Original｜Odaily Planet Daily
Author: Golem
From the announcement of the airdrop snapshot in early May to the witch purge, LayerZero has been in the spotlight for nearly two months, facing doubts, controversies and disputes. After all this, the community thought they could finally receive the airdrop with peace of mind, but unexpectedly, LayerZero came up with a new Claim mechanism of "proof of donation". To receive ZRO, users must donate $0.1 for each ZRO.
Some people think that this is another attempt by LayerZero to make things difficult for the community, but is it really so? The proof of donation mechanism launched by LayerZero may be a positive improvement on the current airdrop model.
What went wrong with the airdrop model?
There is no doubt that Uniswap has truly ushered in the era of airdrops. The project returns part of its value to the community and users through airdrops, which is also an important business model developed by Web3 in recent years. Developing from the real support of the community and users, and then giving back the development results to the community and users, this positive feedback of interests is actually beneficial to the development of the crypto industry and attracts newcomers to join this thriving market.
Airdropping token distribution was initially a win-win initiative for projects and users, but now it has evolved into more and more contradictions. What is wrong with the current airdrop model?
The world is full of people, all for profit. The one-way reward airdrop model is only suitable for the early stage of ecological development. As a large number of projects and users pour into the ecosystem, this airdrop model is unable to complete the virtuous cycle of the ecosystem.
After four years of development, the one-way reward airdrop model has long been thoroughly studied by players. Driven by greed and profit, a large number of bad currency projects have emerged in the market, using the task mode PUA users and the greedy large witch army to brush the project volume and then achieve listing on large trading platforms. These bad coins not only contribute little to the development of the industry, but are even gradually driving out the good coins in the market, that is, those projects and real users who have truly made innovations and contributed to the development of the industry.
The original win-win airdrop model has now turned into a game between several parties. A track or project that does not have a large scale or even fake demand can use a complex airdrop task model to attract traffic, increase users and deceive investors with data; a group of witches will also frantically contribute data to the core projects of the track in order to gain benefits, in order to compete for and dilute the dividends originally planned to be distributed to real community users.
The result of this game will be a lose-lose situation. Inferior project owners use airdrops to attract a lot of funds and users, making a lot of money but not giving the community the feedback they deserve. High-quality projects either lose attention or spend a lot of energy to join this game. The addition of hundreds or thousands of witches will compete for and dilute the airdrop share that belongs to real users with only one or a few accounts. In order to protect the rights and interests of real users, project owners must exclude witches, but in the process, real users will be hurt by mistake - even if the original intention is just and reasonable; some project owners are more extreme, and would rather kill a thousand by mistake than let one go, and finally the community will be furious, and even conspiracy theories will appear; some project owners are cautious and want to take care of everyone, but in the end they are likely to be deceived by witches.
A good business model should try to avoid the phenomenon of bad money driving out good money and form a virtuous cycle. Obviously, the current airdrop model can no longer achieve this.
LayerZero Launches New Airdrop Mode
Faced with the drawbacks of the current airdrop model, LayerZero wants to try to make changes. It wrote in a blog post: "Free token airdrops will not be beneficial to the development of the project in the long run. The distribution of ZRO is not an airdrop."
LayerZero has introduced a new Claim mechanism called Proof-of-Donation. To claim ZRO, users must donate $0.1 USDC, USDT, or native ETH for each ZRO. This small donation goes directly to the Protocol Guild, a non-profit group of Ethereum core researchers and developers.
This new airdrop mechanism is actually expected to create a new ecological model.
From the perspective of ecological cycle, in the past, in the one-way airdrop model, the distribution of airdrops meant the end, and there was no contribution to the entire ecosystem, but now it has become the beginning of other projects. The community supports project development - the project grows and the airdrops are given back to the community - the community donates part of the value of the airdrops to support ecological development - high-quality projects are funded and developed. The result of this model will make the entire industry run healthily.
From the user's perspective, donating to receive airdrops can effectively curb the development of witches and increase their costs, which to a certain extent protects real users and prevents the value of airdrops belonging to real users from being overly competed for or diluted. At the same time, even if witches cannot be curbed, they can be encouraged to contribute to the development of the entire ecosystem to a certain extent.
From the perspective of other projects, in addition to helping the development of high-quality projects that really need funds, the introduction of this model has also found a new way to attract traffic for other projects. For example, WOO X announced that depositing the token ZRO will get a donation rebate, and Bitget announced that the first 10,000 users who deposit ZRO will get a donation fee refund, etc. This actually pulls other projects into a virtuous cycle of the ecosystem.
But although the ideal is beautiful, LayerZero is indeed not appropriate in terms of specific implementation, such as the projects funded have been jointly selected by the community. However, these may be solved and mature in the future. A real user of the ecosystem will not refuse to do this, even if it is just a small donation, and only witches will strongly oppose it because it is a cost for them.
How do all parties view LayerZero’s actions?
When judging something, due to different positions, "good" is always relatively subjective, but "benefit" is objective and real. How do various parties in the market view LayerZero's behavior?
Developers generally approve of LayerZero's actions. Smokey, co-founder of Berachain, wrote that the current airdrop model is inappropriate, rewarding users, but more rewards should be given to real users; Beau, security manager of Pudgy Penguins, wrote that LayerZero makes everyone realize that there are things bigger than profit, and if you don't want to pay donations, don't claim. Of course, some developers have expressed doubts, such as Yearn core developer banteg, who wrote that LayerZero's forced donations are like a glorified ICO.
From the user's perspective, there are mixed opinions on LayerZero's behavior. However, from the perspective of the chain, there are still many users who support LayerZero's behavior. According to LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino's post on the X platform, more than 119,000 addresses received the airdrop more than 3 hours after the Claim was opened; due to the collection of LayerZero tokens, Arbitrum's network revenue soared 166 times to 3.43 million US dollars yesterday, which also indirectly shows that users' enthusiasm for collection has not diminished much because of donations.
Summarize
Bryan Pellegrino once said that the purpose of proof of donation is to get the community to stop and think for 2 seconds and donate to an amazing cause, even if each donation is only a few cents, everyone can benefit greatly from it.
Of course, people speak according to their standpoints. Bryan Pellegrino supports users' donations to the ecosystem from the perspective of the project, but from the perspective of users and the market, not everyone may buy into it.
A good project should be inclusive of all users, whether they are witches or real users. As long as the number of witch addresses and real users is balanced, everyone can accept it. As a multi-account shill, I have always maintained an attitude of "thank you if there is airdrop, and relieved if there is none" for airdrops. Although I am a shill, I choose to stand with LayerZero this time for its bold attempt.
