After the ZRO and BLAST airdrops, the project team and the Lu Mao Party also "disengaged each other"

Last night, Blast officially opened airdrop applications. In the recent "airdrop is dead" anger caused by ZKsync and LayerZero, Blast and founder Tieshun Pacman were not surprisingly criticized by the community. There are three main drawbacks: the process of receiving tokens is irritating. The price of the token after its listing is lower than expected, and users participating in staking have low income. The top 1% of the activities need to wait for a 6-month linear unlocking period. Specifically, users Before receiving the airdrop, you are required to watch a video that is dozens of minutes long. Founder Pacman will introduce Blast’s token economics and development plan in detail. In addition, after watching the video, you must download the mobile app and obtain 4 prompt words to finally receive the tokens.

Secondly, Blast had multiple analysts value the token before it went public, and even the more pessimistic valuations were above $0.03. After the launch of the token, Blast's FDV was only about US$2 billion. In comparison, the FDV of Arbitrum, Optimism and other L2s were nearly US$10 billion when they were released (which also shows to a certain extent that retail investors no longer pay for high FDV VC coins) ).

However, compared to the token price, some users who participated in large pledges reported that their airdrop benefits were very low. NextGen Venture Christian, for example, said it deposited more than $50 million in Blast but only received $100,000 worth of airdrops. Christian also angrily called Blast a fraudulent project and called Pacman a "serial fraud." Blast points "big brother" @beijingduck2023 pledged about 10 million US dollars, and with a total of 281.2 billion points and 1.22 million gold points, he only received 64,000 BLASTs, worth more than a thousand US dollars. In addition, large users (top 0.1% addresses, approximately 1,000 addresses) also need to wait for a 6-month linear unlocking period.

But objectively speaking, Blast has much less negative reviews in the community than ZRO and ZK recently. X user @CryptoWoodBro mentioned that 7% of the first phase of Blast’s airdrop will be given to pledge points, and 7% will be given to gold points. Pledge points can be earned automatically just by lying flat, which is suitable for giant whales with large funds; while gold points require studying the rules of each project and participating deeply, which is suitable for retail investors with small funds and willing to put in the work. In addition, some rules allow points to be doubled/inflated. Therefore, the Blast airdrop essentially takes care of the interests of retail investors and provides retail investors with small funds with the opportunity to win big with small amounts and "get rich through hard work."

The era of "short-term, flat and fast" has long ended

Although Blast did not check witches and took into account a certain degree of fairness in this airdrop (especially taking care of some retail investors), it slightly put a damper on the discussion of "airdrops are dead", but The points-based airdrop it represents is still not the way back for the Web3 project.

Blast had a "bad reputation" before the airdrop because of its points-based gameplay. In March, the new points gameplay released on the Blast mainnet was accused of being PUA. The new rules require users to migrate ETH points to the main network and enjoy 10 times expansion. However, users need to pay more than 50 US dollars in gas fees for migration, which is too costly for small retail investors. After migration, users find that the expansion coefficient is 0-10 times the random number. Although Blast officials later corrected the bug, it was still criticized for the opaque points calculation rules. Previously, the official also secretly issued a large number of gold points to some Dapps.

Related reading: "Rat warehouse, big investors take it all, short-term investors are deprived of their qualifications, and "hairy" people are trapped in points"

Points system When the community discussion was in a noisy stage, someone once said that this round of points system Whether the PUA will end depends largely on the performance of Blast. If the price of Blast is too much lower than expected, the point-based airdrop PUA will naturally become "extinct". There are also many OGs and KOLs who have threatened to "no longer participate in point-based interactive activities in the future."

But even if Blast fails, does it mean the death of points-based airdrops?

Although the community has complained about the points system for a long time, earning points is still a common marketing and incentive method for current Web3 projects.

Some well-known unissued currency projects such as:

Scroll released Scroll Marks user points statistics rules on May 15, mainly counting users’ bridging data and gas burning data since the release of the Scroll mainnet on October 10, 2023. score. Later projects will issue airdrops based on Scroll Marks;

Linea launched the first phase of the Linea Surge points program (Volt 1) on May 17. Linea Surge will run for 6 months (6 Volts). The main ways to obtain points are There are three types, namely ecosystem points, recommendation points, and early adoption and historical contribution points;

Backpack launched the account transaction volume points system in February, and the points ranking will be used as important reference data for future air investment qualifications or Launchpool projects;

In addition, many projects such as KIP Protocol, KiloEx, Swell, and Puffer Finance have launched points activities. Will non-point-based incentive projects be better? not at all. The situation faced by retail investors will become increasingly difficult. Without a points system, it will be difficult for users to get rid of being nodes, going to third-party platforms to complete tasks, doing Odyssey, pledging to provide LP, purchasing NFTs with no actual value, etc.

Even though the project side’s airdrops have become extremely involved, it does not mean the end of the airdrop era. The Lu Mao Party has not stopped because of one or two setbacks. There are still a large number of addresses interacting on these unreleased projects. It’s just that the era of “short-term, smooth and fast” has come to an end for the time being, that is, the era of obtaining airdrops at zero cost and low cost is completely over. This marks that "airdrop industrialization" has officially entered a mature period, and users have become "Web3 product testers" with certain capital and professional knowledge, and they compete for depth of participation.
The airdrop is not dead, why don’t the project side and the Maoist Party agree with each other? The project side can never satisfy everyone, but why does the negative sentiment caused by this year’s airdrop seem to be particularly prominent?
The most important reason for this situation is the downturn in the overall market. Although the price of BTC and some altcoins have increased this round due to the BTC ETF, not many new funds have actually flowed into the crypto market. Some are just rotations between new concept sections. After being repeatedly beaten by "value coins" with high valuations and low circulation, retail investors finally became completely disenchanted with them and chose not to pay with FOMO. The existing funds of VCs, project parties, exchanges, and retail investors were competing. Most projects fell sharply after the airdrop and issued coins because not many people solved the problem. In addition, after the "value currency" loses its wealth-creating effect, it will be difficult to attract new users.
Secondly, airdrops are no longer a good business for both project parties and users. The industrialization of airdrops has created an irreparable cognitive gap between project parties and users.
The best airdrop in history is Uniswap, no one can refute this. But no one can replicate the airdrop feast that is unique to the pioneers. The so-called good is composed of three factors that are now impossible to complete: users do not have high airdrop expectations for the project, the interaction threshold is extremely low, and the airdrop value is high.
The "wealth creation effect" brought by airdrops has given birth to the industrialization of airdrops, gradually widening the cognitive gap between project parties and users.
For project parties, airdrops are a sign of product-market fit. Most project parties believe that their products can meet the existing needs of the market (but how many Web3 projects have real usage scenarios and core values?). Airdrops are a reflection of the actual situation. Use user rewards. This way of thinking directly leads to the arrogance of the project side. As LayerZero founder Bryan said in response to "mandatory donations", "If you don't want to donate, don't apply for tokens. This is not something you own, but provided by others." "something", on the project side, the token airdrop has become a "charity" to users.
For users, the result of airdrop industrialization is that they will expect every project to be airdropped by default, and they will participate as a "worker" and "farmer", paying technology, time and cost to help ecological construction and increase the project's profitability. Data and valuation help it obtain more financing and deserve corresponding rewards.
Judging from the results, for the project side, if the airdrop threshold is set low, it means that it will attract "low-value" users, and there is a risk of selling after the token is released. Short-term and low-value users will quickly withdraw funds and transfer liquidity to the next "farm" after receiving the airdrop; for users (especially retail investors), even if the amount of funds is small, they actually pay during the interaction process Cost, and usually because the airdrop rules of the project side are not transparent, they often face the risk of being counterattacked.
What Uniswap founder Hayden Adams advocates can create a culture that rewards early adopters, fairer and more extensive value distribution, and simpler self-service adoption, so that the public is willing to try new things, and can achieve "perfection" such as early liquidity and early price discovery. "Airdrop" may and can only be realized once. After all, Web3 is never a utopia.
Airdrops need to be redefined. Jupiter co-founder Meow put forward a point in the recent discussion around LayerZero airdrops. He believes that “airdrops are gifts. Not rewards, not a loyalty program, not a means of growth. That’s just the way it is. Simple. If you ask what you can get from it, it ceases to be a gift and loses its meaning and fails to live up to the original sincerity." He further explained that in order to help protocol developers think about how to conduct airdrops .
He mentioned that we need a clear definition of airdrops. Airdrops are airdrops, incentives are incentives, rewards are rewards, and growth is growth. All this confusion of terms leads to the problems that exist in airdrops now.
In fact, I agree with his later point of view. A clear definition is actually more conducive to solving our aforementioned problems and bridging the cognitive gap between project parties and users. Perhaps, the project team should separate the money spent on user growth and the airdrop budget as gifts.

1. Crypto KOL Cobie discusses "airdrop is dead"

• The current situation of airdrop is difficult to meet user needs
• Small mistakes will backfire on airdrop reputation
• Projects should try other listing methods such as not issuing airdrops

2. He Yi, co-founder of Binance:

   • The battle between Lumao Studio and the L2 project has turned into a farce
   • The Lumao era may be over
   • Strategies such as ICO, IEO, nesting dolls, and Lumao are not suitable for today’s market

3. Airdrop industrialization era:

   • Redefine airdrops and formulate new rules

4. Although there is no perfect airdrop or incentive method, project parties should prioritize user needs: fairness

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