The higher the road, the taller the devil. Has the story of airdrops come to an end?

Is the airdrop story over?

Author: Blockchain Knight

It was probably March 2022 when a piece of news caught the author’s attention: “Aptos raised $200 million in strategic financing led by a16z.” It can be said that the story of the Move ecosystem began to develop after this news was revealed, and many projects and communities related to the Move language emerged one after another.

However, what the author wants to share is not the development of the Move ecosystem, but another fascinating story behind Aptos, which has been popular for over a year – interactive airdrops.

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Of course, if you had been paying attention to Aptos since March 2022, you probably wouldn’t have missed the subsequent airdrops, as the so-called “wealth effect” became more widely known.

Most people are probably familiar with the story that followed – from Move ecosystem airdrops, to Layer 2 airdrops, to some small-scale NFT-related activities. Simultaneously, there was a transition from individual participation to team collaboration, and then to large-scale deployment. It can be said that the airdrop industry chain has been successfully connected over the past year.

However, last week, it seems that the story has changed with the arrival of SEI airdrop, as we can see from a friend’s Twitter share.

The next day, we saw many KOLs and social media reporting on the “negative” aspects of airdrops, with a unified voice: the stories of profiting from airdrops may have gone too far.

Coincidentally, Aptos, which began the story, is a public chain, and SEI, which potentially ends it, is also a public chain. As for Layer 2, it has become the next awaited surprise.

But will the story really end here?

First of all, let’s set aside the issue of profitability and discuss the significance of airdrops themselves. This marketing strategy is already very mature in Internet operations. Similar to Alibaba’s Ant Forest and Farm, they attract users and increase product activity by completing tasks. The difference is that the rewards given are relatively practical and not as exaggerated as Web3 airdrops.

Therefore, in terms of the airdrop strategy, it is an effective means of operation. The key point lies in how to prevent mass operations. Currently, market operators have to raise the threshold and even set barriers to counteract these tools, which puts pressure on studios rushing into this field.

Undoubtedly, when market participants become overly enthusiastic, there will be a process of “squeezing the bubble”, and we are probably in that stage now.

On the other hand, since airdrops are an effective marketing strategy, they will inevitably continue to exist. The question then becomes how to improve efficiency. Perhaps the current single-task approach is not a standard answer, which is why we see some large Quest platforms being forced to transform.

For operators, the goal is to gain attention and attract real users. How to achieve this goal may not only be through airdrops or the current methods of airdrops. Perhaps, after this, operators will come up with new strategies to improve this issue and achieve a true win-win situation. The opportunity in between may be the story of the formation of the next industry chain.

From my current thinking, the true meaning of airdrops is to retain and activate users, which is a huge demand and market for the entire Web3 industry. It is also worth the attention and contemplation of entrepreneurial teams. Therefore, I believe that the true value of the airdrop frenzy in the past year is that it has revealed an urgent pain point to the market, and the opportunities brought by this pain point are the “gold mine” that professional studios can dig deep into.

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