The Dilemma and Solutions of the Web3 Airdrop Ecosystem

In the cryptocurrency field, airdrops were once a widely popular marketing and user acquisition strategy. However, this method has recently evolved from a "get-rich myth" into a controversial battleground. The trust crisis between project parties and users, the imbalance of distribution mechanisms, the rampant witch attacks, and the survival dilemmas of participants together form the complex picture of the current airdrop ecosystem. This article will focus on the airdrop event of a certain blockchain project as a core case, combined with several other controversial projects, to explore the existing problems in the Web3 airdrop ecosystem and their deeper causes.

1. Imbalanced allocation by the project team, users from "harvesting" to "being harvested"

1. Capital-led distribution logic

Taking the recently controversial airdrop of a certain blockchain project as an example, the total amount of the airdrop accounts for 15.8% of the initial supply, but testnet users only received 1.65%, while NFT holders accounted for 6.9%. Six major NFT holders divided up $306 million worth of tokens through a scarce series of NFTs, with the highest individual address earning $55.77 million. A similar phenomenon is also evident in another Layer 2 project: 1.3% of addresses (about 9,203) received 23.9% of the token share, with the difference between the lowest and highest rewards being 100 times. This "wealth disparity" exposes two major issues with the airdrop mechanism:

• Resources are tilted towards capital: NFT holders are mostly early-stage investors with strong financial backing, while users of the testnet who contribute to on-chain activity become "low-income households".
• Rule Black Box: Some projects have not disclosed the details of the airdrop algorithm, and some projects have faced criticism for allocating tokens to NFT holders who did not participate in the ecosystem, leading to ambiguity in the rules and giving rise to "rat trading" controversies.

2. Systematic Devaluation of Interactive Value

Traditional airdrops focus on trading frequency, cross-chain interactions, and other behaviors, but some projects are shifting to core indicators like "fund retention time" and "risk asset allocation": providing liquidity to decentralized exchanges can yield double rewards, and users holding high-risk tokens or NFTs enjoy multiplier incentives. This shift, while suppressing witch attacks, leads to the disincentivization of ordinary users, creating a vicious cycle where "the higher the capital threshold, the greater the returns."

2. Users from "Hair Pulling Carnival" to "Trust Collapse"

1. Expectations Falling Short and Liquidity Trap

• Yield Inversion: Participants in a certain project invested millions into a testnet address but only received a thousand tokens (worth about $10,000), while pre-deposit users were forced to lock their funds for three months, and early redemption would incur a 2% loss, sarcastically referred to as "anti-pull."
• Sell-off wave spreads: Only 19.3% of the airdrop addresses of a certain Layer 2 project continue to hold tokens, with 80% sold off leading to a sharp decline in mainnet activity; the cross-chain trading volume of protocols in a certain cross-chain project's ecosystem decreased by 75% after the airdrop, highlighting that airdrops have become a "one-time traffic tool."

2. The Spread of Trust Cracks

• Double standards in rules: Early users of a certain project are deprived of qualifications for not participating in the new version interactions, while partners receive a large amount of tokens, far exceeding their publicly raised funds.
• The bankruptcy of technical idealism: Despite projects launching innovative mechanisms and dual-token models, distribution disputes reveal that if the economic model deviates from fairness, technological innovation instead becomes a "fig leaf" for centralized control.

3. The "collateral damage" cost of anti-witch measures

A certain cross-chain project banned over 1 million addresses through community reports, but mistakenly judged a large number of real users (such as those with similar ENS domain naming patterns). Some reputation systems attempt to balance security and fairness, but biometric verification and KYC raise privacy controversies, falling into the "trilemma of decentralized identity."

3. The Survival Dilemma of Participants

As the Web3 Airdrop ecosystem evolves, users participating in multiple project airdrops to obtain token rewards are facing an increasingly harsh survival environment. The once low-cost, high-return strategy is gradually becoming ineffective, replaced by high costs, complex rules, and opaque operations from project parties.

1. "Small capital high-frequency interaction" becomes "high-cost game"

Early participants maximized their airdrop profits by creating addresses in bulk and engaging with low costs. However, as project teams adjusted the airdrop rules, a single address now requires a large amount of funds to be held long-term, with costs far exceeding profits. Taking a certain Layer2 project as an example, it requires users to hold a significant amount of funds long-term or provide liquidity, which significantly increases the cost for a single address, while the returns may not necessarily cover the investment.

2. Interactive value depreciation

The weight of traditional high-frequency interaction behaviors in Airdrops has decreased, making it difficult for ordinary users to obtain substantial profits through low-cost operations. In contrast, users with substantial capital have gained higher rewards by holding high-risk assets or NFTs, shrinking the profit margin for ordinary users.

4. Breaking the Deadlock: Reconstructing the Consensus of Fairness

At present, airdrops seem to be caught in a dilemma. The traditional model is often simplistic and crude, using the number of addresses or the amount of tokens held as the sole criteria, ignoring the users' real contributions and long-term value to the project. This "money-spraying" style of airdrop not only fails to attract target users but also fosters speculative behavior, straying from the original intention of project development.

To reconstruct the consensus on fairness, it is necessary to establish a more scientific and reasonable Airdrop mechanism:

1. From "quantity" to "quality": Incorporate users' contributions to the project into the Airdrop criteria, encouraging users to engage deeply in the project ecosystem.
2. From "one-time" to "continuous": combining airdrops with the long-term development goals of the project to incentivize users to grow together with the project.
3. From "Centralization" to "Decentralization": Utilizing blockchain technology to establish a transparent and open airdrop mechanism that enhances user trust.

The project team should be open and transparent in co-governance with community users, for example:

• Algorithm Audit: Public Airdrop parameters, introducing third-party audit to verify the rationality of the rules.
• Community Governance: Publicly disclose the anti-witch standards in advance and open community discussions, introducing a voting mechanism to involve users in rule design.
• Gradient Distribution: Rewards are dynamically adjusted based on staking duration and contribution, limiting whale monopolization.
• Long-term value binding: Link airdrops to governance rights, requiring users to continuously participate in voting to unlock benefits, thereby suppressing short-term selling.
• Technology empowers fair verification: By enhancing multi-dimensional identity verification, the cost of Sybil attacks is increased; exploring zero-knowledge proof technology to verify real identities while protecting privacy.

Conclusion

Airdrops should not merely be a game of wealth transfer. Recent controversies have revealed the core contradictions of the Web3 airdrop mechanism: project parties pursue cold start efficiency, users yearn for fair returns, while capital seeks to exploit opportunities for arbitrage. When airdrops become alienated into "exit channels" or "traffic bait," trust will collapse and user flight will become inevitable. In the future, only through transparent rules, community co-governance, and technological iteration can airdrops return to the essence of "contributor priority," thus reshaping the foundational trust of the Web3 ecosystem. Allowing value creators to share in the value is the ultimate answer to the spirit of decentralization.