Original | Odaily Planet Daily
Author | How to be a husband
Recently, LayerZero and various second-layer projects have launched a fierce attack on the wool-pulling group. From the formulation of rules to the decision-making power, the two sides seem to be somewhat evenly matched. The introduction of various anti-Witch policies corresponds to the fact that most of the airdrop addresses that meet the requirements are suspected of being "rat warehouses", which has caused conflicts between the two groups that once had a tacit understanding.
It was not until Binance founder He Yi wrote an article about the rise and fall of the cryptocurrency circle in the past, and said: "Today the market has indeed changed again. The internecine fight between LuMao Studio and L2 project has turned into a farce, and the LuMao era may be over." The crypto world's attention was completely focused on the two groups.
From an external perspective, the project has introduced an anti-witch mechanism to restrict the airdrops from the Grooming Studio, while the Grooming Studio has continuously increased costs to meet the anti-witch standards. The project and the Grooming Studio seem to be in an irreconcilable and antagonistic relationship, but is this really the case?
Odaily Planet Daily conducted an anonymous interview with the founder of LuMao Studio, and LM (pseudonym) revealed the wonderful stories behind LuMao Studio and the project party.
The Luma Studio may have been born from KOL
The term "撸毛" actually came into being very early. After the entry of institutional capital, project parties no longer need to conduct public token financing through IEO and other forms. Institutions invest in early projects on behalf of the public to enable them to survive and maintain project development. The public participates in the early construction of the project and obtains the qualification for airdrop tokens.
At the same time, as the value of UniSwap airdropped tokens increased, subsequent projects were keen to conduct multi-address interactions, which gave rise to the behavioral verb "撸毛".
Regarding the motivation for scalping, the interviewee LM said: "Although I also received token airdrops in the early days, such as UniSwap, I didn't think it would bring much return. But at the end of the last bull market, the NFT sector was very popular, and I met some well-known KOLs. These KOLs should be the first group to start "scalping". When they airdropped tokens on Aptos, at least each of them received hundreds of thousands of USDT. For this reason, I really realized the value of scalping. My first scalping project was Blur, because the NFT sector was very popular at the time, and the Blur airdrop rule was to trade on this platform. However, I had no relevant experience in scalping for the first time, and I made some mistakes, so I didn't achieve too high a return, and the profit was about 2,000 USDT."
So what was the opportunity for LM to truly realize the clustering of the LuMao business? LM said: "I really started to build a LuMao studio when L2 was emerging. At that time, the entire network was working on second-layer projects such as zk sync and Starknet. I realized that I needed to build a studio to achieve scale. After all, a person's time and energy are limited, and more people can bring greater strength. In fact, relevant LuMao studios were established a long time ago."
According to LM's answer, the Lumao Studio was born in the middle and late stages of the last bull market and has gradually matured since then. The relevant KOLs have become the main body of this business.
The interviewee's unique studio structure
When talking about LM's current studio business, LM said: "At present, my studio has about 7 full-time staff, plus interns and distributed office staff, about 20 people. The business is roughly divided into three sections, namely KOL creation, community, and LuMao studio."
LM said: "KOL creation is not like traditional MCN companies that make money from these people, but rather provides them with a platform for communication and learning. Currently, the KOL creation group is mostly college students majoring in blockchain-related majors. First of all, they have a certain knowledge reserve in Web3, and they also want to develop in the blockchain industry in the future. I hope to provide some education so that they can enter Web3-related companies after graduation. On the one hand, this will provide some talents for Web3. Secondly, for me personally, since their first stop is my studio, after they enter the relevant companies, it can also provide me with some visibility and related benefits.
This initiative created by KOL not only attracts a large number of practitioners to Web3, but also brings potential returns to LM. It can be imagined that if relevant personnel enter the capital, project parties or even exchanges, the subsequent value will be obvious. This reminds the author of the undercover role in the movie "Infernal Affairs".
Speaking of the community, the community created by LM is more of a content sedimentation service, and traffic is still the core competitiveness at present. LM did not introduce much about the community, but the community can provide LuMao Studio with diverse project information, and through community operation, LuMao Studio can also have a certain service scalability.
Speaking of the core business - coin-mining, LM said: "Regarding the coin-mining business, we generally divide it into pure internal coin-mining business and semi-external business. The pure coin-mining business is mainly for high-quality interaction with current coin-issuing projects. We will not use scripts for large-scale interaction, but instead use more manual interaction to ensure that each address can get the corresponding token airdrop. The semi-external business is more for interns and college students. According to their different interests, for example, some people like technology and study the construction of related nodes; there are also people who want pure coin-mining and provide relevant coin-mining information for mutual communication."
For this reason, the author asked about the problems caused by script-based interaction. LM said: "The reason why we don't use script-based bots is that most scripts are not stable, especially when it comes to related transactions. Script robots are prone to errors. Although it is a low-probability event, it will cause irreparable losses as long as it happens once. For example, in transactions on NFT platforms, scripts can easily sell higher-priced NFTs at extremely low prices. In addition, although script-based bots are suitable for cost-free test network interactions, they are easy to form similarities, so that when the project party pulls the airdrop list, most of the anti-witch rules restrict script-based orders."
When talking about the daily tools and account maintenance of LuMao Studio, LM said: "In fact, it is not much different from the tools you use in daily life, such as fingerprint browsers, or using AI tools such as ChatGPT to improve work efficiency. As for social account maintenance, remember not to log in to multiple accounts with the same IP and multiple people log in to the same account, so as to prevent the official from identifying the account as a robot account."
When asked whether LuMao Studio has received any orders from clients, LM said: "We do receive such orders, but we rarely accept them, mainly because the profit is not high, and we do not have a large number of accounts to serve them. However, other studios are indeed engaged in related businesses, such as the Starknet airdrop and the well-known KOL running away, who is said to have taken away 20 million tokens, worth over 100 million yuan."
According to LM, his studio's business is more diversified. In addition to hair pulling, it also engages in KOL creation and community operation. From this, it can be seen that the business of the Hair Pulling Studio is gradually shifting from single hair pulling to diversified development.
The competitive and cooperative relationship between Lumao Studio and the project party
In this interview, the author focused more on discussing with LM the relationship between LuMao Studio and the project party, hoping to find out whether the project party has any vested interests with LuMao Studio and live up to everyone's expectations. At the same time, the author is very grateful to LM for his very truthful answer, which reveals the relationship behind the project party and LuMao Studio.
The project side is operating in secret, and airdrops are no longer a survivor bias
When talking about the relationship between the project and LuMao Studio, LM used the Web2 Taobao platform to make a metaphor: "I think LuMao Studio and the project are more like Taobao platform product order brushing. In order to make their products rank at the top of search, merchants put relevant incentives on the order brushing platform to attract order brushers to brush orders. This is a means of attracting users at the data level."
However, Taobao fake orders are operated by merchants who actively look for relevant personnel. But the author asked at this time whether Web3 project parties will also take the initiative to find Lumao Studio to interact with airdrops, and what kind of rewards can be brought to Lumao Studio? LM said: "It depends on the size of the project. Large projects will not take the initiative to find Lumao Studio to interact with fake orders, because they have no shortage of traffic and everyone is doing it. On the contrary, small projects need the cooperation of Lumao Studio, because only when the data looks good can they be listed on the exchange. Generally, these project parties will not give Lumao Studio relevant actual incentives, but they will tell us the anti-witch rules in advance. With the anti-witch rules, we have actually received deterministic token rewards."
When asked about the details of the cooperation between the project party and LuMao Studio, LM said: "LuMao is generally divided into two types, one with cost and the other without cost. Generally, most of the project parties who find us are the latter, and the free ones are divided into project sizes. Generally, small projects' test networks find LuMao Studio more often, so we brush airdrops by knowing the anti-witch rules in advance. The project party wants the test network data to look good, thereby increasing its popularity. As for large projects, they rarely take the initiative to find us. More often, we go to them to obtain the anti-witch rules. However, some well-known projects lack certain transaction data when they are listed on well-known exchanges, and they will also entrust some large LuMao studios to help brush the volume."
When asked about the rumors circulating in the market about the project party cooperating with LuMao Studio to return project tokens, LM said: "At present, my studio has not received any related business, but my colleagues around me have received similar business. In fact, this gameplay is essentially a problem of the project party's exit mechanism. At present, most of the project parties' own reserved tokens need a certain release period, and the listing rules of relevant exchanges will also clearly require the team not to "ship" to prevent bad influence. At this time, it may be the relevant exchanges or market makers who help sell."
"But the other is that the project party will focus on the airdrop, because the project party is the one who formulates the airdrop rules. If part of its own addresses are included in the rules, this is a very easy and normal phenomenon. And it is not necessary to cooperate with the LuMao studio. The project party itself can meet these requirements, such as the TVL range, interaction time, address balance, number of interactions, etc., and GameFi projects are easier to operate, such as level restrictions, login time, etc. For the project party, as long as the active users are classified into the airdrop standard range and the studios or individuals for LuMao are isolated, it will not be a loss for the subsequent development of the project. In this way, it can not only obtain benefits, but also ensure that the core users are not lost. I believe that most project parties will adopt this method."
The project's anti-sybil rules may be a way to boast that their data is "clean"
Previously, Layerzero's anti-witch rules seemed to create an antagonistic relationship between the hair-pulling studio and the client, and reporting would actually earn more tokens. What do you and your colleagues think about this?
LM did not answer directly, but first introduced the project's demand customers from the project's perspective. He divided the project's customer investment funds into three structures, namely:
Head capital investment: about 10% of the total investment. This part is contributed by a small number of large investors, whose funds are often more than the sum of the remaining 90%. For example, one person may invest 100 Bitcoins or 1,000 Ethereums.
Middle-tier capital investment: about 30% of the total investment. This part of the funds comes from medium-sized investors, who are usually the core users of the project. For example, a user may stake 0.1 to 2.2 bitcoins.
Tail capital investment: This part of the capital comes from a large number of small investors, who may only invest 0.0001 bitcoins each.
For project owners, how to deal with these different levels of investors is a key issue. Project owners can choose whether to absorb all investors or only a certain number of investors. This is a strategic choice they need to make.
Generally speaking, a project owner hopes to attract as much capital as possible to enhance the overall strength and risk resistance of the project. This means that they need to design mechanisms that can attract investors at different levels and ensure that these mechanisms can operate effectively to achieve the long-term healthy development of the project.
In summary, LM analysis stated: "Layerzero's anti-witch measures are more of a marketing move, claiming that there is no studio in the project and that all of them are real users."
I have to say that LM's analysis is very reasonable to a certain extent. Even if the studio is able to report the client, the number of such clients is relatively small, which cannot be compared with the number of "self-made" clients in most studios.
At the same time, LM does not think that there is an antagonistic relationship between Lumao Studio and the project parties. He said: "The emergence of Lumao Studio provides these projects with effective real user data. As mentioned before, in the Web2 era, this phenomenon is very common, such as Taobao's brushing, transactions and advertising. There is a saying in the advertising industry, 'You never know that 70% of the money you invest is wasted, but you never know which 70%'. Therefore, we can regard Lumao as a promotion reward given by the project party to users. Every project needs this kind of promotion reward, and this is currently the best solution. This is not just a phenomenon in our industry, but also in other industries."
"I think that hair-pulling is a long-term sustainable business. Each hair-pulling studio brings hundreds of valid users. As long as they participate in the project according to the rules, it cannot be simply regarded as hair-pulling behavior, but rather provides user data for the project."
“Secondly, for the initial release of liquidity chips for a project, the highest priority is super head capital (such as a16z), followed by new mines or related Launchpools of large exchanges. After that, it is the share given to effective users, and finally the investment release of small capital. For the project side, distributing tokens to users can not only help with publicity, but also obtain high ROI. Therefore, LuMao Studio can continue to develop because the project side continues to release new projects, and each project needs these users.”
“Finally, a senior in the field of margin trading once said, ‘The margin trading business is actually a 1.5-level market between the primary market and the secondary market.’ That is, margin trading does not require communication with the project. As long as the project needs to issue tokens, there will inevitably be rules for the generation of tokens. As long as the margin traders master this rule, there will inevitably be large-scale margin trading activities, and even exchanges will open pre-market trading for such people.”
LM's position is to express from the perspective of LuMao Studio. From the perspective of business operation logic, the cooperation between the project party and LuMao Studio is a reasonable business behavior. The project party formulates the rules, and LuMao Studio participates within the rules. Both parties cooperate with each other while satisfying their own interests. But from the perspective of ordinary users, the cooperation between the two has damaged the expected scene brought by the previous airdrop. However, Web3 is ultimately a commercial activity, and where there is interest, there must be "jianghu".
