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Opinion: Airdrops become the only way to achieve decentralization and establish DAO

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When a decentralized application launches a native token, it must first consider how to airdrop it to users.

Original title: "[Xiaobai] Airdrop: The only way to achieve decentralization and establish a DAO. "

Original author: 0xtaoist, @0xCryptoUni

When a decentralized application launches a native Token, it must first consider how to give users airdrop.

Why airdrop Token to users?

Because it needs to be decentralized (at least officially).

Airdrop can be defined as "distributing Token the behavior of".

The following are purely personal opinions, not authoritative opinions.

1. Significance of airdrop

Most of the initial airdrops were for marketing and expanding popularity.

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Uniswap airdropped 180,000 users with a total value of hundreds of millions Token Afterwards, this NB app that sends iPhones to users quickly went out of the circle and became the product of choice for many newcomers, and its own excellence also allowed it to retain users who came here admiringly.

After that, airdrops of decentralized applications have become the norm, bringing waves of airdrops, and single addresses earn tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of profits The wealth creation effect also naturally makes other users pay attention to the product itself.

Attention, whether it is web2 or web3, is one of the keys to the survival of the project.

The new app will airdrop the "senior" users Token , so as to gain the attention of the target users as quickly as possible. Sushiswap issued governance earlier than Uniswap Token Launched the incentive plan and successfully seized 75% of Uniswap’s liquidity and users in a short period of time, which caused Uniswap to publicly condemn it on Twitter. And X2Y2 and LooksRare airdrop to Opensea users Token , starts a series of Token Incentives behave in the same way. This practice is known as "vampire attack".

When the concept of web3 becomes popular, airdrop Token It became a prerequisite for forming a DAO.

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Users need to hold Token To participate in DAO governance.

The project party needs to Token Distributed to more users to achieve decentralization.

Only in this way can we build a real web3.

Whether it is to give back to users and expand popularity, or to decentralize applications, endow Token Voting rights allow holders to participate in DAO governance, or launch a "vampire attack", and the project party will launch native Token After airdropping to users, at least for now, airdropping is the optimal solution for project decentralization.

2. Users and Witches

In the past, users who found the app could perform an airdrop.

Now, it is more important to catch hidden witches among users.

The early airdrop rules were very simple, as long as the users of the platform would have a similar airdrop share.

Uniswap: Historical users, liquidity providers and NFT holders can all get airdrops.

1INCH: User trades at least 4 times and not less than $20.

Subsequently, the time period, amount and number of times are used to calculate the weight, so that there is a gap in the airdrop between users.

ENS: According to the registration time, reverse resolution and renewal time of the .ens domain name, divide the weight distribution Token .

Cowswap: Limit the number of transactions and the amount, divide the transaction volume into five levels to calculate the weight respectively, reduce the weight of stablecoins, the first and last transaction The longer the time interval, the larger the extra factor.

DYDX: Divide different levels of users according to the amount deposited and used by users.

When people realize that airdrops have huge wealth, multi-account and automated interactive applications are becoming more and more popular, and the "witch" in the mouth of the project is born. ". Airdrop rules also raise the bar and complicate matters. The project party will also use data analysis and on-chain records to check the correlation between addresses, and bounty-based witch hunts are becoming more and more common.

Paraswap: Excluded transaction records above 1M (anti-whale), and then excluded chain records below 50TX and Token Users with a balance of less than 200U (Sybil-proof). Transferring between more than 5 parent-child accounts is also considered a "Sybil attack". Then calculate the weight airdrop according to the number of transactions and transaction amount Token . Created a precedent for tracking and arresting witches on the chain.

Hop: compare the "well-known" cross-chain bridge airdrop projects. The basic rules are the same, the number and amount of user cross-chain, and the provider of the LP pool can all get airdrops, but it has created a bounty-style capture of witches on the chain, and the most reports have reached more than 500 addresses for a proposal. Analyze to determine whether different addresses are controlled by the same "body".

Optimism: users who enter funds and use on-chain applications can get airdrops, and use it multiple times in different weeks, donate and participate in Gitcoin on the mainnet Users with Snapshot governance and using Safe multi-signature wallets have more airdrop shares. Under the repeated proposals of community members, tens of thousands of "witch" addresses were also screened, but the specific logic was not disclosed.

Safe: The user who generates 1TX will get the minimum living allowance, which will be based on the user’s deposit Token Value, the handling fee generated by the transaction is given different weights, and more Token . Also under the suggestion of "community enthusiasts", the "witch" bounty activity was launched.

Evolution of airdrop rules: define users - distinguish users - screen out witches.

Airdrop "Yigaimu" realized that airdrop is the future trend when the project did not normalize airdrop, and laid out the interaction Application, control hundreds or thousands of accounts with one person. After the "epic-level airdrops" such as DYDX and ENS, "Legends of getting rich" have been created one after another.

These "legends" let the "second generation" people start to enter the field to find the next "epic airdrop", which led to the exponential growth of the user base of the project party , It also made the project party realize that most people are just here for airdrops. When Paraswap launched native Token At that time, it already had more than 100,000 users. Perhaps in order to achieve the best marketing effect, they chose to screen out most users and retained only 10,000 addresses. Facts have proved that both the airdrop value and "reputation" are extremely huge.

So far, the surge of users, the showing off of witches, the jealousy of peers, and the marketing effect desired by the project party have together led to the evolution of rules and the witch hunt movement normalization.

As for the "three generations" who entered the circle after the arrival of the bear market, it may take a long construction process to reap the rewards in the next bull market, but the cost is absolutely Being lower than the previous "predecessors" is also an excellent opportunity to learn the knowledge on the chain.

Projects, users and witches are in a deformed relationship, coexisting and hostile. The project has not launched native Token Sometimes, users will question whether they want to deny decentralization and whether they want to keep PUA users. Conversely, the project will think that users just want to urge them to quickly airdrop, then cash out the coins and slip away. And when witches are showing off their huge gains, users and project parties will also fight against each other and try their best to obtain more benefits.

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Currently, the concept of decentralization has not yet been realized, governance power is still in the hands of a few people, and witches are still hunting projects. Such a relationship will still exist with the existence of the airdrop mode until a new mode appears to replace the airdrop.