OKX Friends Episode 8｜Dialogue with Feng Mi: The "Taoism and Art" of Airdrops

Investment bank switched to Web3? Entered the circle in 2017, played "DeFi Summer" in 2020, but accidentally discovered the airdrop track? Has he obtained tens of millions of results in 4 years?

How did "Airdrop Master" Feng Mi @Kui_gas do it? If you are also a "fleeting" person, you must read this "Sunflower Manual" -

Feng Mi believes that the core secret of airdrops lies in "losingGas", that is, where is the Gas consumed? Disassembled into two points: 1. Does the consumed Gas increase the weight; 2. Does the consumed Gas increase the on-chain portrait.

This is the "Friends of OKX" series of dialogue interviews. This series aims to provide reference for novice users by digging out the work stories, industry thinking and lessons learned of KOLs from different backgrounds. The interviewer of this issue is Mercy @Mercy_okx, welcome everyone to follow~

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Chapter 1: Entry experience: How to get in touch with Lufu and become an expert

Chapter 2: Lufu's core strategy: How to screen high-quality airdrop projects

Chapter 3: The future of airdrops

Chapter 4: Advice for newbies: How to start Lumao from scratch

Chapter 5: Advice for OKX

Chapter 1: Experience in entering the industry: How to get in touch with Lumao and become an expert

1. What was the opportunity to enter the circle? Why is "Lumao" a "gold mine"?

I majored in finance, specializing in securities investment and management. I have worked in hedge trading and investment banking in traditional finance. I entered the cryptocurrency circle in 2017, and discovered the airdrop track in 2020 during the "DeFi Summer".

In fact, I knew about BTC in 2009. It was not worth much at the time. I used a laptop to mine it when it first came out, but I didn't understand the technology very well. The main reason was that I had low cognition at the time and didn't understand the value of this thing at all, so I missed it. Later, I really started to participate seriously in the bull market in 2017, and was attracted by the surge. I wanted to make a lot of money, which was the purest motivation at the time. Later, I gradually came into contact with DeFi in 2018-2019, such as MakerDAO, Compound, Uniswap and other protocols

In the "DeFi Summer" of 2020, I found that Defi mining and airdrops can be combined, and the compound interest effect is very obvious!

For me, I really realized that "money-making" was a feasible strategy when uni and sushi issued coins, so I found a lot of protocols that I was optimistic about, including ens and paraswap. And from that time on, I started to hold multiple accounts. After that, ens and paraswap issued airdrops, and the single number reward for ENS airdrops exceeded 100,000 RMB, and the single number of PSP started at 10,000 US dollars. This was also the first big bonus I got in this track, which verified that the way to make money through airdrops was feasible. It felt like I had found a gold mine.

2Why did you want to create and initiate 33DAO? What was your original intention? What impact has it had on you since its establishment?

33DAO is a DAO organization for co-creation, co-construction and sharing. I am one of the initiators. It has been running for 4 years. There are currently 35 people distributed around the world. We must hold meetings every week and all members must participate. I simply calculated that 33dao has held no less than 200 weekly meetings in the past 4 years.

The original intention was simple - I hope to bring together a group of capable and thoughtful individuals to form a community that can truly provide value through regular exchanges, in-depth discussions, and collisions of ideas. At the same time, we are also constantly outputting external content, such as tutorials, market views, Space discussions, etc., to help partners who receive airdrops get started faster and better understand Web3.

Regarding the impact on myself since its establishment, I feel there are three points: First, I think the most direct thing is that I met a group of awesome people, and everyone has achieved very great results through this, and these members encourage each other, influence each other, improve cognition, and finally realize it. I think this is a very good process.

For example, during the recent Chinese New Year, the Trump token was issued by a member within ten minutes of its release. At first, everyone thought it was stolen, but through members digging data from each other, they confirmed that the information was true, and then everyone immediately took positions. I remember that it was about 0.5-1 US dollars at the time. It rose by about 100x in 2 days. In the end, many people got very, very big results. Unfortunately, I was abroad at the time, and I bought too little and broke my thigh! At the same time, I also deeply understood the importance of small circles, and it is important to communicate with the right people

Secondly, the existence of 33DAO will force me to continue to output. It means continuous research and sharing of views. Many cognitions are not innate, but evolve through continuous learning, deep thinking, and discussions with community members. This mechanism of forcing oneself to grow has a great impact on me. For example, we used to focus on many projects such as ARB and Strk. During the bear market, everyone encouraged each other and finally got very good results.

Finally, the accumulation of resources and connections. 33DAO gives us the opportunity to directly communicate with top overseas projects. Many projects were discovered for the first time through the power of the community. Through many project exchanges, we will have a broader perspective. At the same time, members will interact through projects and become more closely connected. It can be said that Diaosi has truly integrated into the Web3 ecosystem.

Chapter 2: The core strategy of LuMao: How to screen high-quality airdrop projects

1How do you screen high-quality airdrop projects? What indicators do you pay most attention to? (Such as team background, token economic model, community activity, etc.)

Indicators of high-quality projects: track, financing background, ecological layout, team background, on-chain data, technical innovation points, etc., of course, market ability, ability to make things happen, and ability to organize a game. When screening and analyzing projects, I personally pay attention to the odds and probability of the project, and the cost. I personally think this is a very complicated process, and each link is a practical methodology that I have summarized over the years.

• Classify the tracks and focus on the mainstream

There are only a few major categories of tracks, and you can naturally distinguish them after reading more. First go through the mainstream tracks to form a basic understanding, such as L1/L2, ZK DeFi, LSD, Restaking, BTCFi, Move language and other narratives. I usually sort the projects in the ecosystem, and then analyze the odds and probabilities separately.

• Look for highlights as well as protocol technology innovation and protocol characteristics.

After I have read a lot of content, what will I focus on as the core advantage of the project? What is the difference compared to competing products in the same track? If you have time, you can read white papers and official documents, but in the early stage, it is recommended to form a track awareness first, see a project and quickly determine what it does, and then study it in depth. I am more impressed by mavrick, ······· on zksync, high APR, and found huge opportunities.

• Focus on institutions and investors and multi-dimensional perspectives

With the support of institutions, it is more credible, especially the star-level ones basically will not run away, it is easier to get listed in big firms, and the ceiling is higher. Institutional financing + investors, VC perspective. The institution has helped to screen, which can effectively filter out ordinary projects and increase the winning rate. I personally prefer to focus on the institutions I like, such as Hack vc.

Core idea: First look at the track, quickly determine the positioning, then look at the highlights of the project, and finally look at institutional investment, find the alpha of the project, analyze the market activity ideas of the project, especially from the perspective of the project party. Multi-angle and multi-dimensional exploration.

I regard this process as a self-introduction process in real blind dates. What do you do? What does your family do? Do you have money, do you have a house or a car, do you have a job, do you have... To put it bluntly, why do I want to do this project should be very clear.

2Project parties usually use technical means to identify witch attacks. If it is not identified as a "witch attack", how do you use the multi-account strategy reasonably?

This is a good question. Due to time constraints, I will try to be more comprehensive.

1. Let’s first talk about what a witch attack is: a person or team creates a large number of accounts to manipulate the network, protocol resource allocation, and fake behavior, typical batch operations, programmed operations, robot operations...

2. What the project party thinks and does: The project party and the ecosystem hope that real users will participate in the network, and rewards are also given to real users. The project party will use technical means such as on-chain data analysis, address association, and behavior pattern detection to identify. The more typical one is nansen’s AI clustering analysis.

3. The nature of witches: It is not that using multiple accounts is definitely a witch, but that batches of junk accounts with no contribution are generated, and those who abuse the rules to obtain airdrops are witches. The core of the project party’s witch check is "de-scripting and de-batching"

4. Answer your question: How to use the multi-account strategy reasonably?

My point of view is: to make "high-quality accounts", high-quality accounts mean that each account has "independent + real". Pengu some time ago, tia in the past had many such classic cases, one address ranged from 500 to 2000 US dollars. High-quality accounts mean high-quality accounts, each account has real user's on-chain records, independent behavior, and reasonable on-chain asset distribution. Multiple accounts themselves are also the principle of risk diversification. Multiple accounts ≠ witches. The use of multiple account strategies is nothing more than the law of approximate numbers and the principle of wide coverage. The profit of stacking one account may not have a high odds of multiple account profits.

Specific practices:

Account starting stage-Basic principles:

1. Reasonable capital flow, try to achieve differentiation from the time of account starting. Including the source of funds

2. Reasonable capital flow to avoid concentrated deposits and withdrawals

3. Randomize the interaction time and amount, and do not operate mechanically

4. Multi-chain layout, real user traces make the account more natural

">Account maintenance interaction stage:

1. No batch operations, each account has independent behavior

2. Interaction time, avoid assembly line operations, such as randomizing the amount, transaction order, and combining multiple types of protocols during interaction

3. Multi-chain layout to make the account more natural, and the interaction path as independent as possible

4. Make high-quality user portraits and behaviors, hold different assets, and increase account weight

5. Participate in real activities to increase account weight. Such as DAO voting, NFT Mint, DeFi Staking

6. Combined interaction, embedded interaction, combined with DeFi strategy, Gas consumption on the cutting edge

3How to understand"Quality Accounts"?

Quality accounts mean high-quality accounts. Each account has a real user's on-chain record, independent behavior, and reasonable on-chain asset distribution. Of course, everyone has a different understanding of quality accounts. The project party also hopes that the addresses distributed to rewards are real and high-quality. Some are equity-based NFTs for their own projects, and some pay attention to on-chain interaction portraits. Then the points of concern will be funds, activity, diversity, on-chain identity, loyalty, main network data (gas consumption, time, tx, active time), NFT holdings, etc. How to be real.

Summary of focus:Wallet history, interactive behavior, capital flow, asset holdings (token nft), balance retention, multi-chain activity, some social bindings...

4How to control the cost of wool? On chains with highGas fees (such as Ethereum), what suggestions do you have for optimizing interactive strategies?

1. I personally don’t use IP, ADS, and other program-related things that many people mention, mainly because I don’t know how to do them. I focus more on the on-chain portrait formed by the loss of gas in the account itself.

2. The cost of my own interactive account is: capital cost and gas cost.

3. So the core point I care about is where the Gas is consumed, either increase the weight or increase the on-chain portrait. These two points are the core of the airdrop perspective range that can snipe the project party.

4. In terms of specific strategy, it is to use DeFi, arbitrage, trading, mint or the weight tx of the project as much as possible. Try to recover the gas cost lost by Kui as much as possible, and at the same time improve the account portrait. This is very reflexive, and you must first learn to lose money and gas.

5. What suggestions do you have for optimizing the interaction strategy on the chain with high Gas fees (such as Ethereum) you mentioned? It depends on the situation here. In the past few years, only the first year of gas fees were very expensive, and the gas fees were very low afterwards. For example, now gas1, no one cares, it is a good time to polish the new account. You can combine specific projects to interact with the main network data by the way.

5、Different projects have different requirements for interaction. How do you adjust your strategy according to the characteristics of the project?

Different projects have different requirements for airdrop interaction. The significance of blindly referring to tutorials is not very great at this stage. Everyone hopes to achieve accurate interaction + minimum cost + maximum return. This is very rare. This uncertainty and reflexivity requires long-term practice and tracking. It is also the most difficult part of this track.

1. My strategy has always been high-quality accounts + weighted interaction + calculating high input-output ratio + controlling risks. Use the strategy of high-quality accounts to snipe high-quality protocols to combine trading protocols. Different projects have different airdrop allocation logics. You can't do batch operations in a one-size-fits-all manner, but you have to make targeted layouts. My experience is not simply "winning by quantity", but finding the correct interaction strategy that meets the expectations of the project and the project that suits your personality.

2. Give an example. For example, L1/L2 must take into account TVL, reality, and preferred native DApps, and a diverse combination. Play with the ecosystem from a real perspective.

DeFi protocols, the project side’s perspective is to focus on deep users, and give priority to rewarding users who provide long-term liquidity and transactions, such as deposit time, amount, LP, etc. Specific analysis based on the on-chain data of a single protocol.

Cross-chain bridges, pledge types are also based on the protocol background. Pledge types may focus on the protocol’s tge time, security, track position, and input-output ratio.

EigenLayer and Babylon cases.

In addition, interaction can also increase the quality and weight of accounts. Here I can explain the logic of my participation in W Wormhole, with a single number earning more than 10,000 US dollars. Due to time constraints, if you want to listen, I will talk about it... I have talked about it here but don’t want to write it anymore

Community projects: encourage contributions, and the project has NFT-related gameplay. You can focus on ecological NFTs and hold equity-type OG NFTs

"Getting the money well" is more important than "getting a lot", especially as the current market pays more and more attention to real users, so accurate interaction, reasonable allocation of funds, and long-term layout of account maintenance are the current focus. In the current airdrop track, what matters is not the number of wallets, but the research on the project, the understanding of the rules, and the execution!

6After many projects airdrop, everyone will choose to sell the tokens they have obtained. How do you judge the timing of selling?

I am not good at this. Now I have a lot of altcoins. I am the typical representative who will hold but not sell. I think there are many reasons. On the one hand, the market has changed. The holders got rich in the last cycle, but if you hold in this round, you will lose money. I have held OP and ARB for more than 1 year. There are also some projects that I pledged after getting them, and they fell by 90%. There are also many projects that have become small losses. Some projects have airdropped, and I really haven’t sold them yet, such as EigenLayer. If I really encounter a project that has fallen badly, I will pretend to be dead and wait for it to return to zero. According to the listing price, it is included in the cost price and the loss is accrued. I have always been a person who does not pursue absolute values, but relative values.

After suffering a lot of losses, according to my personal situation, I will sell about 1/3 of the airdrops at this stage. In the future, I will judge according to the project and market conditions. Most of the projects I have taken are vc coins. My focus is mainly on the valuation of the last round of the project, the listing market value, the unlocking situation, and the most important thing is the market situation. We can’t actually use it as a reference. The main reason is that airdrops can make people feel emotional, and the core reason is that they are reluctant to sell!

Chapter 3: The Future of Airdrops

1What do you think of the emergence of meme launch platforms such as Pump, and what impact will this have on the use of airdrops?

Meme launch platforms such as Pump.fun have lowered the threshold for token issuance. Anyone can issue tokens in a few seconds using the one-click coin issuance mode and automatically create LPs. In fact, this is the evolution of a new and extremely free asset issuance model. Its emergence is equivalent to the transition from the early ICO and IEO modes to the airdrop mode, and the evolution to the current self-issuance mode. It lowers the threshold for issuing coins, and also changes the mentality and strategy of Web3 participants (especially coin collectors). 1. Impact on project token distribution This free asset issuance model lowers the threshold for token issuance. One-click issuance + automatic creation of LP, no technology, no financing, direct entry into the market. This new model not only affects the Meme track, but also changes the way traditional Web3 projects distribute tokens. Many projects will choose not to go on exchanges first, but go online directly on DEX. Project parties no longer need to rely on traditional financing or token lock-up, but let the market determine the value of tokens directly.

2. Impact on Lu Sir

Impact1-Mentality:The cycle of Lu Sir has been extremely shortened, which is a huge test of human nature, and the speculative mentality has increased. In the past, when it came to airdrops, people were used to 3-24 months of interaction and long waits for TGE. Now Pump's Meme coin can be raised by a hundred times in a few minutes, or it may return to zero in a few minutes. In contrast, the time of Lu Sir, the uncertainty of income, the anti-lucky and other characteristics, are no fun compared to meme.

Impact2-Benefits:Lu Sir's "belief system" collapsed, and the speculative gameplay was infinitely magnified. In the past, when it came to airdrops, people paid attention to the depth of interaction, on-chain contribution, technical characteristics and value. Lu Sir hopes that the project will develop in the long term. In the Meme model, the core driving force of tokens is "emotion + narrative + capital FOMO". Many coin collectors no longer coin airdrops, but turn to memes. They no longer care about the project itself, but only care about short-term fluctuations, because it is more fun, faster, and has a greater wealth effect. They all hope to be the son of the version.

Influence3-Gambling:Sirs have a more FOMO mentality and are prone to gambling. Traditional coin collectors pay attention to steady progress, but the Meme ecosystem has put the market into an extreme speculative mode, and gambling is getting heavier.

2The evolution trend of coin collectors in the future: Is there still a chance to lose gas with multiple accounts?

I think there is. Without multiple accounts, you will never get rich and there will be no excess returns. But you need to balance personal funds and the flow and allocation of account funds. It is OK to lose gas by using multiple accounts, but don't burn gas. There is a distinction here. The core of future monetization is "premium accounts". Real interaction + natural capital flow + long-term activity is the optimal strategy. Monetization is no longer just "pile up volume", but a test of "strategy + execution + information gap"! Those with strong execution capabilities can still pile up premium accounts, and pile up more premium accounts.

3For some projects that both burn gas and require social accounts to complete tasks, how should we deal with it?

Some projects have a double screening mechanism when designing activities, which requires both on-chain interaction (Kui Gas) and social interaction (Twitter, Discord, Galxe tasks, etc.). This model places higher demands on losers. If not handled properly, they may invest too much cost and time, and the final benefits do not match, so they will complain. My suggestions and strategies are:

1. First determine whether the project is worthy of "both KuiGas and social interaction". Before that, you must have your own logical judgment and thinking, and at the same time see if the project suits your personality and formulate differentiated interaction strategies.

2. Here, we distinguish between studios and individuals. The strategies here should be inconsistent. As a super individual, I personally have a batch of 3-piece sets. They are all registered one by one with overseas mobile phones in the early days. They are all long-term accounts. Within my personal ability, they are divided into computer maintenance. Here, the 3-piece sets depend more on your behavior. Occasionally, you need to be active in a different way. The 3-piece sets will also check the relevance, activity and other account quality. I won’t say much about time. Anyway, this is infrastructure. It must be there, but there is no demand.

3. For the corresponding 1 boutique account, you can configure the 3-piece set to make the number of accounts within your ability. For example, 100.

4. Focus more on on-chain portraits and high-quality tx. A large number of invalid web3 interaction tasks are meaninglessly abandoned. Here, judging the activities designed by the project party is a key point.

4Will TX be useful? Is the role of transaction volume in the wool-pulling still effective?

With the continuous upgrading of the project party's screening criteria and anti-witch mechanism, this simple and crude accounting method is no longer the best strategy. Now the wool-pulling emphasizes "interaction quality + transaction authenticity". However, TX and transaction volume need to be combined with "interaction depth". To make an inappropriate analogy, if you go to the bank more often before, the bank president may know you and occasionally invite you for a cup of coffee. At this stage, it may not be useful to just deposit money. You have to be a VIP and a long-term customer who purchases their financial management and promotional bank insurance products.

5What kind of innovative airdrop design will be in the future, which will be a win-win for the community, project parties, and even the entire ecosystem?

This topic is a bit big and broad. How to distribute airdrops is an art for project owners if done well, but it is just selling crutches if messed up. Let me briefly explain my understanding:

1. Airdrops have been proven to be an important way for early growth and user acquisition of Web3 projects, but the traditional airdrop model does have a lot of problems, which leads to projects spending a lot of tokens but failing to attract long-term users. The proportion of "low-quality users" is too high, and the token economic model is damaged...

2. Good airdrops are designed to attract new users, reward early users, and retain more users, while growing around the economic flywheel of the project and the ecosystem. A more innovative, fairer, and more sustainable airdrop design should achieve a "win-win-win" situation for the project, community users, and the ecosystem

The future airdrop model and method must have the following core principles:

1- Long-term incentive mechanism (avoid short-term selling, encourage users to continue to interact and contribute in the long term)

2- Combine on-chain data and off-chain community contributions to screen real users and real contributing users

3-3-party interests are consistent (user growth = ecological growth)

4-Open and transparent (make every rule and reason clear), don’t be a rat

Specific methods are diverse, and an example can be given: the "gradual release" mechanism, refer to OP's airdrop, multiple rounds of airdrops in a row, large and comprehensive and continuous rewards for long-term contributions, and more elements can be added on this basis, and the airdrop strategy and design are more perfect. There is no perfect solution, we can only take care of small and medium-sized retail investors as much as possible, as well as more real users.

Chapter 4: Advice for novices

Principle: After you have your own project judgment, it is clear that not all projects are worth investing in. You must have selection criteria before investing. The essence of investing in Fomo is "low-cost investment". Time, gas fees, and opportunity costs are all your "investment", not Fomo.

•         Direction: Choose the right track, direction is more important than hard work, you should choose a track with strong future certainty, large amount of funds, and possible long-term incentives

•         Investment research: Establish a project library, learn to look at projects, follow up projects, calculate ROI, look at risk points, odds points, weight points, etc.

2. Method (execution level): Specific methods

•         Learn to interact correctly: such as how to swap, bridge funds, how to find tokens, how to complete project tasks with 3 sets, etc. The core is to improve interaction skills.

•         Improve account weight: learn to do deep interaction and become an active, real and high-quality user of the ecological protocol.

•         Control costs: There are many ways to make money, not just kuigas, staking, there are also very high-quality test network projects on the market,

•         Participate from multiple angles: For example, the user's perspective is to deeply participate in the ecosystem, the creator's perspective is to help the project write content, and so on.

Summary: Slow to fast, less to more.

2Common misunderstandings?

Feng Mi: Suffering a loss is a blessing. Some pitfalls must be stepped on by oneself. It is most useful to review your own experience. People cannot teach people, but things can teach people once.

3How should novices obtain high-quality information sources? What information channels or tools do you recommend?

The simplest way is to follow high-quality KOLs, Twitter, youtube, etc. You can find projects from rootdata @RootDataCrypto, find the corresponding X account and team members, as well as financing and other information.

For learning, there are also many basic project tasks in OKX's web3 wallet @OKXWeb3_CN, which can be used as a practice

Chapter 5: Suggestions for OKX

1. What role and influence does OKX play in the development of various ecosystems?

OKX's wallet supports a lot of ecosystems and chains. As far as I know, it currently supports 127 chains. I personally use OKX as my regular wallet in the interactive wallet. I usually share the same mnemonic with Xiaohuli and OKX.

Features: safe, timely, smooth, too many, I won't write, anyway, it's easy to use. The Movement ecosystem is thanks to the support of the OKX web3 wallet. At that time, Movement needed to download another wallet, but it was not easy to use. After I reported this problem to Haiteng @Haiteng_okx, he immediately pulled relevant colleagues for me and quickly supported Movement, which made it much more convenient for us. Assets no longer need to be migrated.

2In the future development, what ecosystems do you want to see OKX cooperate with? In what form? What kind of cooperation does the community want to see more?

The ecosystem and coverage are very comprehensive. As far as I know, OKX's wallet team is very powerful, BD expansion is also very strong, support is fast, and bugs are solved in a timely manner. I think the area that can be optimized is in the airdrop interaction. OKX @okxchinese has done a wide range, but not enough depth. There are many users using OKX. Here, we can build some valuable growth systems around the user's wallet situation. This system can cooperate with many ecosystems to help both parties to attract traffic, or bring more data bonuses and rewards to OKX wallet users.

The tools have been done very well, such as the real-time K-line and a trading token supported on X recently. In terms of airdrops, OKX can make an airdrop detector, and the user's on-chain wallet can detect any unclaimed airdrops.

Conclusion:

Feng Mi: These 5 years of experience have made me more determined to believe that the real value does not lie in what you know, but in what you can link and execute.

In this ever-changing market, the strongest competitiveness is the continuous evolution of cognition, forward-looking layout, and super, damn execution. Time is short, please correct me if I said anything wrong!

Mercy: When I first heard about Mr. Feng Mi, he seemed to be a legendary figure. Some people also said that Mr. Feng sat in the temple 365 days a year to make airdrops... After really getting in touch with him, I found that whether it is the sincerity and humility in dealing with people, or the focus and serious professionalism, they are all worthy of Mercy's learning and respect.

In this conversation with friends from OKX about the "Tao and Art" of airdrops, Mercy gained three core points:

1. Have excellent judgment - "making good airdrops" is more important than "making a lot of airdrops";

2. A high sense of responsibility - take every deal seriously;

3. Strong execution - both newcomers and old hands need it.

I hope everyone can also gain something. Finally, thanks again to Fengmi @Kui_gas for sharing, and welcome everyone to continue to pay attention to the "Friends of OKX" dialogue series.

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This article is for reference only. This article only represents the author's views and does not represent the position of OKX. This article is not intended to provide (i) investment advice or investment recommendations; (ii) offers or solicitations to buy, sell or hold digital assets; (iii) financial, accounting, legal or tax advice. We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of such information. Digital assets held (including stablecoins and NFTs) involve high risks and may fluctuate significantly. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding digital assets is suitable for you based on your financial situation. Please consult your legal/tax/investment professionals for your specific situation. Please be responsible for understanding and complying with local applicable laws and regulations.