Original Title: "Research on the History of Airdrops Part 2: Where is the Future of the Airdrop Party?"

Original Author: DefiOasis, Web3 Geek

Introduction: Actually, one of the biggest values of blockchain that we have discovered so far is to observe the generation and distribution of funds/wealth in a highly transparent way. Although this approach is still in an early stage with many flaws, the long-term vision of "transparent and decentralized asset creation and distribution" can indeed bring tremendous positive value to society.

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Despite the bearish market in 2023, many project parties still distributed large-scale airdrop rewards to users. FreeMoney in the bear market has attracted users' attention. Taking Coingecko's data as an example, based on the ATH (all-time high) price of airdropped tokens, project parties such as Arbitrum, Celestia, and Blur have distributed approximately $4.65 billion in airdrops to users in the past year.

Now, half a year has passed since the geek web3's airdrop popular science article "A Brief History of Airdrops and Anti-Witch Strategies: On the Tradition and Future of Luma Culture" was published in September 2023. During this time, the Web3 industry has undergone changes again, and new characteristics and trends have emerged in the airdrop distribution mechanism. This article will analyze and popularize the changes in the airdrop mechanism that have occurred during this period, and further demonstrate the pattern and evolution of airdrop strategies that may appear in the future.

积分制成为大部分项目的空投参考指标

The point system has become a reference indicator for airdrops in most projects.

The popularity of the airdrop points system is largely due to the promotion of Blur founder Tieshun. From Blur to Blast, the way project parties measure user loyalty has changed from initial trading volume to the amount and duration of user deposits.

Nowadays, the point system is highly favored by various public chain ecological projects, such as Magic Eden, Marginfi, and Kamino on Solana, Bounce Bit and B²Network in the BTC ecosystem. With the rise of the ReStaking concept, the popularity of the point system has reached its peak. Swell, KelpDao, Ether.Fi and other re-staking projects have launched a point stacking war based on mining Eigenlayer points, and there are now even dual or triple mining of LST and LRT points.

Actually, the current mainstream point system can be divided into two categories, namely transaction-based points and deposit-based points.

The volume-based points system is common in NFT trading markets, derivative exchanges, and other projects that encourage users to increase their trading volume. This is a past gameplay of the airdrop points system. For users, trading volume points can be completed with a single fund rotation multiple times, which to some extent encourages single users to have multiple addresses, making it more difficult to identify witch attacks.

而存款积分制是另一种主流的积分模式。采用该计量方式比较多的项目是借贷平台、公链类项目，以及大热的再质押概念项目。这种模式下的积分，主要靠资金数额和留存时间来决定。

The deposit points system is another mainstream points model. This measurement method is commonly used in lending platforms, public chain projects, and the popular re-staking concept projects. Points in this model are mainly determined by the amount of funds and retention time.

In order to maximize the appeal to funds/capital, such projects typically do not limit the types of funds they accept to a single type, but actively attract the influx of multiple types of assets. For example, in the second phase of Merlin Chain, users are allowed to pledge Bitcoin or some Ethereum assets, as well as inscription assets such as BRC-20, Bitamp, and BRC-420.

In today's Web3 world where TVL data is king, the deposit point system uses airdrops to attract funds, but it occupies users' funds for a long time and sets a withdrawal limit period of several months, imposing a huge opportunity cost on users. In today's world where witch players are everywhere and real identities are difficult to distinguish, the deposit point system can greatly increase the cost of witch attacks, just like Proof of Stake.

The expected airdrop of the deposit points system has almost an immediate impact on the growth of TVL data, becoming the breakthrough for the current Ethereum Layer2. Due to the bear market during the launch of ZK-based Layer2 on the mainnet, the TVL performance of ZkSync and Starknet has been lukewarm, while Manta, ZKFair, and others have followed Blast's example and surpassed the aforementioned ZK giants in TVL data in a short period of time, maintaining good data performance even after the airdrop has ended.

In addition, projects that use a deposit point system generally use some soft anti-witch methods, such as binding the user's wallet address with social accounts such as Discord and Twitter. However, even so, it is still impossible to completely stop witch attacks.

Essentially, the deposit point system simply greatly increases the cost of launching witch attacks by the wool-hunting hunters. Some project parties have come up with creative ideas and use whether users have made deposit pledges for other projects as a reference data for distributing airdrops: for example, when Altlayer distributes airdrops, "whether they are pledgers of Eigenlayer and Celestia" is a powerful restriction.

Altlayer's airdrop uses a layered approach, and the distribution of points is based on the amount of TIA staked by users on the Celestia mainnet, with clear hierarchical divisions. The amount of airdrop you can receive is determined by the amount of deposits you have staked in networks such as Celestia, not the number of accounts you have. However, the amount of airdrop per individual account is still limited, and rewards are only given after meeting the minimum deposit requirement, with clear lower and upper limits. This is essentially a POS that incentivizes layering.

Although this type of airdrop distribution method resists airdrop hunters, large holders with a large amount of assets can still split their deposits into multiple parts (just like people who run Ethereum Validators often split their ETH into multiple parts, each part consisting of 32 ETH, to meet the minimum staking threshold of each Validator, and then this person can run multiple Validators).

For small-scale investors in the cryptocurrency industry, in order to meet the expected conditions of airdrops - each receiving address must have reached a deposit and pledge threshold of at least XX in the past, they often need to consolidate funds from multiple addresses into a single account to qualify for the airdrop. However, for the project party, having money is the most important thing, and the "bourgeoisie" witches are valuable assets.

Actually, "everything can be integrated" in the encryption industry. In addition to the two mainstream methods of integration calculation mentioned above, there are also comprehensive integration calculation schemes such as LineaDeFiVoyageXP, B²Buzz and bsquaredOdyssey from B²Network, and tasks released on Galxe. These schemes are based on user transaction volume and fund duration, as well as multiple integration consideration systems such as check-in, social media interaction, invitation and team building, which more comprehensively capture the user's contribution to the ecosystem.

积分，本质就是空投承诺，类似于一种期权，你在今天付出了一定的成本，未来可以获得 XX 的预期回报。

Points, essentially, are airdrop promises, similar to a type of option. You pay a certain cost today and can expect a return of XX in the future.

But unlike DeFi mining with clear APY, the point-based system guides users to blindly mine based on "unreleased token economic models, undisclosed airdrop distribution plans, and unpredictable market conditions." Mining points is actually a game of information asymmetry between users and project parties, testing users' investment research capabilities.

At the same time, airdrop points are essentially unlimited inflation. For users with small funds, the participation of large account holders dilutes the airdrop share. Of course, this is similar to the staking of Ethereum validators, where those who hold a large amount of staking funds will receive more dividends (this rule has remained unchanged for thousands of years).

Whether it is the aforementioned trading volume or the duration of fund existence, the pure point system measured in terms of funds will undoubtedly direct the majority of rewards towards large account holders. Some projects will add blind boxes and random point lottery in the form of a lottery to redistribute to small fund users, in order to seek a balance between large account holders and ordinary users.

However, the point system has been criticized for becoming increasingly similar to many existing gameplay methods on Web2 platforms. Obtaining points requires carrying out various complex tasks, which has led the community to question whether users are experiencing the ecosystem or becoming slaves to project work.

Airdrop targets increasingly focus on core players, "Sunshine Inclusive" benefits multi-chain users

However, the widespread airdrop of multiple standards and screenings can cover as many users as possible, making different groups happy and winning the community's favor. But with the intensification of internal competition in the industry, project parties can only hope for layer-by-layer screening to accurately distribute incentives to real users, gradually leading to the demise of the EVM chain's widespread airdrop.

However, non-EVM ecosystem projects like Sei, Celestia, and Dymension have opened up a new approach to airdrops with a wide net, providing "sunshine benefits" airdrops to multi-chain base users, with the core distribution target being high-quality players on the chain.

Generally speaking, airdrop project parties have multiple considerations for these high-quality users. They will consider TOP-level active users on protocol platforms with abundant funds, which have cooperation relationships with themselves on multiple chains such as EVM and Solana. They also evaluate the on-chain user activity from multiple dimensions such as user interaction amount, transaction frequency, and gas consumption by intercepting a portion of time periods to find truly high-quality and active players.

On the other hand, airdrops are often distributed to long-term staking users, especially large stakers, represented by ATOM, TIA, and INJ stakers in the Cosmos ecosystem. Strictly speaking, staking airdrops are not a new phenomenon, as ATOM stakers in the previous cycle received multiple high-quality airdrops from the Cosmos ecosystem. However, the benefits of this chain airdrop are often overlooked because the airdrop profits of holders in the bear market cannot cover the losses caused by the decline in the price of ATOM.

(The wealth effect has made many new users active again on the Solana chain)

Projects with large financing amounts often have a long airdrop distribution cycle due to their abundant cash flow. This also means that the army of airdrop hunters will be extended, and long-term investment without immediate returns has become the norm. In addition, large financing amounts indicate project stability. For users, if the certainty is high, it will attract many people to participate, thereby diluting the airdrop share.

Regarding this, some scalpers have shifted their focus to small and refined projects, whose disclosed financing amounts are often not large, but because there are fewer participating users, the cost-effectiveness of scalping is higher. Starknet, Layerzero, and ZkSync, which are jokingly referred to as the "Three Idiots" due to their long-term involvement in the PUA community, have all experienced varying degrees of fluctuations and downward trends in their active data.

There is another strategy for finding profitable projects, which is to look for projects with a background in major exchanges. Since the value of airdropped tokens depends on the expectations of major exchanges, many profitable activities revolve around projects related to major exchanges such as Binance, OKX, Coinbase, etc., such as Binance Labs Fund, Coinbase Ventures, and projects within the self-operated public chain ecology of major exchanges. Another type of profitable activity revolves around top VC firms such as Paradigm, a16z, etc., which participate in financing but have smaller amounts and appear to be more niche projects.

In addition, some relatively obscure airdrop rules, such as NFP's continuous check-in and Arkham registration, can also make people's airdrop shares reach a satisfying point. However, once an obscure rule with a wealth effect appears, it will become a rule that is fully recognized by the market. It may not be feasible to "copy homework" to form a sustainable path dependence. This market, even the world, is almost full of uncertainty, and past historical experience may not be applicable to the vast future. All so-called "rules" and "conventions" may be rewritten in the near future.

Perhaps every leading project in each industry is trying to invent new airdrop rules. These rules may bring about different innovations, but the fundamental principle remains the same: the recipients of rewards distributed by the project team always include loyal users who have participated early, deeply, and contributed large amounts of funds.

Debate: The Game between Airdropped Farmers and Project Parties

Recently, Starknet caused controversy in the community by referring to users focused on airdrops as "electronic beggars" on social media and even creating a "electronic beggars" channel on their official Discord. Similar conflicts between project teams and airdrop players have also occurred with Scroll. Later, Scroll and Starknet personnel personally engaged with the community and even blacklisted users on social media, causing community outrage. Although the parties involved later apologized, they were unable to completely dispel the community's grievances. This PR controversy had a reverse marketing effect on the community and is worth analyzing as a case study.

This public opinion incident has exposed the subtle relationship between Farmer and the project party in the airdrop industry. The unspoken rules of airdrops formed by the wool party and the project party seem to have caused misunderstandings between the two. Many users believe that the airdrop is their "income from labor", and in the bear market, users work hard to contribute transaction fees and help the project create the illusion of prosperity on the chain, and should receive "rewards". However, these users have strong purpose, and the project party may not fully agree with them.

During the early airdrop era when there were not many scammers and most users were genuine (possibly before 2021), project teams did not exclude low net worth users from participating due to their good retention rate. However, as mentioned earlier, due to the influx of a large number of scammers, this airdrop method that allows mutual recognition between project teams and users is decreasing.

Additionally, airdrops should not be considered as the end goal of a project. Some cases have shown that successful airdrop campaigns can stimulate user activity for a project. Jupiter has an annual airdrop plan, and after the first airdrop distribution, Jupiter's DAU exceeded that of Uniswap at one point; Arbitrum's STIP funding program and Optimism Op Grants both keep their user activity data at a high level for a long time.

(Arbitrum and Optimism remain active on-chain after the airdrop)

Some project parties will also take unconventional measures to lock in funds, by supporting ecological projects or developers first. Similar to Base, which does not issue tokens, it uses applications such as friend.tech and Bold to attract large holders to deposit funds in the protocol and cultivate user stickiness. However, even excellent applications like Uniswap face the problem of TVL stagnation before issuing tokens. It can be said that airdrops are a big move when the community contribution and growth are weak, even declining, but it should not be the last move.

(In the long bear market, a large number of wool party interactions contribute income to ZkSync)

Community members generally complain that the "wool party" supports on-chain data and helps projects survive in bear markets. On the other hand, many project parties ignore the "wool party" but attract a large number of users to participate in on-chain interactions through various hints or cooperation with third parties, which has caused negative emotions in the community due to the lack of announcement of airdrop plans.

More direct deposit airdrops that attract funds are the liquidity of renting users' funds, and in the future, airdrops will be used to reward users. For users, they also need to consider opportunity costs.

The airdrop standard has changed from interactive to deposit-based, and in the future, the user's deposited funds may become the main criterion. This reflects the changes in the game and demand between users and project parties. However, this game between project parties and users may be eased as the bull market approaches and the overall cryptocurrency market improves. The prisoner's dilemma of airdrop distribution in the bear market may improve gradually due to the gradual abundance of market funds. Recently, there has been criticism that "the re-staking protocol has more ETH than users have on hand." With the change in the pattern of fewer projects and more users, the attitude of project parties may also change from despising "freeloaders" to competing for them.

The original intention of the project party is not to confront the community, but to be more cautious in the distribution of airdrops after the joining of thousands of studios. Nowadays, it is not realistic to get rich through airdrops, which requires strong investment research ability or good luck. For the wool party, the golden age of mass airdrops and picking up money everywhere has become history. What will be the future narrative of airdrops and everything needs to consider the classic saying "One's success depends not only on one's own efforts, but also on the historical process".

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