Are the Kanpai Pandas that received the LayerZero airdrop "wash trading"?

Author: Cookie, BlockBeats

First of all, my point is clear: Kanpai Pandas is obviously not "insider trading."

Since the beginning of 2023, the floor price of Kanpai Pandas has not dropped below 0.7 ETH. After LayerZero announced the snapshot in early May, Kanpai Pandas also faced some setbacks, but the trend remained relatively stable, and there was no "guillotine" pattern in the increase of trading volume.

This project was launched in April 2022. Although it doesn't hold the title of "the first Omni NFT" like Gh0stly Ghosts, NFT players generally mention Kanpai Pandas alongside Pudgy Penguins, Gh0stly Ghosts, and tiny dinos when discussing which NFT projects might receive LayerZero airdrops.

LayerZero's CEO Bryan Pellegrino also personally clarified in a tweet:

Based on the responses from Kanpai Pandas holders under various tweets, the amount received for one Kanpai Pandas is about 100, which matches up.

If we remove Pudgy Penguins, a non-Omni Native NFT giant, Kanpai Pandas is undoubtedly the leading Omni NFT. Over the past two years since its launch, this project has focused on community building and has organized many real-world activities related to sports and music for everyone to participate in.

It's not surprising that people only heard about this project during the LayerZero airdrop; Omni NFTs are a niche track, perhaps similar to Cosmos's Bad Kids.

But in reality, is the dissatisfaction with LayerZero due to Kanpai Pandas? Clearly, Kanpai Pandas has merely become an outlet for emotions; the real reason is that these airdrop projects are disrupting the balance between VCs, project parties, and "profit-seeking" users.

"Profit-seeking" users, or studios, are the most vulnerable party in this distorted game driven by irresponsible VC valuations and reckless spending. Project parties need user interaction data to secure funding from VCs, while VCs need project parties to issue tokens to cash out. Each project party is clearly dangling tokens as a carrot in front of "profit-seeking" users, using future tokens as bait to get users to work for free on data growth.

The concept of "witch hunts" is inherently about wanting it both ways. Users are first and foremost users, and only then are they "profit-seeking" users. Games may impose restrictions or even ban gold farming studios because these studios could disrupt the balance of the in-game economy, ultimately leading to player loss and revenue decline. Do crypto projects think the same way, that "profit-seeking" users will cause the loss of real users? If so, can we say that these projects' so-called real users are also here to "profit-seek," just that their skills in doing so are not as strong as those of the studios?

Since the concept of "self-reporting" emerged from "witch hunts," I have found it absurd, truly absurd. Has "profit-seeking" become a crime? Do we need to "self-report"?

Why are people increasingly dissatisfied with VCs and these projects? It is clearly the greed of VCs or their investment misjudgments that have led to these projects having inflated valuations. The projects cannot establish a reliable and stable business model, so they resort to issuing tokens to make retail investors pay for their undigested waste. Retail investors work hard to exit, only to be abandoned in the end. When will this distorted model come to an end?

Perhaps one day we will witness the end of this old airdrop industry chain. Although the likelihood of Base issuing tokens is minimal, the reason I insist on participating in the Base ecosystem is that I feel they are beginning to adopt a new operational approach. From the initial rise of $BOLD to later projects like Warpcast's $DEGEN, encouraging users to genuinely use something within the ecosystem and then having various projects unexpectedly release something, this model may bring some changes to the distorted three-party game.