The tide of Airdrops recedes, and it's hard to profit from token grabbing again.

Recently, many teams focused on obtaining Airdrops have expressed that they are facing difficulties, with some even calling for rights protection. The strategies of the project parties seem to be getting increasingly shrewd, and the rules for Airdrops are becoming more stringent. The recent zkSync incident has made people sigh that the project parties have become too lazy to conceal their actions.

Avail Airdrop Sparks Controversy

On April 19 this year, Avail announced its Airdrop rules, marking the beginning of the project's "penny-pinching" phase.

Avail, as an important project in the DA layer of the modular blockchain trend, has garnered significant attention. Its financing strength is also quite robust, having raised a total of $70 million in seed and Series A rounds, both led by well-known institutions.

However, the results of the Airdrop claims have disappointed many people. Many testnet participants and active L2 users found themselves ineligible, leading to widespread dissatisfaction and questioning. Some users even accused the project party of engaging in "insider trading" behavior.

What is even more surprising is that the DYM stakers of the Dymension project, which is closely related to Avail, also did not receive the Airdrop. Meanwhile, users participating as nodes also feel disappointed, as it is reported that only 5% of the nodes can receive the Airdrop, but the actual situation seems to be far below this ratio.

Under community pressure, Avail eventually arranged the second phase Airdrop to quell some users' dissatisfaction.

Taiko Refuses to Publicize Airdrop Rules

Another highly anticipated project, Taiko, has taken a more direct approach, threatening not to disclose Airdrop rules.

The project's co-founder stated on social media that to avoid unnecessary controversy, they would not disclose the detailed Airdrop rules. He emphasized that the project's goal is fairness, but it is difficult to meet everyone's expectations.

However, as the doubts grew, the founder seemed to lose patience and expressed his dissatisfaction on community platforms.

PUA-style Operations of IO Projects

IO.net, as an AI computing power platform, announced that there would be airdrop of 32 million tokens to computing power miners. This news attracted a large number of users to participate from March to May.

However, IO does not display the user's points status, which has caused anxiety among many miners. Whether renting computing power or purchasing equipment for mining, significant cost investment is required.

Some miners have stated that the project party requires long-term hanging without disclosing the actual points, causing everyone to invest a lot of energy and resources.

In the end, many studios and teams found that at the current coin price, they are struggling to recover even half of their equipment costs.

zkSync Airdrop Causes Huge Controversy

In the recent Airdrop event, zkSync's performance can be described as the most disappointing. As a once-star project that raised $258 million, its Airdrop distribution method has sparked widespread questioning.

Many long-term projects and users that support and use zkSync have found themselves not eligible for the Airdrop. For example, the largest NFT marketplace on zkSync, Element, has publicly stated that it did not receive any airdrop and questioned whether this is a joke.

What is even more surprising is that there are 12,000 addresses with no interaction records that received an Airdrop, while those who received larger ecological Airdrops seem to be related parties of the project.

Airdrop is essentially a marketing expense

Looking back at the early strategies of internet companies that attracted new users by issuing red envelopes, we can see a similar development trajectory. Even some e-commerce platforms that started out by giving out red envelopes have become increasingly stingy.

This actually reflects the normal process of project development. The project team always needs to weigh how to allocate the limited budget to achieve the maximum benefit.

Early crypto projects found that directly distributing funds to users was more effective than investing in advertising due to high interaction thresholds. However, as some teams began to mass-fake users, project parties naturally adjusted their strategies.

With the development of technology, the entry barriers for many projects have been significantly lowered. In the future, airdrops for crypto projects may resemble traditional internet product red envelopes, where only a few real users can receive some rewards.

For studios that rely on "sheep shearing" for their livelihood, it may be time to consider a transformation. For regular users, if participation is necessary, they should try to control costs and avoid over-investing.