The contradiction behind the airdrop review system: a dilemma between structure and interests?

Author: Wang 1, TechFlow

Whether it is an individual who focuses on experiencing the project or a studio dedicated to wooling, the festive atmosphere on the day of the airdrop is no less than the Chinese New Year.

But as the standards for airdrop distribution by the project party have become increasingly strict, this happiness is becoming increasingly rare.

Checking witches is almost a necessary stage before the airdrop of a large project, and the main expectation of users before the airdrop has also changed from "how much can I make this wave" to "don't be witched this wave."

The wool party has gradually formed a classic dichotomy for judging projects: checking means no pattern, and not checking means a big pattern.

Water can carry a boat, but it can also overturn it. The wool party is also an important source of large paper data. Faced with users who cannot be ignored, crypto projects seem to be caught in a dilemma of whether to have a pattern or to have interests.

In this dilemma, different projects are expressing different attitudes.

zkSync’s show of goodwill

On May 22, zkSync, which plans to hold TGE this week, posted a message saying, “I absolutely cannot censor. Censorship is the killer of freedom.”

As soon as this statement came out, the community began to become uneasy.

Everyone speculated that zkSync was talking about the harm of censorship on the surface, but in fact, the real intention was not to drink. By criticizing the censorship system, it showed that it might be relatively relaxed in the future to check witches.

After all, if they had set up a flag to criticize censorship and then investigated witches, the big projects would naturally not be inconsistent and give everyone a pretext.

It was just a brief mention and didn’t even say that they would not investigate airdrops, so how did the comments collectively cheer? It seems to be just a straightforward opinion, how did it become news?

Because this month, LayerZero, another project that has also attracted the attention of the wool-pulling group, has implemented an anti-witch mechanism that is more stringent than people can imagine.

L0, launched an increasingly fierce "witch hunt"

In May 2024, LayerZero, a project that the wool-pulling party has been looking forward to for a long time, announced that it had completed the first quarter snapshot and announced the launch of an anti-witch campaign before the official coin issuance.

Different from previous projects using databases to identify Sybil addresses, LayerZero has introduced a "self-reporting" and "others' reporting" mechanism this time.

From May 4, users who believe that their addresses are suspected of being Sybils have 14 days to self-report to LayerZero. After confirmation by LayerZero, they can retain 15% of the airdrop quota, but the airdrop share of addresses that have not been self-reported will be cleared once they are identified.

After the "self-exposure" phase, the next 14 days will enter the reporting mode, encouraging community users to report witches to each other. Successful reporters can obtain 10% of the airdrop share of the reported address. If the reported witch address originally deserves 0 tokens, then the reporter will not be rewarded.

Yes, LayerZero has introduced a large model of human nature in the matter of catching witches - the reporting mechanism. This unexpected thundering method caused an uproar in the community, and more people expressed anger at this mechanism, saying that "this is not something that should happen in the crypto community" and "I would rather be shot than surrender." Although there is a lot of opposition, many people still see opportunities in this mechanism that is similar to coercion and inducement.

Before the end of the self-reporting phase, LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino said on social media that more than 338,000 addresses have admitted to being witches. On the second day of the reporting mode, LayerZero said it had collected 2,312 witch reports and was gradually reviewing them.

After this move, it is expected that only a small part of the originally expected airdrop addresses will be retained. Judging from the results, the project party has indeed achieved the purpose of "witch hunting".

Is it the pattern or the interests that need to be maintained?

But the focus of this matter seems to be no longer on the effectiveness of catching witches.

The airdrop is to reward users who invest real time and energy in the project. The original intention of anti-witch is to ensure a fairer distribution of airdrops, protect the reward value of real users from being diluted by a large number of fake users in the hands of the studio, and also ensure the healthy development of the project in the future.

From the perspective of protecting fair distribution and the development of the industry, the project party's "catching witches" behavior is worthy of recognition, but the use of reporting, especially the reporting system with rewards, may change the taste of this matter.

The other side of human nature cannot withstand amplification. Under the reporting mechanism, individuals who have no conflicts of interest may become opponents in zero-sum games.

When bound to their own interests, the reporting mechanism may become a tool for personal gain. The distrust between people is constantly extinguished in the face of repeated reports and will be infinitely magnified. This is indeed a profound irony for crypto, which was created to solve the trust problem.

To take a step back, if the project party wants to ensure the fairness of airdrop distribution, shouldn't the witch-checking mechanism be notified in advance? Instead of waiting for many false addresses to give the project data good-looking data before "hiding the bow after the bird is dead".

The continuous upgrading of the anti-witch mechanism is a foreseeable trend of the industry. Once the mechanism of Layerzero is launched, it is likely to be imitated by more project parties in the future, and the risk of individual users being accidentally injured will also increase. For ordinary users, it may be a good strategy to abandon "more and faster" and turn to "fine and slow" in the operation interview, and think about how to be a real user.

The airdrop is originally a "common prosperity" where you pay money and I work hard, and in the end you are good, I am good, and everyone is good.

But gradually, it seems that everyone has begun to be unable to help themselves: the project party wants a better ecological future, so it will continue to expand the means of checking witches; if the wool party wants to successfully airdrop, it must continue to improve its technology and successfully hide it from the project party. Even now, even the wool party has to be wary of each other.

In this "witch hunt", people frequently perform "Infernal Affairs" one after another, and airdrops eventually become an endless torture. There is no free lunch anymore, but a tiring competition for interests.