ZKSync airdrop caused controversy, let’s look at the dilemma of cold start of Web3 project

Abstract: The hottest topic last week was definitely ZKsync’s public airdrop verification incident. Originally, the author was studying and writing some learning experiences about TON’s DApp development, but after seeing this controversial incident, and triggering The extensive discussion in the community has given me some feelings, so I wrote an article hoping to share it with everyone. In general, ZKSync’s airdrop plan adopts a distribution method based on proof of property, focusing more on rewards for developers, core contributors and ZKSync’s native Degen whales. This has created a situation where the native Degen whales are laughing. , the hair-raising studio is calling.

The focus of debate in the community: Is interaction the key or the amount of funds is the key

For a long time, the Web3 industry seems to have formed a paradigm of attracting users to use products through Airdrop, thereby achieving a cold start for the project. This is especially true in the Layer 2 track. By guiding developers and users’ expectations for potential airdrops, developers are stimulated to actively build and maintain DApps, while stimulating users to bridge funds to the target Layer 2 in the early stages of development and actively participate in the projects running on the target Layer 2. DApp, thus serving the purpose of activating the ecology, has become a standard.

So in the past, users’ expectations for ZKSync’s airdrop were generally based on its two direct competitors, Arbitrum and Optimism. Of course, this conclusion is logical no matter from the perspective of industry influence, VC background, fundraising scale, etc. However, the results are quite different, which leads to many users who reuse past experience to participate in ZKSync and do not seem to get what they expected. The number of rewards within the system has led to widespread debate in the community.

In order to explore the reasons behind this controversy and discuss some reference implications for the future, it is natural to review the previous airdrop rule settings of Arbitrum and Optimism. First, let’s review Arbitrum’s airdrop activity, which dates back to March 2023. It allocated 11.62% of the total supply of Arb airdrops to Aribitrum users, and allocated 1.13% of Arb airdrops to the DAO running in the Arbitrum ecosystem. The settings of the airdrop activity are based on the snapshot data on February 6, 2023. The specific rules for users are as follows:

• Cross-chain to Arbitrum: Users need to transfer funds to Arbitrum One or Arbitrum Nova.
• Transactions in different time periods: Users have traded in two different months, six different months or nine different months.
• Transaction frequency and interaction: The user has conducted more than 4, 10, 25 or 100 transactions, or interacted with a corresponding number of smart contracts.
• Transaction Value: The total value of transactions made by users exceeds $10,000, $50,000 or $250,000.
• Providing Liquidity: Users have deposited more than $10,000, $50,000 or $250,000 in liquidity
• Arbitrum Nova Activity: Users have made more than 3, 5 or 10 transactions on Arbitrum Nova.

Each detail will have a specific score calculation method. The upper limit of the score is 15 points. This score is used to determine the number of Arbs that the user can receive. The calculation method can be approximated as a linear relationship, but the starting reward starts from 3 points. At the beginning, the cap reward is 10,200 Arb. As for the rewards for DAO, the specific amount is determined directly based on the activity assessment method. From the results, 137 DAOs finally received airdrops, of which Treasure and GMX received the most, 8 million Arb respectively. According to the current essence , which is really a huge profit.

Let’s review Optimism. Unlike Arbitrum, Optimism’s airdrops are conducted in multiple rounds. The total number of distributed rewards accounts for 19% of the total supply. Its earliest first round of airdrops can be traced back to June 2022. A total of 5% of the rewards have been distributed to 260,000 addresses. So far, four rounds of airdrops have been carried out. The specific rules of each round of airdrops are as follows:

• First round: ordinary users and active users are divided according to the number of transactions. Users respectively correspond to addresses with one transaction and addresses with more than 4 transactions, as well as Ethereum DAO participants, Ethereum multi-signature wallet users, Gitcoin donors and cross-chain bridge users. Each status corresponds to a fixed-value reward, and the last three rewards can be stacked.
• Second round: Users with a total transaction gas fee greater than 6.1 USD or users with a currency age of more than 2,000 who participate in entrusted governance can share 11,742,277 $OP;
• Third round: Users with a currency age of more than 18,000 who participate in entrusted governance can share 19,411,313 $OP;
• The fourth round: 10,343,757 $OP were allocated to NFT creators;

From the above review, it is not difficult to find that the number of interactions will be used as an important reference indicator in its specific activity settings. Users who interact more frequently generally receive greater rewards. However, this unspoken rule seems to have been abandoned by ZKSync. In ZKSync’s airdrop design, the qualification and allocation of ZKsync users are selected and calculated in four consecutive steps. The specific rules are roughly as follows:

• Eligibility Screening: Every address that has transacted on ZKsync Era and ZKsync Lite will be checked against eligibility criteria. It has set 7 inspection criteria to screen qualified users, such as interacting with more than 10 non-token contracts and the non-token contracts must be active for at least 30 days, sending at least 5 transactions in the ZKsync Era, etc.
• Distribution: When calculating the specific reward amount for an address that meets the above criteria, confirmation is based on a value scaling formula that calculates a time based on the amount sent to the ZKsync Era and how long these crypto assets have been retained in the wallet. The weighted average is used to adjust the allocation of each address. At the same time, funds participating in the DApp protocol will receive a 2x bonus. This means that you transfer large funds to ZKSync, keep them for a long time, and actively Use these funds to participate in some risky products, such as providing liquidity to DEX, and you will receive more rewards.
• Multiplier: Addresses that meet certain criteria can receive a multiplier in the allocation. These standards typically hold some high-risk altcoin or NFT native to ZKSync.
• Sybil detection: Finally, ZKSync will also do Sybil attack detection to ensure that most robots are filtered out. The detection criteria are from two aspects, the source of the first ETH after the creation of an EOA address, and the relationship between the EOA address and CEX Interactions with deposit addresses. In fact, this also takes advantage of the characteristics of CEX KYC.

From the specific rules, it is not difficult to find that the number of interactions is not involved in the calculation of rewards, but focuses more on the amount of funds in a single account and the willingness to allocate risky assets. Therefore, when the results were announced, many fans or studios who relied on past experiences and interacted heavily on ZKSync were shocked. This was also the source of the entire controversy. In order to increase the number of addresses that receive potential airdrops, this group of users usually choose to disperse large funds into address groups as much as possible. These address groups are usually hundreds or even thousands, and use small funds to participate in a certain agreement. Determine some possible incentive behaviors, frequently interact through automated scripts or manual methods, and complete tasks to increase potential benefits. The airdrop setting of ZKSync makes this strategy ineffective. The handling fees paid by many frequently interacting addresses are even higher than the rewards received, which naturally arouses dissatisfaction among this group of people.

And it is not difficult for us to find a large number of airdrop hunter KOLs in The media put pressure on ZKSync officials in the hope of changing this situation. However, judging from the official attitude, it seems that they are also very tough and have not changed the rules due to pressure, which is why the current situation has occurred. The accusations and justifications for some possible evil behaviors triggered by the debate are the highlights of this public opinion war.

Judging from the results, the appeals of both sides seem to be understandable. The right and wrong can only be discussed from what angle. But I think there are some things worth thinking about, that is, to this day, the cold start stage of the Web3 project Who are the core value users, or what kind of users should be motivated during the cold start stage.

Re-interaction brings witch attack problem, and property proof brings monopoly problem

Based on Airdrop rewards for early bird participants, it has been proven to be an effective cold start method for Web3 projects. A good airdrop mechanism setting can It helps the project attract seed users efficiently in the early stage, and at the same time completes user education by stimulating users to use key behaviors of the protocol, increasing the stickiness of the product. This is also the fundamental reason why for a long time, the airdrop settings of most Web3 projects have focused on incentivizing interactive behaviors. However, this has brought a drawback, which is that it lowers the threshold for obtaining rewards, which can easily cause activities to encounter witch attacks. Because interactive behaviors are easy to be automated and batched, this gives many professional teams room for batch operations. When a large number of robot accounts pour in, although the protocol will have a short-term false prosperity, these "users" usually gradually Living alone cannot provide impetus for the future development of the project. After receiving the rewards, most of them will be cashed out to increase the capital turnover rate and thereby increase profits. This incentive mechanism actually dilutes the number of rewards the project side gives to those users with real value. It’s really not worth the loss.

So why did this mechanism work well in the early days? This is naturally because there were not so many similar professional teams at that time. Most users had not yet formed a habit of thinking about this incentive mechanism, and the interactive behavior was still relatively pure. Belonging to real users, this allows incentives to be distributed to these users more efficiently, and the resulting wealth effect also helps the project party achieve the above benefits. However, with the impact of the money-making effect, this method is obviously no longer possible. Effectively attract real users. One of my personal feelings is that the effectiveness of airdrop activities with interaction as the main incentive object has basically reached its peak by the time of the Arbitrum airdrop.

This is also the fundamental reason why ZKSync wants to abandon the use of interaction numbers as the basis for identifying valuable users based on the relative size of assets. However, this method of property certification may not be without problems. Although the risk of witch attacks can be more effectively identified and eliminated, a new problem that comes with it is the uneven distribution of wealth caused by monopoly.

We know that one of the core values ​​of the Web3 project is the bottom-up distributed autonomy model. This means that the support of grassroots users (real users with small amounts of capital) is the basis for the development of a project. It is precisely with the grassroots users that some whale users can pour in and form a more sustainable development form. After all, the financial advantage is still available in most scenarios. Only if there are enough grassroots users, the whale users will benefit. Just big enough. Then the distribution system of property certificate will lead to the obvious benefits of whale users among its early bird users at the beginning of the cold start. This makes it difficult to form effective incentives for grassroots users, and naturally it is impossible to form a cohesive community.

In the final analysis, for Web3 projects, when designing the cold start mechanism, you still need to carefully consider the user profiles that are valuable to your product, and design corresponding mechanisms based on the current environment to effectively motivate the above-mentioned valuable users. At the same time, the top priority is to avoid witch attacks as much as possible. Therefore, how to design your own cold start mechanism is a very valuable topic, and everyone is welcome to leave a message in my X for discussion. Brainstorm some fun options together.

X Links: https://x.com/web3_mario

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