‘Big Sybil Hunt’, Loyal Users Fuel LayerZero Airdrop Success

The native ZRO token of LayerZero has done better than the tokens of other projects that were airdropped simultaneously, such as ZKsync and Starknet.

According to LayerZero Labs CEO Bryan Pellegrino, the company’s native token price remained stable after its airdrop because of a combination of strict Sybil filtering and a laser-like emphasis on prioritizing developers and “durable” users.

During Korea Blockchain Week, Pellegrino said that LayerZero accomplished several “very unique” things with its airdrop, such as a “big Sybil hunt” that prevented bots and excessive farming from providing its native ZRO (ZRO) tokens to the most devoted users on the network.

“Rewarding the true users—the most devoted and long-lasting users—was our intention.”

The native token of LayerZero, ZRO, is priced far higher than the tokens of competitor Ethereum layer-2 networks, Starknet (STRK) and ZKsync (ZK), also released through an airdrop in 2024.

“Closing the gap between expectations and reality” is the first goal for any team executing an airdrop, according to Pellegrino, who also mentioned that LayerZero put a lot of effort into striking a balance.

“This was our major Sybil search. People didn’t expect this to happen, so he added that when we first announced the Sybil, there was a visceral adverse reaction.

“But people became very positive on the Sybil hunting as soon as they saw that we were putting in a lot of effort and that our goal was for real users to get a higher allocation.”

Despite price declines, LayerZero ZRO outperformed competing big airdrops.

On June 20, LayerZero gave users access to its native ZRO (ZRO) token through an airdrop. According to CoinGecko data, the token first sold for $4.40.

ZRO’s price has dropped barely 23% since its debut, despite the team’s decision to make donations required for customers to claim their airdrop, which caused controversy (Pellegrino acknowledged that the team “didn’t give people a heads up on”).

On February 20, 1.3 million wallet addresses received an airdrop of the STRK token, which had its market debut at a $5 starting price.

However, allegations that the project had over-prioritized insiders over authorized network users and had neglected to implement safeguards against an enormous number of “airdrop squatters” clouded Starknet’s token launch.

It is stated that these airdrop squatters falsified metrics on the developer site GitHub to obtain disproportionately high amounts of STRK tokens.

False Name Out of the 1.3 million wallet addresses eligible for the STRK airdrop, Yearn. Finance developer Banteg said an estimated 701,544 addresses were connected to renamed GitHub accounts in settlers’ hands.

According to data from Starknet explorer Starkscan, the number of active addresses on the network has drastically decreased, from roughly 380,000 on February 20 to approximately 8,300 at the time of writing. This has resulted in a 91% decrease in the price of Starknet’s STRK token since its introduction.

According to CoinGecko data, ZKsync airdropped its ZK token to customers on June 17 for $0.31. Since then, the token’s value has dropped by more than 67% to $0.10 as of this writing.

Like Starknet, ZKsync’s airdrop was lashed by critics for enforcing “almost no Sybil filtering,” allowing the airdrop to be farmed by predatory airdrop hunters who were never actual network users. 

The ZKsync airdrop is available. The information security chief of rival layer-2 network Polygon, Mudit Gupta, stated in an X post on June 11 that this was “probably the most farmable and farmed airdrop ever.”

As far as I can see, there is almost no Sybil screening, Gupta continued. “Anyone aware of the requirements could have easily farmed the hell out of it.”