.49 per coin). The remaining 4% will be spread evenly across a list of airdrop participants as part of an effort to build the Decred network and decentralize its distribution. Coins held by Company 0 will be used to fund its ongoing work on open-source projects, such as Decred and btcsuite.
Giving away these coins in an airdrop allows us to accomplish several things at once for the project: enlarge the Decred network, further help decentralize the distribution of coins, and allow us to get coins into the hands of people who are interested in participating in the project. Decred is fundamentally about technological progress, so the airdrop will target individuals that have made contributions to advance technology in its various forms. The maximum number of airdrop participants is capped at 5,000 individuals, so we recommend registering sooner rather than later. These coins will be given away unconditionally and there is zero expectation of Decred receiving anything from you in return for these coins.
Sign up for the airdrop is currently open, but the airdrop registration will commence on January 4th, 2016. People who have been selected to participate in the airdrop will receive an email that contains a link to a web registration form. This form will require airdrop participants to enter an address to which their coins can be sent. Binaries and source code will be made available so that you can generate a wallet seed and an address for your airdrop coins. Once you have entered your receiving address into the airdrop webform and submitted it, you will receive your coins on the projected launch date of January, 18th, 2016.
Lemme get a dab of that airdrop devs
Signed up!