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ZKsync’s airdrop was the most misunderstood drop in the past cycle.
It was my first brush with full-blown toxicity, and I was not prepared for it at all.
There was so much hatred on the timeline because wallets hit certain metrics, but they were completely ineligible for ZK.
But if you looked at the airdrop through the lens of ZKsync:
It made sense why they chose to use this criterion.
1 year after all the controversy and bitterness, here’s my reflection on the criteria and what we can learn to improve our airdrop strategy:
Arbitrum changed the airdrop game with their simple points system to award an airdrop allocation.
The key criteria included:
Transaction count
Swap and bridging volume
Smart contract interactions
I believe it was possible to use this criterion because Sybil farming was not as full-blown as it is today.
Though there was some Sybil filtering done with Nansen.
But once this criteria was released, everyone assumed that each L2 airdrop (like Scroll and Linea) would use the same playbook.
Which is completely false and not guaranteed.
Sybils spammed all of these L2s with the same activity-based metrics. So if ZKsync used the same criteria, it would be impossible to differentiate between a real user and a Sybil.
So that’s why they chose this criterion instead:
The key criterion for the ZKsync airdrop was Time Weighted Average Balance (TWAB):
This calculates the average balance of ZKsync assets in a wallet over a certain period, weighted by the amount of time each balance was held.
So TWAB was determined by 3 factors:
How much assets you held on ZKsync
How much assets you deposited into DeFi protocols on ZKsync (2x multiplier)
How long you held the assets for
Even if you had limited capital of just $25 and deposited it into Syncswap for the full 366 days of the snapshot period:
You would have been eligible for 1,040 ZK.
Here’s why I believe ZKsync prioritised this metric over others:
As an L2, liquidity and TVL are king.
Locking funds on ZKsync indicates trust in the L2, where users are willing to risk their funds in a new project.
ZKsync saw liquidity and funds on their chain as a meaningful contribution, while volume and transaction count were just vanity metrics.
And ZKsync didn’t just choose raw volume as the key criterion:
This would have only benefited whales who have the liquidity and capital to play the game (while those with limited capital lose out).
TWAB is more resistant to whales gaming the system:
Just holding $192 across the entire 366 days can outperform a whale who deposited $10,000 in one week.
TWAB is being used by other protocols too, most notably Polygon and Katana:
Katana will redistribute the remaining KAT weighted by time and amount
Time-weighted staking of POL (MATIC) for future Polygon ecosystem airdrops
TWAB was a straightforward criterion for others to qualify, but here’s why many wallets didn’t make the cut:
Here’s my theory on why wallets were ineligible:
They were too focused on wallet checker metrics like transaction count or volume.
The likely scenario was this:
Bridged in their funds to ZKsync to generate bridging volume
Swapped multiple times to generate swap volume and transaction count
Bridged funds out of ZKsync to generate bridging volume and allocate funds elsewhere
This likely repeated across different months (since Arbitrum awarded points based on distinct months)
Because they didn’t leave their funds inside ZKsync:
Their TWAB was too low and didn’t meet the threshold to be eligible for the minimum allocation.
Based on the FAQs, it seems that a wallet was ineligible with a TWAB of $30.
Transaction volume had no impact whatsoever on the eligibility criteria, likely because it can be easily gamed.
TWAB was mainly aimed at filtering out Sybils:
Sybil farms won’t have significant funds, so they’ll recycle them across multiple wallets to push the same transactions.
So if a wallet’s actions were similar to a Sybil, ZKsync likely filtered them out.
Despite this, many Sybil farms still qualified for the ZKsync drop.
But this brings forward another dilemma for projects:
There was outrage over how ZKsync’s Sybil criteria were too weak, but they didn’t want to filter out real users during the process.
They need to make a decision on how aggressive their Sybil filter should be:
Too aggressive, and many real users will be ineligible too
Too lax, and more Sybils will qualify and dilute rewards to real users
ZKsync likely believed that TWAB was effective enough to filter most Sybils:
High TWAB in multiple wallets would force attackers to divide significant capital across each wallet.
So this made a full-blown Sybil attack costly and impractical.
But there will always be those that fall through the cracks, and Sybils could still qualify for the airdrop.
Airdrops will never be fair, so projects would choose to optimise for the best scenario (in their opinion).
So after all the drama from this airdrop, here are the key lessons I’m applying to my airdrop strategy:
There’s zero guarantee that a future airdrop uses the same criteria as a previous one.
We can reference them, but the optimal way for airdrops is to develop our own strategy.
No one knows the criteria until the announcement, so the ideal way of becoming eligible is by integrating it into our daily routines.
I was lucky because I did multiple Galxe campaigns, which helped me add liquidity on ZKsync (which increased my TWAB).
The best type of airdrops are surprise ones we qualified based on our previous footprint.
But in this current meta, onchain footprint is no longer enough.
To get the highest allocations, we need to link our social and onchain profiles together as I shared below:
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16 Jun
The airdrop game has changed forever. Gone are the days when airdrop criteria are based on volume and transaction count alone.
Airdrop trackers are useless in this meta because you’re likely chasing metrics that projects won’t even use in their criteria.
They are good as a reference, but not something we should follow closely.
Airdrops are never stagnant.
We either adapt and evolve or become irrelevant in the new meta.
I prioritise actions that can’t be easily done by Sybils.
If millions of wallets can do the same actions as you:
How does a project differentiate you from a Sybil?
They prefer to reward actions that they deem as meaningful contributions.
But this assumes that the project truly cares about their community and rewards users who are long-term aligned.
I used to follow Ardizor’s guides, but soon realised that they encouraged low-value actions.
So here’s the better way to determine how to qualify for the airdrop:
Reverse engineer and think like the project:
Perform actions that would give the most value to the project.
The playbook will never be the same because Sybils will exploit the previous criteria.
So it’s all about learning how to stand out from Sybils.
Is ZKsync a failed chain because usage metrics have plummeted post-TGE?
If most of the activity was inorganic and just meant to get the airdrop:
The high activity is unsustainable, and it’ll eventually go back to the normal usage baseline.
Ultimately, this was a good lesson on how Sybils force projects to continuously change their criteria to outsmart them.
So we need to adapt and evolve our strategies to stay ahead of Sybils and stand out.
And that’s why I believe onchain footprint alone is no longer enough in this new meta:
We need to combine our social and onchain footprint together as I shared below:
·
16 Jun
The airdrop game has changed forever. Gone are the days when airdrop criteria are based on volume and transaction count alone.
Whenever you’re ready, there are 2 ways I can help you:
Audience to Airdrop: Steal my playbook to build trust fast and earn social airdrops
Secure Airdrop Hunter: My flagship Web3 security course, learn how to protect your assets and onchain footprint while stopping hackers from draining your funds
FIP Crypto
