Although this year is a bear market, there are still many hot spots in the cryptocurrency circle. The wealth-making effect of Arbitrum's airdrop has led to an unprecedented prosperity in the field of interactive airdrops. In addition to ordinary individual players, many studios, investment institutions and even middle-aged women have begun to participate in the field of interactive airdrops. However, the entry of a large number of people has brought not only unprecedented internal competition, but also strict anti-witch measures by the project party.
Generally, project owners are very cautious about using the witch reporting method, even if they know that there are studios that interact in large quantities. Their general practice is to constantly PUA users, causing some users to give up interaction. However, there are also stubborn project owners, such as hop protocol, which encourages users to report witches, so that some wallet addresses with deep interactions are labeled as witches. The consequence of this practice is that hop protocol has also been abused by many players, and the credibility of the project has also been questioned. It even affected the amount of interaction on the chain of hop and reduced the overall valuation of the project.
For this reason, project owners would rather continue to use PUA to increase users than to conduct large-scale witch reporting. However, not all project owners think this way. There are always a few who are short-sighted, such as connext, which has caused a lot of controversy this time.
connext is a cross-chain protocol that recently announced the upcoming issuance of the NEXT token, and announced anti-witch measures a few days later. Simply put, as long as you report a witch address, you can get a certain percentage of the witch address's token reward. For this reason, many witch hunters have appeared on the Internet. They look for witch addresses on the chain and submit reports in the hope of receiving generous rewards.
From the current perspective, reporting 4 witch addresses can get a reward estimated at several hundred U. Of course, the token may be worth more than that after it goes online, and often some witch addresses are dozens or even hundreds, so reporting witches has become a profitable job, and some people use scripts to collect information and data from the chain. Basically, it can be said that not much effort is spent, so it has attracted many people.
Because of this, many addresses have been reported. Although the project owners may think this is a good thing, the players in the market have suffered huge losses.
Some simple Sybil addresses, such as wallets grouped together, are easier to report, such as the following picture:
Others have taken advantage of the correlation of on-chain interactions to make deeply hidden Sybil addresses invisible, for example:
1. Operate the same project at the same time, and the methods are highly similar
2. The wallets have similar amounts and types of tokens, and their active dates are the same.
3. They all operated a few projects
These methods can basically find 80% of the Sybil addresses on the market, and the impact they produce will be huge. According to statistics from netizens, nearly 40% of the addresses are Sybil addresses. Although the Connext team has not yet reconfirmed these addresses, it is basically true.
So how should we view the relationship between witches and anti-witches? In fact, this is the essence behind this matter.
First of all, some low-level witch addresses must be eliminated. Except for the early project airdrops such as Uniswap, other projects have more or less established anti-witch measures, but some projects are stricter and some are more relaxed. At this time, players are actually more receptive.
However, the reporting model of hop and connext has a drawback. First, after the user's wallet address is labeled as a witch, other project parties will exclude these wallet addresses from airdrops. This will not only affect the airdrops of hop or connext, but also affect other airdrops of user players. This is the main reason why these players oppose it. Because it will force those wool-pulling users to give up these addresses, and these addresses themselves have costs.
Secondly, witches themselves also have certain advantages, especially in a bear market. The profit model of many project parties is actually to make a living by earning the difference in fees. In a bear market, their sources of income are relatively few. For example, when connext is cross-chain, you not only have to pay the gas fee for contract interaction, but also the protocol usage fee. This protocol usage fee is the source of income for the project team. When the project party’s protocol usage fee is not enough for project operations, they will think about financing or issuing coins. In other words, witch’s studio and users are actually giving money to the project party and helping them through a crisis.
From this perspective, the project's strict anti-witch behavior is tantamount to killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, and it is understandable that it has been denounced by studios and users.
At the same time, the activity on the chain is relatively low in a bear market. While witches are inflating the volume, they can also provide convenience for project parties to obtain financing and become bargaining chips for project parties to raise funds. The reputation of the project parties is also built on this. Therefore, it is generally not easy for project parties to report witches. The slightly stricter ones basically require the project parties to search for witch addresses on the chain themselves, rather than asking others to report them. In addition, they will not be too strict with witches, and basically those that are not too obvious can be let go.
The impact of the witch incident
First of all, the witch's report has hit the mentality of many players, because many people have invested too much in the game, and now there is the risk of being pua and internal rolls. Therefore, if the witch is reported, it will basically be a waste of money, and the investment and the harvest are not proportional, which will force some people to leave this track.
Secondly, some powerful studio teams may develop as a result, because the increase in barriers also allows them to exist in this track. They will use more advanced interaction methods to prevent being detected by witches, but early bonuses will basically no longer appear.
Finally, the airdrop track will face a certain degree of reshuffle. The open incentive test network may be more popular, and the blind test form of airdrop may be difficult to survive. Of course, people will be more willing to choose large projects with high financing, because these projects will have more "patterns". Small projects need to change to avoid this from happening.
