A Senior Witch's Account: How I Obtained 6.6 Million ZK Airdrop

Author: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily

It has been several days since the ZKsync (ZK) airdrop was launched, but the aftermath of the event continues.

On the evening of June 22, Beijing time, X user k1z4 provocatively posted, "Hey, ZKsync, I want to let you know that I finally completed the airdrop claim and transfer work for 350 wallets, averaging 18871 ZK tokens per wallet. Unfortunately, I still don't have enough money to buy a Lamborghini or a villa in Beverly Hills… I was expecting to receive more tokens, you have disappointed me!"

According to a screenshot of holdings allegedly from Binance shared by k1z4, the total amount of ZK tokens the user ultimately received reached 6,605,139, which is still valued at nearly 1.2 million dollars even with the current declining token price.

After k1z4 publicly boasted, the post quickly spread across CT.

In the early hours of June 23, k1z4 posted several updates, roughly explaining his strategy as a "senior witch" to evade ZKsync's witch detection.

First, k1z4 candidly admitted that he was engaging in "airdrop farming," but emphasized that the infrastructure he used to farm 350 wallets was more complex than most Layer 2 solutions today, making it difficult for anyone, including ZKsync, to distinguish his bots from real users based on address behavior ------ "My bots look more real than most real people."

Specifically, k1z4 revealed that he used 350 IP addresses with independent caches, cookies, RPC, VPNs, hosting services, and a range of AI tools. He then spent several days coding programs to allow the bots to learn how to interact like real people based on various "airdrop strategies" commonly seen on X.

As a result, these 350 addresses were not only difficult to trace back to each other, but their interaction behaviors were also completely different. k1z4 later disclosed that the airdrop amounts received by these addresses varied, with the lowest being around 9000 tokens and the highest reaching 70000 tokens.

However, k1z4 later mentioned that merely having technical capabilities was not enough; engaging in "airdrop farming" also required a significant financial investment.

k1z4 revealed that to successfully operate these 350 bot addresses, he spent 29.68 ETH just on network gas fees; building the bot infrastructure cost an additional $21,000, and he paid two assistants (who helped monitor the bots' operation) 50,000 ZK each; additionally, he allocated 200 ETH to allow the bot addresses to flexibly participate in various DeFi liquidity pools on the chain.

k1z4 also noted that to ensure the strategy's proper execution, he invested a significant amount of time and energy, which are costs that cannot be priced.

When responding to the community's question about whether he was doing this for research on new technology or for money, k1z4 showcased his values: "Initially, it was just to research new technology, but then I realized it could be monetized… and you already know the result."

However, even though k1z4 ultimately received airdrop rewards far exceeding those of ordinary users, he was still not satisfied with the outcome.

In evaluating the airdrop rewards, k1z4 ultimately expressed, "I am not satisfied with this number; I expected much more, but what can you expect from a blockchain that raised $400 million yet still cannot operate normally?"