By Stacy Muur

Compiled by: Chris, Techub News

This article is a summary and brief analysis of Stacy Muur’s latest report from Delphi Digital, “Do Airdrops Hurt More Than Help.” In the report, Delphi Digital explores recent project airdrops, analyzes the “health” of projects before and after airdrops, and discusses the problems and solutions faced by token issuance:

In 2024, the current state of “airdrops” is not optimistic. User expectations are getting smaller and smaller, and the fundamentals of the project are deteriorating. To explore why this phenomenon occurs, Delphi Digital wrote a report titled “Do Airdrops Hurt More Than Help”.

Delphi Digital’s insights into current airdrop strategies are important for both users and founders.

It’s been four years since the Uniswap airdrop, but it’s still the largest airdrop in Web3 history, with the total value of the airdropped tokens reaching $6.4 billion at the peak price.

The industry has changed significantly since then, with a plethora of Sybil attackers and airdrop farmers.

The 50 largest airdrops in the cryptocurrency space have distributed a total of over $26.6 billion worth of tokens.

This opportunity to make money without initial capital has not gone unnoticed. Now, every time a new project is released, it attracts a large number of Sybil attackers and bots who want to get the initial airdrop tokens. Therefore, these projects have developed new airdrop standards and anti-Sybil measures to deal with these problems.

Initially, Uniswap used a fixed reward system. Later, Jito introduced a tiered airdrop method. The Optimism team chose to distribute airdrops based on multiple criteria. And now, we have introduced a points system.

However, for many dApps popular with airdrop hunters, the main problem with airdrops is that they attract a lot of attention and participation in the short term, but after a key event (such as a snapshot), user activity and participation will drop sharply. The airdrop effect often leads to a false boom, and there is no real increase in actual user interest and demand for the application.

Let’s take LayerZero as an example.

Since April, Stargate cross-chain bridge transaction volume has dropped from $1.67 billion to $406.7 million, a 75% decrease in transaction volume. I personally never farmed ZRO tokens specifically, so the allocation I received was normal, about $400.

Prior to the ZK airdrop, zkSync generated roughly the same amount of daily transaction fees as Arbitrum. However, since the snapshot announcement and token distribution, this number has been declining. Recently, daily transaction fees fell below $10,000 for the first time.

Delphi Digital's research explores similar cases in detail, including Kamino, Parcl, Jito and Manta Network. A similar situation occurred with these projects, meaning that after the airdrop snapshot, the user activity of the project dropped significantly, and subsequent user engagement revealed the popularity of the project in the actual market.

The biggest problem with this kind of inorganic growth (which means attracting a large number of users in the short term through airdrops, etc., but the user activity cannot be sustained) is how to fairly evaluate the protocol and make wise investment decisions. The following methods may solve these problems:

  • Track the daily active users (DAU) and monthly active users (MAU) metrics over time to see if there has been a drop in user activity after the announcement of the airdrop snapshot and subsequent incentives.

  • Measure how many users continue to use the platform within a predetermined period of time after the airdrop (e.g., 1 week, 1 month).

  • Compare the daily active users (DAU) or weekly active users (WAU) ratio of new users to old users.

  • Monitor the number of transactions per user.

Monitor which features users are using and how often. If usage of core features continues or increases after the airdrop, this indicates that users are maintaining interest in the platform.

  • Track wallet engagement metrics.

  • Monitor community discussions and activity on governance forums.

Another problem facing airdrops in 2024 is that many new protocols widely adopt the "low float, high FDV" token model. This model makes it difficult for new buyers to see the growth potential of the token and cannot absorb the selling pressure brought by the airdrop.

personal opinion:

Airdrops can attract new users, some of whom may stick around. However, this is similar to the airdrop on X: most users come, but only a few actually stick around.

As an investor, you need to distinguish between organic growth (natural growth) and inorganic growth (growth obtained through short-term incentives). As a protocol developer, make sure you can retain users to build a long-term successful product.