Author: gm365 Source: X, @gm365
ZK’s airdrop represents the end of an era
One wave has not yet subsided, another wave rises.
L0 CEO, who created the “largest witch library in history”, is still immersed in the fight against witch clusters, and the “largest anti-scam in history” ZK is born.
For a while, there was widespread grief, almost wrath of heaven and people.
Why?
The one you have the most and the greatest expectations for often hurts you the most. It’s the same with Web3. zkSync, which can be called the last hope of L2, has waited for 4 years, but what it has waited for is just a ruthless sentence “Unfortunately, YOU are not eligible for the airdrop”.
Anti-witch without checking witches
10 million addresses, 400 million tx, adhering to the "original intention" of "the world is for the public, no witch check", how to screen "real users"?
zkSync chooses to use cold and strict mathematical rules to help.
It is roughly divided into three steps: initial screening, allocation, and bonus.
To be honest, the 7 standards for entering the points pool for initial screening are very loose. For example, 10 tx, depositing DeFi projects, holding magic lamps, Lite donations, etc. Most people who interact "seriously" believe that they can enter the pool.
The allocation link is the highlight, and it is also the "big filter" for most users to be exposed. Because the allocation here is not based on the "industry gold standards" such as the monthly activity of your wallet, transaction volume, number of tx, etc., but the "fund retention" consistent with the DeFi deposit project.
Similar to EtehrFi, it is quite normal for the pledge project to require fund retention, but an L2 uses similar rules to filter users, which makes most people feel "unacceptable" and even "treasonous".
As for the "addition" link, it belongs to the category of icing on the cake, and is directional for those "old OGs", boutique accounts, and deep users.
But this is not what many people care about, because everyone finds that the rice in the bowl is gone, who cares if there is a chicken leg?
So, the core here is: An L2 that everyone has the highest expectations for, using a similar rule of DeFi project with card funds retention, filtered out more than 90% of user addresses, resulting in the largest anti-looting tragedy in history.
In contrast, as for the disparity between the maximum allocation and the minimum living security households, the opaque allocation rules, and why NanSen is not allowed to check witches, these are all secondary issues.
The main problem is that the poor and lower-middle peasants have no food to eat, so they hate the landlords' extravagant food even more.
Anti-reduction review
Not to mention the waste of N years of time and energy, the gas reversal alone is unbearable, so some people are shouting for ZK to withdraw gas.
Emotional expression can indeed make you find resonance and relieve the resentment in your heart, but it will not help you to move forward and continue to make money in the industry. Analyzing the reasons, checking for omissions and shortcomings, and correcting policies and strategies are the right way.
There is no need to delve too deeply into why the project party who keeps saying "community is everything" chose the anti-witch method that angered 90% of users. If you put yourself in the perspective of the project party and examine the specific rules of the "distribution" link mentioned above, you will find that the project party has excluded all industrialized witch clusters and ordinary users with subsistence allowances through just this one mathematical formula.
Why choose to retain funds and double the bonus of DeFi deposits/LP to fight against witches?
Two reasons:
1. For L2, TVL is the lifeblood
2. The project party is very aware of the ordinary users' speculation about the "airdrop rules" (actually a misjudgment)
When ARB and STARK were airdropped before, some big Vs said that airdrops are too easy to be industrialized Farming because the rules are too easy to guess, nothing more than those few.
Everyone thinks so, and KOLs teach so. People are consciously or unconsciously following the steps, and there are even a bunch of third-party tools to help everyone count the relevant data, and they have made a serious effort to come up with the address ranking.
Waves of fueling the flames, like boiling a frog in warm water, have made everyone lose their vigilance, thinking that your little Monkey King ZK still can't jump out of the palm of my Tathagata Buddha's hand, and it's not a done deal to control your airdrop.
What was the result? ZK did not play by the rules. With one move, the amount was retained, and all the honest people who followed the script were defeated.
Some people say that ZK's airdrop rules filtered out all the low-end industrial witch studios and ordinary retail investors, and allocated them to high-end users and high-end witch studios (wealthy and powerful, high-end witch addresses).
This observation is very accurate, and in reality, it is true.
For example, the L0 witch cluster, which distributed 0.6 ETH in batches on the same day, and finally got a witch cluster of millions of ZK, is a typical example of a high-end witch cluster.
In other words, the core of not getting ZK this time is the serious misjudgment of the airdrop rules (caused by underestimating the enemy) and the double stranglehold of everyone wanting to have multiple accounts but not having enough funds.
Current Status of Industrial Farming
If we judge by the airdrop rules of ARB or even STARK, most of the 90% of users who were screened out this time meet the standards, and can even rise to the category of "high-quality accounts" and get a good result.
But why does it not work here with ZK?
It's simple, the times have changed. The core is:
The industrial farming system is too prosperous.
The over-maturity of the EVM ecosystem + the addition of GPT4's AI tools have led to a sharp decrease in the threshold for batch account creation and interaction, which in turn has created a serious inflation of the number of accounts and tx.
This is the evolutionary path of the times, which is not subject to personal will.
It's very similar to the scene in the early days of the Industrial Revolution when those skilled female textile workers were replaced by machine spinning. The skills that handicraftsmen rely on to make a living are not worth mentioning in the eyes of mechanized producers. Low efficiency, high cost, and prone to errors, which are incomparable to machines that work ruthlessly and tirelessly.
At that time, it was just like this moment.
The era of industrialized farming has come, and being able to access multiple accounts is no longer an advantage. It is equalized, surpassed, and left behind by the interactive code that GPT4 can generate in minutes.
However, this situation is not only known to you and me, but also known to the project party, VC, and exchange.
The number of addresses and tx numbers are all inflated, which is tacitly known to everyone, and perhaps there are only different opinions on the proportion of inflated water.
But the TVL indicator is more difficult to fake because it requires piling up real money.
So the smart project conveniently chose this most difficult to fake indicator as the core rule for airdrop distribution.
In this regard, it is similar to the gorgeous tail of a male peacock.
The male peacock's tail is extremely eye-catching, which brings a lot of inconvenience to his life and may even put his life in danger. Why did nature evolve such a "useless and dangerous" burden?
Because this is the most difficult "signal" to fake, and it is the "gold standard" for the female peacock to be convinced and willing to commit to the other party. Signals that can be easily faked are not worthy of being believed.
Similarly. As long as you are willing and set the program parameters, you can create perfect daily, weekly, and monthly active data, super high tx numbers, and super high transaction volumes for your address cluster. Anyway, the ruthless wool-pulling machine will work hard for you to interact until the end of time.
But to keep hundreds of U of funds in each account, it is not something that any program or GPT can help you do.
The money has once again flowed into the hands of those big pluckers who are not short of money. Even Web3 is still as unfair as Web2, MD.
Where is the way forward?
In an era where gas fees are negligible and industrial witches are flourishing, where will the wool-pulling group go? Will Web3 still reward us, the brave men who are panning for gold in the West?
What is certain is that:
▪️ Web3 is still in its early stages
▪️ Large financing projects will emerge in an endless stream
▪️ Airdrops will never end
▪️ The opportunities and amounts of money made in Web3 still far exceed those of traditional Web2
What is different is that:
▪️ The times are different
▪️ The rules are always changing
▪️ The overly mature ecosystem and fierce competition have made it a chicken-ribbed choice for ordinary people
We must believe in the choice of the times. At present, ordinary people like you and me have the opportunity to change their fate not elsewhere, but here, in Web3.
In terms of the probability of making money and ROI, airdrops are still the most suitable track for ordinary people to make their first pot of gold. Unfortunately, due to the rapid changes in the industry and factors such as AI, the difficulty has increased dramatically.
If you used to be able to reap a lot by just following the tutorials of KOLs, then the next step will probably test your wisdom even more:
Choose an ecosystem, choose a project, choose an interaction method, how to balance funds and quantity, and how to maximize output.
The era of getting rich by doing it without thinking is over, and the era of getting rich by doing it is now.
JinseFinance
TheBlock
Bitcoinist
Catherine
Beincrypto
Cointelegraph
Nell
Ftftx