Data Link:
-EtherFi participating address analysis Thegraph: (https://api.thegraph.com/subgraphs/name/web3mario/etherfi_airdrop_analyze)
-All accounts get airdrop results: (https://cf-ipfs.com/ipfs/QmP2tgnrAyUGwRs1o6B8YGzHmnecyZrVhY5QiFCESxUsBv)
introduction:
In the previous article, the author discussed in detail how oligarchs in the Web3 field exploit users through the Loyalty Point mechanism. This article selects a specific case to further verify this point of view.
On March 18, 2024, Ether.Fi, a leader in the Restaking field, took the lead in conducting the first airdrop of ETHFI tokens, which caused quite a stir. As of now, the price of ETHFI has reached $5.54, and the fully diluted market value has reached $5.5 billion. This valuation is quite impressive for an early project whose core business has not yet been launched, and it also reflects investors' recognition of the project's vision.
However, many users are not satisfied with the results of this round of airdrops. For a long time in the past, EtherFi's promotion focus and incentive mechanism have been centered around Loyalty Points. Therefore, naturally, users will think that there is a certain correlation between receiving airdrops and accumulating Loyalty Points. However, after the airdrop results were announced, many users found that there seemed to be no obvious relationship between the two. Many loyal users who have accumulated a large number of Loyalty Points have little difference in rewards with some "shallowly involved" users, and even found that some large users with strong funds quickly occupied most of the airdrop shares.
Therefore, the author spent some time to analyze the design ideas of the project team in this round of EtherFi airdrop activities in detail through data, and identified the biggest beneficiaries of this round of airdrops. I hope this can help readers optimize their strategies for participating in similar airdrop activities in the future. Finally, we also look forward to the possible design direction of EtherFi's second season airdrop rules and estimate the potential benefits.
Review of EtherFi Season 1 Airdrop:
First, let’s review the official rules for EtherFi’s Season 1 airdrop:
- EAP: Users participating in the Early Adopter Program
- ether.fan: users who hold ether.fan NFT
- Solo Staker: Participate in Solo Staker on ether.fi
- eETH/weETH: Users holding eETH or weETH
- DeFi rewards: Users who participate in DeFi pools or storage rooms of eETH or weETH
- Badges: Users who have unlocked one or more ether.fi badges
- Referrals: Users who invite one or more new users to participate in ether.fi
However, these rules do not directly point out the description related to Loyalty Point, and the specific calculation algorithm is not very clear. However, through the analysis of the full amount of data, we can still find certain rules.
TheGraph obtained all the user addresses that participated from July 10, 2023, when EtherFi deployed the Liquidity Pool smart contract, to March 18, 2024, and used Python crawlers to crawl these addresses to obtain the airdrop information. The analysis results are as follows:
- The total number of participating addresses is 82,102, of which 71,380 addresses received airdrops;
- Among all the users who received airdrops, each user had an average of 536,444 Loyalty Points, and each user received an average of 702 ETHFI airdrops;
- Each user needs to accumulate 755 Loyalty Points on average to obtain 1 ETHFI, that is, the $ETHFI conversion rate is 755 Loyalty Points / ETHFI.
These data clearly demonstrate the existence of the Matthew Effect. Among all users who received airdrops, the top 20% of users received 94% of Loyalty Points and 77.5% of the airdrop volume. The top 10% and top 5% of users received 87.8% and 79.2% of Loyalty Points, and 72.2% and 65.6% of the airdrop volume, respectively. This shows that the project's airdrop distribution mechanism is more favorable to "shallowly involved" users and "heavy loyal" users, usually whale users.
First, let's look at the distribution of LoyaltyPoints obtained by users. As shown in Figure 1, the horizontal axis is the user's LoyaltyPoints.
Point ranking, the vertical axis is the amount of Loyalty Points held by the user. We can see that the average amount of Loyalty Points obtained by each user is 536,444, but at this time only the top 7,588 users can reach this standard. Compared with the total number of participants of 82,102, this is a relatively small range, which means that whales hold a large number of Loyalty Points.
Next, let's take a look at the distribution of the number of airdrops received by users. As shown in Figure 2, the horizontal axis is the user's Loyalty Point ranking, and the vertical axis is the amount of ETHFI airdrops received by the user. We can see that the average amount of airdrops received by each user is 636, and users ranked close to the top 6,500 can meet this standard. Compared with the distribution of Loyalty Points, the distribution of airdrops is more concentrated on users with higher rankings.
Finally, let's explore the relationship between the user's Loyalty Points and the number of airdrops. As shown in Figure 3, the horizontal axis represents the user's Loyalty Points, and the vertical axis represents the user's ETHFI airdrop conversion rate, that is, how many Loyalty Points are required to obtain 1 ETHFI airdrop. We can find that Loyalty Points and airdrop conversion rates present an approximate rule of piecewise functions. In the first piecewise function, the user's airdrop acquisition rate is roughly proportional to Loyalty Points. The more Loyalty Points held, the greater the corresponding airdrop conversion rate. However, when the user holds more than about 200,000 Loyalty Points, the entire piecewise function enters the second part. During this stage, the user's airdrop conversion rate is approximately 1140, which means that holding more Loyalty Points does not further increase the difficulty of obtaining airdrops. This is more friendly to whale users.
To better reflect this relationship, as shown in Figure 4, we transform the horizontal axis into the user's Loyalty Point ranking. From left to right, the higher the user's ranking, the fewer Loyalty Points they hold. The vertical axis is the user's ETHFI airdrop conversion rate. The relationship is more obvious at this time. When the user's Loyalty Point ranking is around 14,500, the piecewise function is at a critical point.
Looking forward to EtherFi’s second season airdrop:
Next, let’s look ahead to EtherFi’s second season of airdrops. They have already released details about Season 2: StakeRank:
- StakeRank is a rating system with 8 levels or "tiers".
- Users will be upgraded by 1 level every 100 hours of ETH pledged on ether.fi.
- Each level has a progressively higher rate of loyalty points.
- Your staked balance needs to be higher than 0.1 eETH to continue to improve your ranking.
- Users who participated in the first season start from Rank II.
- Ranking boost ranges from 1x - 2x (subject to change).
- Ether.Fan NFT holders are automatically upgraded to Rank III, only once per NFT holder.
- In the transition to Season 2, the protocol aims to recognize Season 1 participants while not disproportionately allocating Season 2 airdrops to them. To achieve this, everyone's rate of accrual of loyalty points will be increased by 10x. While this will dilute old points, they will still be valid. However, the base rate of loyalty points in Season 2 will be increased by 10x. Staking in Season 2 means that your new points balance should significantly exceed the amount collected in Season 1. This means that Season 1 stakers are recognized in Season 1, and Season 2 will recognize stakers who were active in Season 2.
The overall plan is designed around the ranking of Loyalty Points, and different enhancement effects are set for each level. However, most importantly, the guidance on the final redemption method of the second season airdrop focuses on diluting the impact of the Points obtained in the past on the final airdrop, which means that users who have accumulated a large number of Loyalty Points will have a sharp decline in the advantages of Season 2 airdrops, and loyal users will have to start over. In addition, EtherFi still chose to use a more vague description to express the relationship between the final airdrop amount and Loyalty Points, which also introduces a certain degree of uncertainty. Considering that in the design of the first season airdrop, the team seems to prefer shallowly involved users and whale users, this seems to be able to bring a certain guiding effect to users participating in the second season airdrop activities. However, the first season airdrop has distributed ETHFI, which accounts for 6% of the total issuance, and the total amount of airdrops in the second season is only 5%.
