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There has been a big earthquake in the airdrop track recently. ZKsync, LayerZero and Blast, which were originally highly anticipated, were all officially TGE in June. What was thought to be a feast for the airdrop party, turned out to be the "largest counterattack in history" and "the largest witch database" The birth of. In addition, Binance MegaDrop has also implemented penalties for users who receive rewards for multi-number KYC. The wool party members were not only beaten back, but also labeled as witches, and they complained endlessly under the double loss. The airdrop track, which was once regarded by countless people as a way to get rich, has now been completely relegated to the sidelines.
It can be said that the number of airdropped Tokens is not satisfactory, but the overall market market continues to be sluggish. Most of the airdropped Tokens peak when they go online, and then plummet all the way, and countless wooly parties end up unable to make ends meet. However, is this chaos a phased phenomenon, or is it an inevitable result after the industry develops to a certain level?
Focusing on the above issues, this article combines the recent controversial ZKsync airdrop, LayerZero anti-witch measures and Blast points system and other real-life materials to provide an in-depth analysis of the current airdrop track pattern and its future trends. We believe that the era of getting rich by combing hair has become a thing of the past, and everyone should give up their fantasies and look for something more suitable and valuable to find another way out.
ZKsync airdrop: Matthew effect, rat warehouse, ignoring old users
The most famous recent TGE and airdrop events include the ZKsync airdrop in June. Although its Airdrop market share accounts for about 17% of the total token supply and its airdrop weight ratio is relatively high among well-known projects, its distribution details and airdrop effects still cause dissatisfaction in the community. The reasons can be briefly summarized into three points.
First, there is an obvious Matthew effect in this airdrop distribution.
Although ZKsync claims to be "very generous" in terms of community rewards, as a star project with over 6 million active addresses, only nearly 700,000 addresses are eligible to receive airdrops, which means that only 10% of the addresses have received rewards. This ratio is basically at the bottom among TGE's previous major Ethereum Layer 2 projects.
In addition, in contrast to the dismal returns of most airdrop players, 23.9% of the airdrops were allocated to 9,203 addresses. Each of these 1.3% addresses received nearly 100,000 Token rewards, approximately US$27,000. In the end, different airdrop addresses received The difference in minimum/maximum rewards is up to 100 times.
This data shows that ZKsync’s reward system is heavily skewed towards a small number of top players.
Image source: Geek web3
It was later verified that ZKsync allocated most of the airdrops to users who had more assets on the chain, or to OGs and contributors in the community. ZKsync may hope to encourage this group of people to hold Tokens for a long time. However, the results were not satisfactory. According to Nansen's data as of June 30, among the first 100,000 addresses that received ZK airdrops, only 19.3% continued to hold Tokens, and the remaining addresses had resold some or all of the airdrop tokens. Behavior.
Image source: Geek web3
Second, airdrop distribution is considered to have a "rat warehouse".
For example, although holders of Pudgy Penguins, Milady Maker, Degen, and Bonsai did not directly participate in the ZKsync ecological interaction, they were still eligible to receive airdrops. They received more airdrops than many users who actively participated in the interaction. The existence of these suspected default "rat warehouses" has greatly diluted the users' real airdrop market share and aroused strong resentment from the community.
Interestingly, it is not just airdrop players who oppose ZKsync, but multiple project parties within the ZKsync ecosystem have also joined the list of defenders. NFT projects that have long been on the whitelist are not eligible to participate in ZKsync’s dedicated airdrop event for projects within the ecosystem. However, some MEME projects with less than 10,000 followers on Twitter, such as LongMao and Long, have obtained A certain airdrop market share makes people suspicious.
In addition, many long-term operating projects in the ZKsync ecosystem, such as Zerolend and Element, also tweeted to express their unfair treatment. On the contrary, Aave, Ethena and some projects that have not yet been launched in the ecosystem have received airdrops. Aave has gained the largest market share this time. ZKsync will use 0.5% of the total FDV amount, equivalent to approximately US$20,000,000, to support Aave’s social product Lens, which is more than the latter’s disclosed financing amount of US$15,000,000.
Based on the above reasons, many community members and project parties have expressed doubts and dissatisfaction with ZKsync’s distribution mechanism, believing that it lacks transparency and fairness.
Third, although the ZKsync mainnet has been online for 4 years and has been in operation for a long time, early loyal users have not gained any advantage in this airdrop distribution.
Among ZKsync's 7 airdrop bonus rules, early users of Zksync lite only meet two of them. If they do not participate in the subsequent interaction with ZKsync Era, they will not even be eligible to receive airdrops.
The above are some questions raised by community members regarding the ZKsync airdrop. ZKsync officially defended the results of this water-filled airdrop by evading large-scale bot and witch attacks. However, in actual anti-witch operations, ZKsync’s filtering of witch accounts was not thorough.
A senior Witch player @k1z4 claimed to have obtained 660,000 airdrop tokens using 350 wallet addresses. Additionally, over 3,300 accounts listed as witch-listed addresses by Arbitrum were still rewarded, with over 130,000,000 airdrop tokens being dropped into Layerzero’s witch-listed addresses.
Compared with Eigenlayer, which adjusted its distribution plan under the pressure of community public opinion, ZKsync did not take any solution and ignored the dissatisfaction of community members, which ultimately made people completely disappointed with it. The current ZKsync mainnet activity has been declining since it peaked in March, and this trend has been extremely intensified after TGE.
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LayerZero: Released the Largest List of Witches in History
Unlike ZKsync, which did not make the airdrop rules transparent beforehand and gave a temporary explanation afterwards, LayerZero adopted an open and transparent approach from the beginning on details such as airdrop rules and distribution plans, anti-witch methods, and fully listened to the opinions of the community. , to ensure fairness in airdrop distribution. To this end, LayerZero co-founder Bryan Pellegrino actively interacts with the community on social media, showing that he attaches great importance to the community.
However, the biggest drawback of the project is not the airdrop distribution rules, but the Witch Problem.
LayerZero quickly launched a two-month witch review after announcing the snapshot on May 1. The first round of review, a joint effort between Nansen and Chaos, focused on filtering for obvious witch behavior such as common scripts, synchronizers, and address associations. Since then, the Layerzero team has launched a second round of anti-witch operations - community reporting. Users can report other accounts' witchcraft behavior to each other and receive a portion of the airdrops that the reported account deserves as a reward.
Since the witch address will be disclosed in the form of a list, which will affect the subsequent airdrop policies of other projects, this community reporting system has triggered widespread discussion and criticism.
Image source: Geek web3
Of course, the community reporting system is not the first of its kind for LayerZero. Many projects such as Connext, Hop, and Safe have already used this method to filter witch addresses before airdrops. However, unlike previous community reporting systems, LayerZero does not start the reporting process after the airdrop query function is turned on. Instead, all addresses used in passing are included in the review scope, involving about 6 million addresses. This move is very important. It quickly aroused condemnation from the community.
In the early GitHub reporting stage, the LayerZero community "used magic to fight magic" and used DDOS and malicious batch reporting to delay the review process, which once led to the witch hunter's GitHub account being blocked. Later, the reporting portal was moved to a platform that required a deposit, but the large amount of reporting information still delayed the progress of LayerZero's work, and ultimately the review work was not completed before the airdrop inquiry was opened.
It can be said that the community reporting system has fully unleashed the imagination of the masses, resulting in the emergence of a large number of witch hunting ideas, and the coverage of anti-witch hunting is almost unprecedented. The characteristics of these discovered witch addresses are:
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There is a certain regularity in ENS domain name registration. In the LayerZero community round of reporting, there is an example of a group of ENS addresses starting with ruslan and ending with 001-104. These addresses were reported as clusters controlled by a single entity. This address cluster received a large number of airdrops on ZKsync, and there is strong suspicion of witches. This case has attracted people's attention and made people pay attention to the clues in ENS domain name registration behavior.
Clues in non-EVM chains and testnet addresses. Although Witch players interact cautiously on the EVM chain and use various anti-witch methods, their interactive behavior in non-EVM ecosystems may reveal their flaws. Witch hunters can find witch clusters through the correlation with EVM addresses on Aptos, Solona, and Starknet wallets. In addition, witch hunters can also find witch addresses from the testnet.
Clues in on-chain voting behavior. A witch hunter used the correlation of voting behavior of Stargate DAO in the Snapshot as a basis, and finally found 7,404 witches based on the correlation between the behavioral patterns of each address, the time of the first vote, and the intervals between previous votes. addresses, belong to 211 clusters.
In addition, social media accounts have also become the basis for witch hunts. Potential witch accounts can also be identified through the account's post content, mutual correlation, and even inferring correlation based on the invitation link serial number. Although this method has not been fully adopted, its reference significance cannot be ignored.
If the identity of a witch is inferred through behavioral similarities, for a single entity with multiple active accounts, even if there is no direct correlation between the addresses, it is inevitable that they will be noticed due to similar behaviors during long-term use. However, the above method is more based on inference and lacks direct evidence, and there is a risk of accidentally killing non-witch users. Therefore, after LayerZero announced the list of witches, it still opened the opportunity for the community to appeal to reduce the rate of accidental killings.
To sum up, in the community reporting system, there is a game relationship between witch hunters, users and airdrop studios. If the Lumao Studio surrenders, it will still receive 15% of the original reward; without determining the criteria for witch determination, witch hunters can "lead the snake out of the hole" through official and community reporting channels and receive 10% of the airdrop proceeds from the reported account. %. To avoid wasting energy, witch hunters must ensure that the reported address was originally eligible for the airdrop.
Judging from the final results, LayerZero only allocated 8.5% of Tokens to a community of 1,200,000 people during TGE. There was too much airdrop and the amount of airdrops people received was not ideal. Even the income of the top 5% of users was average. Neither the surrender nor the witch hunter has much to gain. This can be supported by the data leaked in the media.
In addition, Layerzero officially confiscated 10,000,000 Tokens due to witch addresses. Although the team has not announced the final list of witches, based on previous rounds of lists, the final list involves no less than 1,000,000 addresses, which is the largest in the history of Web3 Witch database. This move triggered a battle royale of unprecedented scale. Woolies became more cautious when interacting with projects that were not yet TGE, and even caused many people to give up on cross-chain bridge interactions such as Hyperlane, Bungee, and LiFi.
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redefining witch
After Layerzero announced the witch hunt, ZkLink, Linea, and Drift immediately joined the action. The witch-hunting atmosphere spread to other ecosystems, and even staking and verification nodes were included in the scope of the witch-hunting operation. However, different projects have inconsistent definitions of "witches", and there is still great ambiguity in the positioning of real users and witches.
Although Nomis and Trustalbas have introduced indicators to measure user authenticity, many projects do not break down the differences between Farmers and Sybils. Instead, they directly define some Farm behaviors with non-real user behavior as witches. For example, Wormhole treats wash transactions as spam transactions, classifies them as witch behavior, and confiscates user-related rewards;
Image source: Geek web3
Similarly, Layerzero defines apps commonly used by Farmers as witch apps, and users who frequently use "witch farming" programs such as Merkly, L2Pass, and L2Marathon, as well as valueless NFTs and small cross-chains, as witches. However, in the end, Layerzero only downgraded the use of cross-chains with less than $1 and low-quality NFT cross-chains, and did not blacklist them. This approach is indeed more reasonable.
Blast: Points-based airdrops are going to collapse
As an alternative to interactive airdrops, the points system has been controversial since its inception. On the one hand, the uncertainty of airdrops, the opacity of points, and project parties can modify the point rules at will. For example, in Eigenlayer and Drift Protocol, the points obtained by users’ real money pledges are not used as the main basis for airdrops, and Etherfi is even more so. The phenomenon of point shrinkage and point theft occurred;
On the other hand, even for open-card points, the future dilution is still unknown. Taking the multi-round Odyssey event launched by Linea as an example, points may be diluted in the future due to various activities, extended TGE time and other factors. These practices of the project side are vividly called "PUA" by users.
When it comes to point-based airdrops, Blast is the originator. There are two points systems. Users can obtain ordinary points through deposits and gold points through on-chain interactions. However, Blast has only had the concept of ordinary points before, and suddenly introduced gold points after the mainnet went online. The difference between the two is that ordinary points are obtained through a positive correlation between pledged assets and duration, while gold points require users to continue to participate in interactions after the mainnet goes online. Gold points can be multiplied by the user's normal points, up to 120 times the normal points.
Originally, people thought that the staking activity would end when the Blast mainnet was launched, and airdrops would be distributed based on ordinary points at that time. However, after the staking activity ended, Blast suddenly launched a gold points mechanism, catching people off guard.
First of all, Blast is one of the first projects to use the points-based airdrop. The core of this system is that users with large pledged assets and long-term pledges will receive more airdrops. However, the 120 times multiplier of gold points makes it at the expense of a large number of lock-ups. Early adopter revenue is diluted without any lower limit.
Secondly, the gold points mechanism requires users to keep all pledged assets on the Blast network for interaction, because the project did not take snapshots after the mainnet went online, but continued to obtain ordinary points based on the amount of assets as before. In this case, if the user withdraws most of the assets and leaves only a small amount of assets for interaction, the growth rate of ordinary points as the base will be significantly reduced, and the role of gold points will also be greatly reduced. Qualitatively speaking, this is a typical "counterattack".
In short, the Blast mechanism has been exhausted, which has greatly reduced the income of airdrop players, and tried to keep user assets on the Blast chain, but people did not buy it. After the rules were announced, Blast’s TVL dropped in just 10 days. fell by US$1 billion, a decrease of 1/3.
Image source: Geek web3
After endless efforts to attract people, interact, and make deposits, the points system eventually evolved into a competition for social influence, a game for big players. KOL uses its social influence to invite users, and then obtains the airdrop weight and enjoys the profits. The big players have an inherent advantage in the points game based on deposits. Justin Sun obtained as much as 4.26% of the market share in EigenLayer’s first quarter airdrop. Accounting rate.
When airdrops of points projects no longer recognize points, and points are diluted in various ways, users' hard-earned points may even be disqualified due to witch censorship. This distribution method will gradually be cast aside by the community. Blast this time Large-scale counterattacks have made more and more people unwilling to sacrifice their opportunity costs in exchange for those invisible and intangible points. The rise of the points system began in Tieshun, or it may end in Tieshun.
The decline of the airdrop track
The model of getting rich through airdrops has been popular for 4 years since the DeFi summer, but now it is declining. Since the beginning of the year, as the number of fans of Lumao KOLs has grown and the scale of Lumao studios has rapidly expanded, people’s attention to airdrops has shown obvious signs of overheating. In contrast, the airdrop yield rate of individual users has declined exponentially. From Wormhole, Starknet to Taiko, LayerZero, ZKSync and many other projects, in just half a year, the airdrop rewards available to a single address have increased by the naked eye. Visible speed reduction.
Image source: Geek web3
Affected by market and community sentiment, the price performance of many projects during the TGE was not ideal. The low community sentiment can be attributed to the low return on investment ratio of users, while the negative sentiment in the secondary market reflects investor dissatisfaction with low liquidity and high FDV projects.
Looking back in hindsight, community members reacted fiercely to plans such as ZKSync, LayerZero, and Taiko that required long-term interaction and were eventually rejected, and they all launched a campaign of crusade. In contrast, projects such as Avail, Dymension, and Celestia have not caused much controversy by issuing airdrops to non-ecological users. This is because their airdrops do not require users to interact too much in the ecosystem and "farm" them. It didn't cost the Woolies much, and it was a bonus for the recipients.
To sum up, the original intention of the airdrop is to attract real users with expected rewards, and the Lumao track is not what the project parties want to see. The various strange phenomena that have occurred recently can be attributed to the relationship between airdrop farmers and project developers. long-standing incentive incompatibility.
In order to obtain rewards, airdrop farmers spend a lot of time and money and engage in a lot of meaningless interactions, thinking that they should receive a large amount of rewards for granted; while the project side is more willing to distribute rewards to real users who have contributed to the reputation of the project. The two are contradictory, but a few years ago, anti-witch resources were scarce and the threshold for airdrops was lowered, which made it normal for most people to make profits. Many airdrop farmers just wanted to get rewards and abandoned the project after issuing airdrops. Then the airdrop would not be able to achieve the expected results of the project team.
A typical example of this phenomenon is LayerZero, where user usage dropped sharply after the airdrop (as shown below). It can be said that the so-called strange phenomena and changes in the airdrop track today seem to be returning to the roots, that is, no longer allowing users who have not truly contributed to the ecosystem to gain benefits.
Image source: Geek web3
Jupiter Lianchuang previously stated that the airdrop is a gift to early adopters, not a reward, loyalty program or means of growth. However, after the Arbitrum airdrop, the influx of a large number of studios broke the balance between early adopters and project developers. Bryan Pellegrino emphasized that donating is not mandatory, and obtaining an airdrop is not a matter of course.
Today's large-scale "anti-Lu Mao" has greatly cooled down the Lu Mao gold rush, and the illusion of false prosperity is gradually shattered. For planners, ecological construction has also begun to return to rationality. They need to think about how to attract normal users and avoid the erosion of automated witches as much as possible. Whether it is light filtering or excessive hunting, it will cause dissatisfaction and condemnation from the community. For the Woolies, the era of high odds and big money-spending in airdrops has passed. It is wise to lower expectations when participating in airdrop activities and stop dreaming about making windfalls through on-chain interactions.
In any case, airdrops are either too few or too uneven. Now the market capacity of the entire Web3 is close to saturation. Today, with the proliferation of wool parties, getting rich through airdrops has become a reality.
[Disclaimer] There are risks in the market, so investment needs to be cautious. This article does not constitute investment advice, and users should consider whether any opinions, views or conclusions contained in this article are appropriate for their particular circumstances. Invest accordingly and do so at your own risk.
This article is reprinted with permission from: "PANews"
Original author: defioasis
