Airdrop in Blockchain: From Revolutionary Innovation to Controversy and Reflection

Airdrop is the act of sending tokens or cryptocurrencies for free to specific digital wallet addresses in the Blockchain field. Project parties use Airdrop to achieve purposes such as promotion, community rewards, and obtaining user data. Users can participate in governance through Airdrop, hold for appreciation, or directly cash out.

Airdrop originated from the Auroracoin project in 2014 and rapidly developed between 2017 and 2018. In September 2020, the airdrop of Uniswap's UNI token became the most influential event in DeFi history, sparking a wave of airdrops across the entire DeFi space. Since then, airdrops have become an important component of the crypto market, with a significant increase in both projects and the number of airdrops.

Airdrop rules are also constantly evolving, from the early simple confirmation of community members to the current multidimensional screening and anti-witch mechanisms. Recently, the airdrops of LayerZero and ZkSync have sparked widespread controversy, mainly focusing on the complexity of airdrop rules, transparency, and the attitude of the project parties.

These controversies reflect the imbalance between the community's expectations of Airdrops and the strategies of the project parties. In the future, Airdrops may become stricter and more complex, and users need to adjust their mindset, view Airdrops more rationally, and think from the perspective of the project parties on how to participate better.

For users, the following strategies can be considered for the future:

1. Focus on projects with large funding amounts that are not widely recognized.
2. Control costs and expectations for hot projects.
3. Do not blindly trust the excessive marketing of the project party.
4. Truly support project ecosystems to increase the chances of receiving Airdrops.
5. Timely abandon projects with unreasonable input-output ratios

Overall, airdrops as an innovative mechanism are undergoing a process from wild growth to standardization. In the future, airdrops will focus more on value creation and ecological construction, rather than merely token distribution. Users need to keep pace with the times and participate with a more rational and long-term perspective.