Recently, the well-known cross-chain project Layerzero released a news, encouraging users who think they are "witches" to "surrender" and also encouraging them to report other "witches" users.
This news caused an uproar in the industry.
Since a number of DeFi projects led by Uniswap launched airdrops in 2020, many projects in the crypto ecosystem have adopted the method of airdropping tokens to encourage users to participate in the projects and interact in the projects in order to attract seed users and establish initial communities.
The earliest DeFi projects such as Uniswap set very low airdrop standards. For example, Uniswap only requires one transaction on the platform to obtain 400 tokens.
Once these airdropped tokens are launched, their prices will almost always be hyped up to very high levels.
This has allowed many users in the crypto ecosystem to see the opportunity to “earn extra money” through airdrops.
So everyone started by increasing the frequency of interactions, then used multiple accounts to interact, and then developed into setting up special studios to write scripts to perform automated batch transactions using a large number of accounts.
People call this operation "薅羊毛" (薅羊毛)/ "空投" (斅羊毛)
My impression is that the most exaggerated thing in the past two years is the airdrop of Aptos. There are several cases reported online about teams that became rich overnight by taking advantage of this project.
Such stories have inspired more people to flock in to get the bargains.
However, are these bulk accounts participating in the transaction really loyal users of the project? Obviously, most of them are not, but these users have gradually become the main beneficiaries of the project's airdrop.
This completely goes against the original intention of the project and is not conducive to the development of truly loyal users. Therefore, later project owners also began to use various means to distinguish "real" users from "fake" users.
These users who are considered "fake" are called "witches" by the project parties - just like the witches in the "Witch Attack" described by Satoshi Nakamoto in the Bitcoin white paper, their purpose of entering the system is not for the healthy development of the system, but for their own selfish interests, they may do things that damage the system.
The identification of witches by project owners has evolved from initially identifying "witch" accounts through on-chain interactions, to later collaborating with data analysis teams in the crypto ecosystem (such as Nansen) to identify "witches", and now Layerzero not only uses various tools and cooperates with relevant teams, but also initiates reporting and exposing tactics.
I think the occurrence of events like Layerzero is foreseeable in terms of trend.
From the perspective of the project side, as the startup costs are getting higher and higher, they will become more cautious about token airdrops. As time goes by, the qualification of airdrops will become more and more stringent.
From the user's perspective, in the future, whether it is a full-time wool-grabbing party or an ordinary retail investor, the profits obtained from the wool-grabbing method will become increasingly thin, and may eventually reach a level where the income is very close to the input cost.
Getting rich overnight from airdrops will definitely become history.
I approve of the project team catching "witches", but I am very disgusted by the method of reporting and exposing them.
This method exploits and amplifies the weaknesses of human nature, deliberately creates distrust between people by instigating conflicts between them, thus creating a situation where "while the snipe and the clam fight, the fisherman benefits."
To my limited knowledge, this practice was used during certain unfortunate periods in human history.
But now, it is being imitated by a crypto project, and this project is funded by many top venture capitals. This is really unbearable for this industry.
This only shows that the project team is incapable of catching the "witch" on the one hand, and has serious problems in their way of thinking on the other.
I have not spent any time and energy on this project, because I have always been pessimistic about such cross-blockchain main chain projects. So fortunately, I did not waste time and energy on such projects.
In the future, even if I want to cross-chain, I probably won’t use such a project.
