After the ZRO and BLAST airdrops, the project team and the profit seekers have also "mutually avoided taking over."

Author: Nianqing, ChainCatcher

Last night, Blast officially opened the airdrop claim. Amid the recent "airdrop is dead" sentiment triggered by ZKsync and LayerZero, Blast and its founder Tie Shun Pacman were unsurprisingly criticized by the community. The main points of contention are threefold:

• The token claiming process is infuriating
• The token price post-listing is below expectations, resulting in low returns for users who participated in staking
• Addresses ranked in the top 1% need to wait for a 6-month linear unlocking period

Specifically, before claiming the airdrop, users are required to watch a long video lasting several minutes, where founder Pacman will detail Blast's tokenomics and development plans. Additionally, after watching the video, users must download the mobile app and obtain four prompts to finally claim the tokens.

Furthermore, prior to the listing, multiple analysts had valued the token, with even the more pessimistic estimates being above $0.03. After the token launch, Blast's FDV was only around $2 billion, whereas Arbitrum, Optimism, and other L2s had FDVs nearing $10 billion at launch (which also indicates that retail investors are no longer willing to pay for high FDV VC tokens).

However, compared to the token price, some users who participated in large staking reported very low airdrop benefits. For example, NextGen Venture co-founder Christian stated that he deposited over $50 million in Blast but only received an airdrop worth $100,000. Christian also angrily labeled Blast as a scam project, calling Pacman a "serial scammer." The top scorer in Blast's points system, @beijingduck2023, staked about $10 million and, with a total score of 281.2 billion and 1.22 million gold points, only received 64,000 BLAST, worth just over $1,000. Additionally, large holders (addresses in the top 0.1%, about 1,000 addresses) must also wait for a 6-month linear unlocking period.

Objectively speaking, Blast has received far fewer negative reviews from the community compared to the recent ZRO and ZK. X user @CryptoWoodBro mentioned that in the first phase of the Blast airdrop, 7% was allocated to staking points and 7% to gold points. Staking points can automatically earn rewards without any action, making it suitable for large whales; gold points require studying the rules of various projects and deep participation, making it suitable for smaller investors willing to put in the effort. Additionally, some rules allow for points to double/inflate, thus the Blast airdrop effectively catered to the interests of retail investors, providing opportunities for small investors to take big risks and "work hard for wealth."

The "Short and Fast" Era Has Long Ended

Although Blast's recent airdrop has slightly quelled the "airdrop is dead" discussion due to its lack of witch-hunting and consideration for some fairness (specifically catering to certain retail investors), the points-based airdrop it represents is still not the way forward for Web3 projects.

Blast had already faced backlash for its points-based gameplay before the airdrop. In March, the new points system launched on Blast's mainnet was accused of being PUA. The new rules required users to migrate ETH points to the mainnet to enjoy a 10x inflation, but users had to pay over $50 in gas fees, which was too high for small investors. After migrating, users found that the inflation factor was a random number between 0-10x. Although Blast later fixed the bug, it left criticisms regarding the opacity of the points calculation rules. Previously, the official team had also secretly issued a large number of gold points to certain Dapps.

Related Reading: [ Insider Trading, Large Holders Eating Up, Airdrop Eligibility Revoked, "Farming" People Trapped by Points]

While the community was loudly discussing the points system, some expressed that the end of this round of points-based PUA largely depended on Blast's performance. With Blast's price falling significantly below expectations, the points-based airdrop PUA would naturally "go extinct." Many OGs and KOLs have also declared that they "will no longer participate in points-based interactions."

But does Blast's failure mean the end of points-based airdrops?

Despite the community's long-standing complaints about points systems, point farming remains a common marketing and incentive strategy for current Web3 projects.

Some well-known projects that have yet to launch tokens include:

Scroll released the Scroll Marks user points statistics rules on May 15, mainly tracking users' bridging data and gas burning data since the Scroll mainnet launch on October 10, 2023. Future airdrops will be based on Scroll Marks;

Linea launched the first phase of the Linea Surge points program (Volt 1) on May 17, which will run for 6 months (6 Volts). Points can be earned through three main channels: ecosystem points, referral points, and early adoption and historical contribution points;

Backpack started an account trading volume points system in February, with points ranking serving as an important reference for future airdrop eligibility or Launchpool projects;

Additionally, several projects such as KIP Protocol, KiloEx, Swell, and Puffer Finance have also launched points activities. Are projects without points-based incentives doing any better? Not really. Retail investors are facing increasingly difficult situations; without a points system, users find it hard to avoid becoming nodes, going to third-party platforms to complete tasks, participating in Odyssey, providing LP for staking, or purchasing NFTs with no actual value.

Even though project teams have pushed airdrops to the extreme, it does not mean the end of the airdrop era. The "farming" crowd has not stopped due to one or two setbacks; there are still a large number of addresses interacting with these unreleased projects. It's just that the "short and fast" era has come to a temporary halt, marking the complete end of the zero-cost and low-cost airdrop acquisition era. This signifies that the "industrialization of airdrops" has officially entered a mature phase, where users have become "Web3 product testers" with certain capital and expertise, competing on the depth of participation.

Airdrops Are Not Dead, Why Are Project Teams and Farmers Not Buying Each Other's Claims?

Project teams can never satisfy everyone, but why does this year's airdrop seem to bring about particularly negative sentiments?

The most important reason for this situation is the overall market downturn. Although this round has seen BTC prices and some altcoins rise due to the BTC ETF, there hasn't been much new capital flowing into the crypto market. What exists is merely a rotation between new concept sectors. After being repeatedly battered by overvalued, low-circulation "value coins," retail investors have finally demystified them and chosen not to FOMO buy anymore. The competition for existing funds among VCs, project teams, exchanges, and retail investors has led to most projects experiencing significant declines after airdrop token launches due to a lack of market response. Furthermore, once "value coins" lose their wealth-creating effect, it becomes difficult to attract new users.

Secondly, airdrops are no longer a good business for both project teams and users. The industrialization of airdrops has created an irreconcilable cognitive gap between project teams and users.

The best airdrop in history is Uniswap, and no one would dispute that. However, no one can replicate the airdrop feast unique to the pioneers. The so-called "good" is composed of three factors that can no longer be fulfilled: users have no high expectations for airdrops from project teams, the interaction threshold is extremely low, and the airdrop value is high.

The "wealth-creating effect" brought by airdrops has fostered the industrialization of airdrops, gradually widening the cognitive gap between project teams and users.

For project teams, airdrops are a sign of product-market fit, and teams often believe their products can meet existing market demands (but how many Web3 projects have real use cases and core value?), airdrops are rewards for actual users. This mindset directly leads to the arrogance of project teams, as LayerZero founder Bryan stated in response to "mandatory donations," "If you don't want to donate, don't claim the tokens; they are not yours, but something provided by others." In the eyes of project teams, token airdrops have become a form of "charity" towards users.

For users, the industrialization of airdrops results in an implicit expectation that every project will conduct airdrops, while they participate as "workers" or "farmers," investing their skills, time, and costs to help build the ecosystem and boost project data and valuations, thereby helping them secure more funding, and they rightfully expect corresponding rewards.

From the outcome perspective, for project teams, if the airdrop threshold is set low, it means attracting "low-value" users, which poses a risk of sell-off after the token release. Short-term and low-value users will quickly withdraw funds and shift liquidity to the next "farm" after obtaining airdrops; for users (especially retail investors), even with small amounts of capital, they have genuinely incurred costs during interactions, and often face the risk of being "re-farmed" due to the opacity of the project team's airdrop rules.

The "perfect airdrop" that Uniswap founder Hayden Adams advocated for, which could shape a culture of rewarding early adopters, fairer and broader value distribution, and simpler self-service adoption, allowing the public to try new things, achieving early liquidity and early price discovery, may only have been realized that one time, after all, Web3 has never been a utopia.

Airdrops Need to Be Redefined

Meow, co-founder of Jupiter, recently proposed a viewpoint in discussions surrounding the LayerZero airdrop, stating that "an airdrop is a gift. It is not a reward, not a loyalty program, and not a growth strategy. It's that simple. If you ask what you can get from it, it is no longer a gift, thus losing its meaning and betraying its original intention." He further explained that this is to help protocol developers think about how to conduct airdrops.

He mentioned that we need to establish a clear definition for airdrops. An airdrop is an airdrop, an incentive is an incentive, a reward is a reward, and growth is growth. The confusion of all these terms has led to the current problems with airdrops.

In fact, I agree with his later points. A clear definition would actually help resolve the aforementioned issues and bridge the cognitive gap between project teams and users. Perhaps project teams should separate the budget spent on user growth from the budget for airdrops as gifts.

Crypto KOL Cobie discussed "airdrop is dead," believing that the current state of airdrops is difficult to meet user needs, and its reputation can easily backfire from small mistakes. Project teams might consider trying better listing methods without issuing airdrops.

Binance co-founder He Yi also recently stated that the infighting among farming studios and L2 projects has turned into a farce, suggesting that the farming era may be coming to an end. As an ordinary investor, using 2017's ICOs, 2021's IEOs, nested schemes, or even 2023's farming strategies may not be suitable for today's market.

In the "industrialized" era of airdrops, we may really need to redefine airdrops and redesign the rules based on that.

Although there is no absolutely perfect airdrop or incentive method, the most important point for project teams to note is that what users need most is fairness, fairness, and fairness!