The correct way for project parties to issue airdrops is actually very simple: give large investors POS returns and give retail investors POW returns.
What if your own token isn't worth much? Just cut the POS returns for large investors and redirect some to retail investors for POW returns.
Why do this:
1. For large investors, no matter how much you airdrop, I'll just dump the next one. The more you distribute, the larger the sell-off. These people often aim to increase the number of shovels and don't care about your project at all; there's no need to appease them.
They are very wealthy. As long as there is no prior agreement, it won't matter much if you let them earn a little less; they probably don't care too much.
For example, the most typical case is, why do BNB holders still get dumped even after paying protection fees? Because BNB holders only care about whether BNB will increase; who wants your garbage?
As for what to do about TVL after issuing tokens, if your project can make users money, then TVL won't be low. For example, Bera. If your project can't make money, then TVL is your debt; why maintain it? Loss is expected. If you have a conscience, say sorry to those who leave and do your best to help those who want to stay earn a little.
Conversely, if you give them too much, retail investors will be very scared, thinking their costs are so low that they won't dare to take over. If you lock their positions, it's better not to give anything; it's just pure annoyance.
2. For retail investors, if you give a lot, most people will still dump, but I might say a good word about you, and there might even be a small number of people who buy in because they see your big vision. Teachers should have had this experience; I often throw airdrops in and still end up losing a bit.
You can't harm retail investors; even if you cut all large investors and only give low guarantees, it's much better than cutting all retail investors while only giving to large investors.
Because when you do this, it shows that your airdrop market value/TVL is extremely unbalanced. You can't put out money, and at this point, trying to maintain large investor returns will only result in very low annualized returns, which is meaningless.
When you give many low guarantees, large investors will definitely feel unbalanced, but they will more likely wonder why they didn't get a share. Little do they know that getting a share actually costs time; this is a form of 'secondary price discrimination.'
3. Don't think that I'm just speaking for retail investors and treating big investors like Japanese people.
In fact, for project parties and investors themselves, as rule makers, low guarantee rules are easiest to use for insider trading, and making the witch rules a bit more relaxed is also good for public opinion. Airdrops are generally TGE100, which is very advantageous compared to the multi-year unlocking period for investors.
Establishing low guarantee rules is the optimal solution because you can't fake real money on-chain.
4. As for exchanges, it's needless to say, one of Binance's listing rules is widespread community airdrops, at least on the surface, and after the Redstone airdrop fraud, they even paused listings for half an hour.
5. Regarding building your own community and bringing in external communities, recently very few projects are willing to do this, as they can barely feed their own communities. However, bringing in external communities is actually very important; the conversion process should be done before the project launches, and retention largely depends on shares. If expectation management is not in place, the deeper the binding, the easier it is to backlash.
6. Finally, airdrops are an art of balance, requiring a balance between primary investors, level 1.5 farming participants, secondary investors, market makers, exchanges, and other parties. However, when the market is not good, secondary investors have almost no purchasing power, and market makers need to maintain prices, which will inevitably harm some people's interests. My advice has always been to cut large investors.
Let's look at practical case studies:
Another top strategy: If the cake is big, how do you cut it? Early communities all make money. For example, the most amazing is definitely Hyperliquid; even such hype has cut off some benefits for non-registered users. Kaito, although it didn't meet my expectations, has done quite well as a zero capital cost project. Deep from the Sui ecosystem, and Hai Xiang, are basically projects that felt like Arb recently; others like Parti and GPS are equivalent to several times the IDO projects, and being able to participate is a joy.
Top strategy: Eigen offers low POS returns to large investors to gain participation from retail investors with low guarantees. The golden age of airdrops just passed; 110 eigen doesn't seem like much, but recently there have been basically no more of these relatively simple low guarantees.
Middle strategy: Merlin, Blast, and ZK, these purely POS projects that seemed insignificant at the time are now quite appealing. Ooga is a pity; it only gives benefits to the top 10% of users, but because the pace is fast and the amount is relatively large, the risk-return ratio is good, so it can be classified as above average.
Worst strategy: Hyperlane only subsidizes the first 37% of users with transaction fees. Kilo also just provides some fee subsidies; this small amount + linear POS is essentially equivalent to not issuing anything.
Second worst strategy: BeVM, an insult to the community. Amnis, Corn, with so many savers, only giving to large investors of 8000-10000 is pure stupidity. Babylon, given the market conditions, it's understandable that you can't issue much money, but setting such high redemption fees directly leads to losses for everyone, even if a small group makes some money. If you can't afford such a wide community, don't issue 100,000 NFTs. Which project in your ecosystem cares about your NFTs?
Harming others and oneself: B2, Aztec, OpenSea, MetaMask/Linea, Tableland, SkyArk, Zapper, Zerion, ThirdWeb, Zora, StarPower, DeBank, etc., are all projects that have delayed issuing tokens for so long. What are they waiting for? Do you think if the market gets better, you'll have someone to take over? If you don't sign up for Binance Web3 IDO soon, you might as well wait for death.
