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

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

But as the project parties’ standards for airdrop distribution become increasingly stringent, this happiness is becoming increasingly rare.

Checking for witches has almost become a necessary stage before a large project’s airdrop, and users’ main expectations before an airdrop have also changed from “how much can I earn in this wave” to “don’t be witched in this wave”.

The freeloaders have gradually formed a classic dichotomy for judging projects: if they check, it means they have no vision; if they don’t check, it means they have a big vision.

Water can carry a boat, but it can also capsize it. The wool party is also an important source of large paper data. Faced with users that cannot be ignored, crypto projects seem to be caught in a dilemma of choosing between pattern or profit.

In this dilemma, different projects express different attitudes.

zkSync’s overtures

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

After this statement was made, the community began to become uneasy.

Everyone speculated that zkSync was openly talking about the dangers of censorship, but in fact, its real intention was not to criticize censorship. By criticizing censorship, it was showing that it might be relatively relaxed about checking witches in the future.

After all, if you have raised a flag to criticize censorship and then investigate witches, it is natural that the big project will not be inconsistent and give everyone an excuse.

How come the comments were so excited when it was just a passing comment and didn’t even say that the airdrop would not be checked? How come it became news when it seemed like just a straightforward opinion?

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

L0, launching an increasingly fierce "witch hunt"

In May 2024, LayerZero, a long-awaited project for the cryptocurrency community, announced that it had completed the first quarter snapshot and announced the launch of an anti-witch campaign before the official coin issuance.

Unlike previous projects that used databases to identify Sybil addresses, LayerZero this time introduced "self-reporting" and "reporting by others" mechanisms.

Starting from May 4, users who believe that their addresses are suspected of being witches have 14 days to report to LayerZero. After confirmation by LayerZero, they can retain 15% of the airdrop quota, but the airdrop share of addresses that do not report themselves will be cleared once identified.

After the "self-exposure" stage, 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 receive any reward.

Yes, LayerZero introduced a human nature model in the matter of catching witches - the reporting mechanism. This unexpected thundering measure caused an uproar in the community, and more people expressed anger at this mechanism, saying "this is not something that should happen in the crypto community" and "I would rather be shot than surrender." Although there was a lot of opposition, many people still saw opportunities in this mechanism that was 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 planned airdrop addresses will be retained. Judging from the results, the project party has indeed achieved the purpose of "witch hunting".

What we need to maintain is the pattern or the interests?

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

Airdrops are meant to reward users who invest real time and energy in the project. The original intention of Anti-Witch is to ensure fairer distribution of airdrops and protect the value of rewards for real users from being diluted by a large number of fake users in the hands of the studio, while also ensuring the healthy development of the project in the future.

From the perspective of protecting fair distribution and promoting industry development, the project party’s “witch catching” behavior is worthy of recognition, but the use of reporting, especially a reporting system with rewards, may change the nature of the matter.

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

When tied to one's 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 a profound irony for the emergence of crypto to solve the trust problem.

Taking a step back, if the project wants to ensure fair distribution of airdrops, shouldn’t they inform the Sybil detection mechanism in advance? Instead of waiting for many fake addresses to give the project data a good-looking data before “hiding the bow and the bird is dead”?

The continuous upgrading of anti-witch mechanisms is a foreseeable trend in the industry. Once Layerzero's mechanism takes off, it will most likely be imitated by more projects in the future, and the risk of individual users being accidentally injured will become greater and greater. For ordinary users, it may be a good strategy to abandon "more and faster" and turn to "precise and slow" in operational interviews, and think about how to be a real user.

Airdrops are a game of “common prosperity” where you pay and I work, and in the end, it’s good for you, me, and everyone.

But gradually, it seems that everyone is beginning to be unable to control themselves: the project owners want a better ecological future, so they will continue to expand their methods of detecting witches; the wool party wants to successfully get the airdrop, so they must continue to improve their technology and successfully hide it from the project owners. Even now, the wool party has to start to be wary of each other.

In this "witch hunt", people frequently perform scenes of "Infernal Affairs" among each other, and airdrops eventually turn into endless torture. There is no free lunch anymore, but a tiring competition for interests.