Written by: SuperEx
Compiled by: Plain Blockchain
On-chain users can typically be divided into four categories: Airdrop Players, DeFi Players, Meme Players, and Stablecoin Players.
Airdrop Players
Basic Knowledge Requirements
Airdrop players do not need deep financial or technical expertise, but must be familiar with basic blockchain operations, such as creating wallets, on-chain interactions, setting gas fees, etc. They should have cross-chain knowledge, understand EVM-compatible chains like Arbitrum, Optimism, zkSync, Base, Blast, and master the evolution of "airdrop logic", such as which behaviors will be tracked or marked as "Sybil attacks".
Technical Ability Requirements: Medium
They need to be proficient in using multiple wallet tools, switching RPC, batch registration, contract interaction (testing DApps), and automated scripts. Advanced players may use automated interaction scripts, simulators, or on-chain behavior simulation tools to avoid censorship.
Time Investment: Medium to High
Airdrop strategies emphasize "continuity" and "layout density". Top players spend a lot of time each day tracking airdrop information, interacting, checking transactions, monitoring official announcements, and testnet upgrades. After receiving an airdrop, they need to quickly batch extract, exchange, or manage funds.
Community Participation Requirements: Medium to Low
Although some projects require "community activity" to verify real users, airdrops focus more on on-chain interactions. Community participation is mostly tool-oriented, such as tweeting, retweeting, or participating in AMAs, rather than in-depth discussions.
Expected Returns: Medium to High
Airdrop returns vary greatly, with Optimism and Arbitrum potentially bringing thousands of dollars in returns, while some test projects yield nothing. Top players maximize profits through "multi-chain layout, high hit rate, batch accounts", with successful airdrops potentially yielding ten to hundred-fold returns.
Risk Appetite: Medium to High
Airdrops may seem "zero-cost", but creating multiple wallets, fund interactions, and testing DApps can lead to risks of private key leakage, phishing links, or cross-chain bridge hacking. Players managing multiple accounts may have all accounts zeroed out due to exposed on-chain behavior, and the risk of projects marking "Sybil attacks" increases, potentially invalidating airdrops.
DeFi Players
Basic Knowledge Requirements
DeFi players need solid financial and blockchain foundations, understanding AMM mechanisms, liquidity pools, annual returns (APR/APY), lending principles, liquidation lines, leverage, perpetual contracts, yield aggregators, etc. They also need to analyze smart contract risks and token economic models to avoid falling into "high-yield traps".
Technical Ability Requirements: Medium to High
DeFi operations involve wallets, cross-chain bridges, providing liquidity, LP Tokens, staking platforms, decentralized oracles (like Chainlink), and yield platforms such as Yearn and Beefy. Players often build portfolio strategies like "staking + leveraged lending" or "dual liquidity mining", and use tools like Dune, defillama, and Zapper to track data and manage yields.
Time Investment: Medium
Intermediate players need to regularly check yield changes, rebalance positions, participate in governance voting, monitor price fluctuations and liquidation lines. Activity frequency is lower than airdrop players, but weekly participation is essential. Long-term players focus on stable return portfolios with less daily management stress.
Community Participation Requirements: Medium to High
Many DeFi projects have governance tokens, and players are often DAO governors or liquidity mining voters. Advanced users participate in community forums for Curve, Maker, Aave, discussing governance proposals. Early feedback is crucial for improving new protocol proposals.
Expected Returns: Medium to High
DeFi returns are more stable than airdrops, with annual returns ranging from 5% to 60%, depending on strategy and risk level. Top players achieve returns far exceeding traditional finance through cross-pool liquidity, leveraged lending, and stablecoin rotation strategies.
Risk Appetite: Medium
DeFi risks stem from smart contract vulnerabilities, project failures, on-chain black swan events (like Luna's collapse), and market volatility leading to collateral liquidation. Top players reduce risks through asset diversification, stop-loss mechanisms, and insurance protocols.
Meme Players
Basic Knowledge Requirements: Low
Meme players are not sensitive to complex blockchain or DeFi concepts, mainly relying on hot topics, social media, and emotion-driven decisions. They may not understand TVL or be comfortable reading whitepapers, but closely follow Twitter, Telegram groups, and trend analysis, similar to "fast-paced speculators" in the crypto world.
Technical Ability Requirements: Medium to Low
They need to master basic wallet usage, be familiar with trading on quick-launch platforms like Uniswap, Pump.fun, Birdeye, DEXTools, and identify "honeypot" or pump-and-dump contracts. Experienced players may deploy front-running bots and set gas priorities.
Time Investment: High
Meme speculation is highly time-sensitive, requiring real-time monitoring of new project launches, social platform discussion indices, and token price changes. Top players may be online for over 10 hours daily, capturing potential "hundred-fold coins" or undiscovered new projects.
Community Participation Requirements: High
Meme players heavily rely on community-driven propagation and momentum. Successful Meme projects are often spontaneously spread by the community. Meme culture revolves around self-deprecation, rebellion, and humor, with players participating in Meme creation, spread, and topic hype, being the core of the culture.
Expected Returns: Extremely High
Meme players aim for "overnight hundred-fold" returns, exchanging minimal investment for massive returns. Successful cases like DOGE, SHIBA, PEPE, WIF have enabled many players to achieve massive wealth changes, but the Meme market is highly volatile with short cycles.
Risk Appetite: Extremely High
The Meme market often lacks fundamental support, depending on emotions and whale manipulation. Pump-and-dump and "zeroing out" are common. Many players buy at high points or miss the peak due to greed, requiring extremely strong psychological resilience and risk awareness.
Stablecoin Players
Basic Knowledge Requirements: Medium
Stablecoin players do not focus on speculation or technical details but possess basic financial knowledge and asset allocation thinking. They understand stablecoin pegging mechanisms (like USDT, USDC, Dai, FDUSD), pay attention to stability risks, regulatory trends, and on-chain interest rate changes, viewing blockchain as a "yield-enhanced storage" tool.
Technical Ability Requirements: Low
They only need to master mainstream wallets, stablecoin trading, on-chain deposits and withdrawals, and cross-chain bridges. Some users combine centralized platforms and on-chain operations to allocate funds, are not sensitive to gas fees, and prefer low-fee chains like BSC, TRON, and Base.
Time Investment: Low
Stablecoin players adopt long-term allocation and periodic portfolio adjustments, relying on low-frequency operations. Common strategies include regular investment in USDT or Dai, investing in on-chain yield pools like Aave, Compound, Pendle, or centralized custody platforms.
Community Participation Requirements: Low
Stablecoin players focus on asset security and liquidity rather than deep community involvement. They monitor market trends, regulatory changes, and platform stability, behaving rationally and tending to "wait and see", not enthusiastic about project "culture" or community atmosphere.
Expected Returns: Medium to Low, Stable
Stablecoin strategies yield annual returns of 4% to 12%, supplementing traditional savings or bond returns. Some advanced players achieve slightly higher returns through "dual stablecoin investment" or "yield aggregators".
Risk Appetite: Low
Stablecoin players prefer low volatility and high stability, avoiding significant losses from market volatility. Their primary goal is preservation of value, with growth being secondary, suitable for retirees, large funds, and conservative investors.
Conclusion
The on-chain world is rich and diverse, with different strategies suitable for different users. You might be a short-term hunter focused on airdrop arbitrage, a steady veteran building a long-term yield portfolio, a meme dreamer willing to take risks, or a crypto "saver" seeking stable returns.
Understanding your abilities, time, preferences, and risk tolerance is a key step in entering the Web3 world. So, what kind of on-chain player are you?
