In traditional financial markets, Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) always allow companies to achieve remarkable results upon listing; however, in the crypto market, airdrops often fall into the fate of "high open, low close."

Dragon Managing Partner Haseeb bluntly said, "Airdrops are foolish, but they can be better." He pointed out that the key is not to completely abandon airdrop incentives, but rather to establish a system similar to a "credit scoring" mechanism through on-chain transparency and behavioral data to filter out genuine long-term participants, allowing for healthier token distribution.

Why are IPO results always "remarkable"? What is wrong with airdrops?

Haseeb points out that the first-day surge of traditional IPOs has always been a deliberate design by companies. For companies, attracting long-term shareholders is more important than short-term speculation, so they will sell shares at a discount to institutional investors with long-term reputations, such as BlackRock or Fidelity.

Records of these large institutions indicate that they do not sell off at market opening but become a stable shareholder base for the company. In contrast, retail investors, unable to distinguish between diamond hands and speculators, can only buy at market price. This differentiated allocation allows IPOs to create stable upward trends in the market.

In the airdrop of the crypto world, although the on-chain public transparency allows project parties to clearly see the past behaviors of wallet addresses, they mostly focus only on filtering out sybils or farmers.

It seems no one has attempted to identify which addresses possess the potential for long-term holding and value contribution, differentiating those who are worthy of rewards from small BlackRock and Fidelity.

Airdrop situation: Farmers benefit, real users are neglected.

Airdrops were once seen as the "most equitable" distribution method in the crypto space, but the actual effects are often counterproductive. Projects spend months attracting users to participate in activities, only to find that the most tokens are ultimately obtained by mass registrations and automated volume manipulation by "airdrop farmers."

Haseeb emphasized that these farmers created false activity and immediately sold tokens after the token generation event (TGE), frustrating the founding team and demotivating genuine contributors.

Even though some projects like Optimism and Arbitrum designed holding reward mechanisms after their TGE to attempt to attract long-term user participation, these measures are merely remedial: "The largest allocations usually happen during the initial airdrop phase. If long-term and short-term holders are not identified at that time, subsequent incentive effects will also be greatly discounted."

The mistake these allocation mechanisms make is attempting to predict simply based on users' behaviors towards their own tokens. Instead, you should reward them based on their behaviors towards previous tokens.

"Holder Score": Credit mechanism in the on-chain world

In this regard, Haseeb proposed a key concept: "Holder Score." This is a scoring system based on on-chain behavior, which the project party can continuously track and publicly update user behavioral indicators after token distribution, such as:

  • Percentage of past token holdings over time

  • Governance participation: voting, delegation, or staking

  • Actual product usage: transaction fee payments, liquidity provision, functional interaction

  • Actual construction or community contribution

  • Social media data or research participation

Once this data is made public and standardized, subsequent projects can directly reference users' past records to determine allocations. This kind of "cross-project reputation" will form a new incentive structure.

Users may choose longer-term and more valuable behaviors voluntarily due to concerns about losing airdrop eligibility in the future.

Look at Ethereum: Crowdfunding is healthier than airdrops.

At the same time, Haseeb also believes that massive airdrops should gradually withdraw and be replaced by "crowdsales." This can not only solve the problem of airdrops attracting farmers but also establish a natural filtering mechanism.

Rather than conducting widespread airdrops, it is better to refer to the Holder Score, allowing high-scoring users to obtain subscription rights at favorable prices or higher amounts in crowdfunding. Low-scoring speculators would participate at higher prices or even market prices.

He emphasized that crowdfunding can provide a more robust fundraising framework than airdrops in the gradually clarifying compliance landscape of 2025. By the way, Ethereum also started through crowdfunding back in the day.

Airdrops do not have to disappear, but they must evolve.

In summary, Haseeb hopes that future token economics should be based on "on-chain reputation." This allows genuine users to benefit not only from early participation but also to be continuously rewarded for long-term behavior, at which point the importance of the InfoFi track resurfaces.

Through Holder Score and tiered crowdfunding mechanisms, the crypto market might be able to shift from the vicious cycle of issuing tokens at high points to a cleaner and more sustainable distribution model.

(What is the new blood Ethos Network in the InfoFi track? Understanding the credit scoring mechanism and participation tutorial at once)

This article looks at the bright performance of traditional IPOs and the dilemma of airdrops in the crypto world: how to effectively utilize on-chain transparency to reward genuine participants. It first appeared in Chain News ABMedia.