Introduction

The legendary stock trader Jesse Livermore once said, “Money is made by sitting.” Though he referred to trading, this phrase aptly applies to blockchain airdrops. However, four years after Uniswap’s large-scale airdrop, the airdrop landscape has changed dramatically. While money may still be “made by sitting,” what awaits might be a humble meal or a Michelin-starred experience—or perhaps just disappointment.

No airdrop hunter wants to settle for a lackluster reward, yet mild disappointment isn’t enough to provoke outrage. The real backlash occurs when expectations are unmet: when a project promises “sweet rewards” but executes “backdoor deals”; when it presents itself as a reliable entity but ends up exploiting users. Broken promises and unfulfilled expectations are like betrayal, with users feeling let down.

This recurring disappointment in airdrop expectations reveals a fundamental issue in managing them. If project teams want to avoid creating a “ghost town” community, they need to master the “big picture” of managing airdrop expectations. First, they must understand the evolution of airdrops and how communities perceive them. This involves abandoning any “PUA-style” manipulation and focusing on building an honest project. Ultimately, in the blockchain world, the community is the foundation of a project’s longevity. Without community support, a project may not die immediately, but it certainly will over time.

1. The Evolution and Current Status of Airdrops

1) Origins and Essence:

Whether contributing to create value or extending the thinking of buying traffic, one’s position determines the direction.

Since Uniswap’s successful large-scale airdrop in 2020, airdrops have become one of the most effective strategies for launching blockchain projects. In just a few years, airdrops have transformed into a highly professionalized, niche industry, with “airdrop hunters” specializing in maximizing airdrop gains.

Over time, the relationship between airdrop hunters and project teams has evolved from a mutual exchange of value to an outright competition. Project teams, by raising users’ expectations, often engage in “PUA-style” manipulation to attract large funding, while airdrop hunters show fierce loyalty only to “pull the ladder” and exit as soon as rewards are distributed.

This escalating tension calls for a deeper understanding of the origins of airdrops.

• Initially, during the ICO boom, airdrops required no interaction—tokens were simply sent to wallet addresses.
• Later, liquidity mining rewards came into play, which increased total value locked (TVL) and incentivized “stake and dump” behavior.
• Uniswap’s airdrop then marked the beginning of a “golden era” for airdrops, setting a model that many subsequent projects emulated for user acquisition, fundraising, and exchange listings. A dedicated segment of “airdrop hunters” also emerged as a result.

Different stakeholders have varied perspectives on airdrops, which is often the root of discord in the blockchain space.

• From the project team’s perspective, airdrops can be seen as a “buying traffic” tactic to boost visibility and revenue, be it through liquidity mining or fundraising. At the same time, they may view airdrops as a means of decentralizing governance, a crucial step in building a sustainable project.
• On the user side, however, they see their participation as contributing value and thus expect fair returns.
• Although both sides may align on interests, the fundamental difference lies in the project’s power to determine what constitutes “value”, which is not in the hands of the users. Once this power is abused, conflicts are inevitably triggered. More importantly, the responsibility corresponding to this power is not strongly enforced upon the project team.
• This further leads to the situation where users must continuously align with the project’s value judgment standards based on subtle clues from the project. On the other hand, the project team has the power to change these standards at will, depending on their goals at different stages. As the market value of blockchain rapidly expands, especially with the influx of massive capital, the complexities of capital and the distribution of interests become even more entangled. The project team, therefore, needs to navigate the positions of various stakeholders, steer the direction, and balance interests.

Things always tend to move in the direction of least resistance.

• For projects, capital is the primary investor, and exchanges are the “father” behind the investor.
• Users are initially treated as kings, then as partners, and eventually, they are just numbers.

For project teams with unchecked power, when necessary, choosing who to sacrifice becomes an easy decision, especially with the rise of “airdrop farming” studios.

• Some project teams, while benefiting from the massive data provided by these studios, secure large rounds of funding.
• At the same time, they strengthen their witch-hunting detection mechanisms, preparing to strike at the perfect moment once the feast begins.
• There are not a few projects that embody this double-dealing behavior. The root cause lies in the project’s absolute control over the power of airdrops.

As can be seen from the above figure, in the ecosystem of users, projects, capital, and exchanges, everything starts from airdrop expectations, to the project side’s financing expectations, the capital side’s valuation expectations, and the exchange’s traffic expectations. All expectations depend on user data interaction.

In specific practice, in order to meet regulatory requirements, theoretically more than 50% of the tokens will be distributed to the community, and most of them will use no more than 10% for airdrops. The proportion given to the capital side is quite limited, so it is not difficult to understand phenomena such as raising valuations through data collection, insider trading, and lock-up periods.

In the face of interests, uncontrolled power is like a sickle wielded towards users.

2) Development and evolution:

From tokens to points, traffic value and interest disputes, PUA and anti-PUA

With the catering of users, the acquiescence of the project side, and the promotion of capital, the profit-hunting industry has become an important part of the project construction.

The wealth effect brought about by high valuation satisfies the demands of capital, but it also lays the foundation for the rise of Lumao Studio. A huge number of robots are swiping accounts, and the project parties have a love-hate relationship. If wealth is great enough, then only hatred will remain.

How to avoid account swiping to the greatest extent, while the number of users continues to grow? The profit-hunting party is evolving, and the project side is also evolving.

The most direct and effective way is to increase the cost of profit-hunting. However, in order to retain profit-hunters, revenue expectations have to be enlarged. This creates an expectation gap and indirectly promotes the birth of highly valued VC coins. After all, it has the ability to implement a points system. All of the projects have luxurious investment backgrounds.

While the point-based system, with its increased time requirements and various stages, has effectively filtered out low-quality bots, it has also alienated retail participants, turning the process into a game for whales and studios. This shift often leads to a scenario where, once a project goes live, neither airdrop hunters nor project teams are willing to support token prices.

Before the project’s TGE launch and even before initiating the airdrop, different project teams have implemented various anti-witch strategies, leading to different outcomes.

As shown above, when an industry becomes overly transparent, it can end up self-defeating. Mixing up objectives with desired outcomes rarely leads to favorable results. The point-based system and anti-bot measures should serve as methods to filter out fake users, not as end goals in themselves.

• An extreme approach to expelling bots is counterproductive,
• but total neglect is equally harmful.
• Worse still is insider trading by project teams.
• Even though the point system eliminates some low-quality bots, issues like point distribution, rule transparency, and the practice of luring users in only to reverse terms have severely eroded user trust. This loss of trust correlates with the decline in project data metrics.

Although project teams may be adept at manipulating expectations, airdrop hunters have developed their own counter-tactics. From low-quality accounts to premium accounts, from script automation to full-scale studio operations, and even to mass-scale human networks and attacks on GitHub scripts, the industry has continually evolved. Though some declared “airdrops are dead” as early as 2023, airdrop farming remains prevalent, underscoring the sector’s rapid growth and the ongoing profitability of this approach.

From the project side, reliance on airdrop hunters has become inescapable. When a bear market hits, airdrop hunters provide one of the few reliable sources of liquidity. As the saying goes, “No winter is too harsh for airdrop hunters to weather.”

3) Dilemmas and Challenges From Attraction to Retention: The Eternal Struggle for Attention and Loyalty

For projects, capturing and holding user attention has become essential in the fast-changing blockchain landscape, where attention spans are short.

The wealth effect generated by airdrops has been an effective draw, but “user retention” has become a significant pain point, with empty “ghost towns” of unused platforms marking blockchain’s traffic problem.

• Often, after an airdrop and token issuance, participants refuse to support each other’s positions, leading to drastic price drops. “Anti-VC coins” have become a market trend, with sentiment often soured by stagnant markets and slow cycles.
• The high valuations seen in bull markets leave little support in bear markets when tokens go live.
• Even if the market recovers, liquidity typically flows first to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other major assets, leaving newly launched VC coins fighting for limited capital.

The loss of the wealth-creating effect is the greatest original sin of the crypto world. For many who enter the crypto space, the dream of beating the odds is their core motivation.

As mainstream capital floods the space, a fundamental tension emerges between the sophisticated capital maneuvers and the more modest, loyal crypto community.

• Backed by substantial funding, project teams often view airdrop hunters as a nuisance while relying on them for support.
• At the same time, airdrop hunters study project mechanics to create a mirage of success, yet grow frustrated with strict anti-bot rules.

The apparent cause of these tensions might seem to be the PUA-style point system, anti-bot rules, or bot-driven account farming. Fundamentally, however, the issue is a combination of user uncertainty around airdrop and point values and project teams’ dissatisfaction with the immediate traffic drop following an airdrop release. Though complex, this is not an unsolvable issue.

Power is only accountable to the source of its power.

As stated, project teams hold absolute control over airdrop distribution and rules. But in the absence of accountability, the cost of misconduct is low. What some projects fail to realize is that their power derives from the accumulated trust of countless users, who, despite their modest position in the ecosystem, are the true source of that power.

Therefore, it’s essential to understand users’ expectations around airdrops and why certain projects can still retain strong user bases even after distributing airdrops.

2. Community Perspectives on Airdrop Expectations

1) Seeking Profits, but Also Fairness and Transparency

For community users, the primary goal of participating in airdrops is to receive expected or, ideally, above-expected rewards. While studios may employ tactics like bulk bot farming or human-swarm strategies to manipulate points systems, project teams counter these with technology, striving to patch rule loopholes to limit large-scale bot activity, as seen with projects like Arbitrum.

Though no rule or anti-bot technology can be flawless, a relatively fair system that satisfies most users also strengthens the project’s reputation and lays a solid foundation for sustained engagement.

When rules themselves are perceived as unfair—whether in points systems or token airdrops—users inevitably voice discontent. Recent examples include

• controversies around Zksync’s alleged insider dealings,
• Starknet’s developer-favoring policies,
• Taiko’s refusal to disclose rules,
• and IO projects withholding point details and manipulating users.

At the root of these conflicts lies a lack of fairness and transparency, which fuels community frustration and leads to significant user attrition.

2) Short-Term Traffic, but Also Long-Term Value Alignment

A strong project with a thriving ecosystem and outstanding user experience can turn airdrop hunters and the project team into mutually beneficial allies.

For instance, Base, despite not having issued a token, successfully attracted a large user base thanks to the earning potential of its high-quality ecosystem project, friend.tech. Similarly, Arbitrum and Optimism have built a positive momentum through continuous token incentives across ecosystem projects.

As long as a project has inherent long-term value, sustainable revenue generation, and strong operational capabilities—and doesn’t merely rely on airdrop-driven speculation—it can withstand occasional bot activity and still thrive over time. Whether from airdrop hunters or genuine users, the ecosystem will ultimately benefit from their support.

3. Managing Airdrop Expectations for Project Teams

1) The Roots of Expectation Gaps: Asymmetric Anticipation and Unpredictable Information \ Expectation gaps arise from asymmetries in both user anticipation and information. This phenomenon is common in failed airdrop projects. The psychology of failing project teams often goes through four stages:

• Stage 1: Imply potential airdrop rewards to attract user activity, encouraging high gas fees and large deposits.
• Stage 2: With sufficient data gathered, funding secured, and valuations stable for an exchange listing, the team sees multi-account “airdrop farmers” as an issue and considers ways to remove them.
• Stage 3: As community expectations skyrocket, the team realizes drastic moves might provoke backlash and opts to join in on the farming by setting up insider positions.
• Stage 4: With the airdrop launch imminent, the team anticipates sell-offs. They abandon lock-up periods and prepare to sell alongside the users.

These psychological shifts are common in projects that retaliate against users. Fundamentally, it comes down to this:

• When the project needs you, you’re a valued user, even a “god.”
• When it doesn’t, you’re just a “digital beggar,” or a “nuisance.”

The root cause of inflated expectations and the “killing the donkey after the grinding” lies in the fact that project teams often lack constraints. When ambiguous information is used to continuously raise user expectations, it is not right to blame the users for greed. As mentioned earlier, claiming to be a “handsome, rich guy” but constantly trying to deceive others into going to Myanmar is the problem. \
The lack of transparency and the disparity in expectations create a cognitive dissonance between the project teams and the airdrop farmers, which is the direct cause of expectation gaps.

2) The Core Secret to Expectation Management: Don’t Overpromise, Don’t Be Inconsistent, and Deliver What You Promise

In actual project operations, many teams intentionally describe the value of airdrops or tokens vaguely, leaving room for interpretation by users, thus continuously motivating them. This can be a good approach.
However, it’s important to note that ambiguity doesn’t mean a lack of boundaries, nor does it justify being inconsistent.
The best and most time-tested example of expectation management on Earth is the Federal Reserve. The key to expectation management is simply three core principles: don’t overpromise, don’t be inconsistent, and deliver on what you say.

• Don’t Overpromise: For projects, this means allowing users some room to interpret future direction but ensuring the fundamental rules are clear and unchanging. Guidance should be corrective and continuous, not left to ferment in the community until it spirals out of control (e.g., Starknet).
• Don’t Be Inconsistent: Many project teams make inconsistent rules, diluting the value of users’ airdrops. This is behavior with no boundaries, which causes significant harm to users (e.g., Scroll). Another issue arises when unnecessary actions are taken, like Blast, where the project began advertising during the key moment of airdrop distribution without notifying users. The forced viewing of the founder’s video was highly awkward and comparable to the cringe-worthy startup ads of certain brands, resulting in a sharp drop in market value.
• Deliver What You Promise: This reflects the project’s vision. Small-scale projects often give away low-value tokens or NFTs, or don’t do airdrops at all.

In fact, when we reverse-engineer the results, we find that projects with bigger visions tend to see their market value consistently rise. When users start saying a project has “small vision,” it’s almost a declaration: “Don’t bother trying to buy this on the secondary market.”

3) Some Suggestions: Balance Interests, Prioritize Community, Focus on the Project

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, there are different expectations between project teams, users, capital, and exchanges, and these expectations fundamentally stem from differing interests. Managing expectations effectively also means balancing these interests.

The reality is that the likelihood of high-valuation token projects failing on launch is nearly 99%. Only a few projects that are listed on Binance have managed to survive for a while. To break the vicious cycle of VC tokens and airdrop struggles, aside from the market’s bull and bear transitions, project teams must realize that beyond the airdrop farming activity itself, the cryptocurrency market has entered a phase of natural selection. In a market with insufficient liquidity, poor management practices will not gain community recognition and could even lead to backlash.

For a project, airdrops are still an effective way to acquire new users and promote the project, but designing airdrop programs with fairness and transparency is a prerequisite. If this cannot be ensured, it’s better not to issue tokens at all. Moreover, it’s essential to recognize that airdrop expenses are marketing and promotion costs—essentially, buying traffic—along with one-time incentives, not an investment in users. Any marketing or promotion inevitably involves conversion rates. How to effectively convert leads in the long term is something that requires continuous effort from the project team to build, ultimately transforming it into sustainable revenue.

Community building should be prioritized. Project teams should recognize the value of a strong community operation, as evidenced by the success of the MEME sector. Projects must build a broader user base through communities, KOLs, etc., to achieve truly effective growth.

• Project teams should counteract bot farming with technology, not compromise with unethical practices.
• They should communicate with the community sincerely, not resort to manipulative tactics.
• They should earn user respect through fairness and transparency, not gain disdain through deception and small vision.

4. Conclusion

The opportunities for airdrop hunters are becoming fewer, which is a natural outcome as the industry moves towards mainstream development.

Similarly, the time for project teams to manipulate users will also be limited, as industry narratives evolve.

Disclaimer：

1. This article is reprinted from [ice frog], All copyrights belong to the original author [@Ice_Frog666666]. If there are objections to this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and they will handle it promptly.
2. Liability Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute any investment advice.
3. Translations of the article into other languages are done by the Gate Learn team. Unless mentioned, copying, distributing, or plagiarizing the translated articles is prohibited.