LayerZero completes the first snapshot of its crypto airdrop and invites the community to come together for on-chain malicious activities

The famous LayerZero interoperability project is about to change the landscape of crypto airdrops once and for all, after the latest message launched to the community.

The first of the snapshots to determine which users will have the opportunity to claim the ZRO token has already been carried out by the project team, but some individuals may lose eligibility if classified as sybil.

In this first phase LayerZero, in an attempt to decentralize its network as much as possible and release a fair token distribution, invited members of its community to come forward in case they had maliciously managed sybil wallet clusters.

For those who self-report, the project offers 15% of the total airdrop allocation.

Risk everything or settle for less? 

Let’s see everything in detail below.

LayerZero crypto airdrop: first official snapshot completed

On May 2nd, LayerZero publishes on its profile X one of the most anticipated announcements by the crypto airdrop farming community: the first snapshot, which will determine which users will be eligible for the launch of the governance token ZRO, was taken on May 1st, 2024 at 11:59:59 PM UTC.

In this first phase, almost 6 million different cryptographic addresses have been revealed that have interacted at least once with one of the various interoperability protocols that leverage LayerZero technology since its launch in March 2022.

Altogether over 50 different chains have been reached, including L1, L2, and various “exotic” networks reaching billion-dollar volumes.

According to the data reported by Dune Analytics, cross-chain bridge activities on LayerZero have significantly intensified since March 2024, reaching a peak of approximately 250,000 daily transactions. 

Overall, more than 6 million transactions have been made thanks to the omnichain communication protocol, although the data could be significantly larger because this dashboard only takes into account the most well-known chains.

In the coming days, more information will be published regarding the date when it will be possible to check the airdrop and make the claim of rewards in the form of the ZRO crypto.

Now for LayerZero the main challenge is to define criteria that could potentially exclude a good portion of sybil users who have farmed with hundreds of wallets and at the same time offer a fair token distribution within the community.

We still don’t know when the airdrop will actually be launched, but it could really be very soon.

Many brokers are including ZRO in their pre-market exchanges, suggesting that an official listing is just around the corner.

Meanwhile you can consult this “wallet checker“, and check the metrics related to your address with data on transactions made, days of activity, exchange volumes, networks used, and much more.

It’s a hunt against the sybils: LayerZero agrees on a minimum allocation of the airdrop for those who register

Immediately after announcing the first snapshot for the ZRO crypto airdrop, LayerZero has published more information regarding the means by which their team intends to exclude the sybil users.

We remind you that sybils represent individuals (or groups) who, in order to obtain the largest share of an airdrop, use an ecosystem in an unethical manner by carrying out operations with dozens if not hundreds of different wallets.

Given the large participation of Sybil in the LayerZero airdrop, the project team has decided to undertake a modus operandi that is still completely unexplored in the crypto world.

For the first time in history, this category is formally invited to organize itself (by filling out a specific form) indicating the addresses with which farming was carried out, with an incentive of 15% compared to the original airdrop quota.

At this point, Sybil only have two options:

• delivering to LayerZero and receiving a 15% reward compared to what they would have earned from legitimate users
• do not surrender and hope that the subsequent on-chain cluster analyses carried out by LayerZero do not identify the addresses in question. If they are identified, they will not receive any reward.

The farmers community was shocked by the announcement: many users asked for explanations to Bryan Pellegrino, CEO of the project, wondering how an ordinary user can know if their activities fall below the sybil threshold or not.

With an emblematic tweet, Pellegrino partially silenced the complaints of users (probably the sybils themselves), publicly declaring that:

“if you think you are a sybil, you are probably a sybil”

On a more technical level, we can define sybil as all those addresses that are closely connected (funded by the same wallet, with a similar activity) to dozens, hundreds, or thousands of other accounts.

Also included in this category are all those who have exchanged trivial amounts like 0.01 dollars and have made “bridge ofNFTwithout value” on sybil farming applications like Merkly, L2Pass, L2Marathon etc.

At this point, however, many have complained that Merkly represents the second most used dapp under LayerZero technology, and it seems unfair to exclude all those who have interacted with the application.

Actually, as communicated by the LayerZero team itself, using Merkly does not automatically mark the address as sybil as long as other protocols have also been used.

Instead of using only and exclusively the dapp in question, it will most likely label you as incorrect users, and therefore you will be excluded from the airdrop.

Snitch Hunting: LayerZero’s next strategic move

As communicated in the anti-sybil report, once the incentive campaign for all those who join the LayerZero team is completed, there will be an intermediate phase in which the project team will release its list of users who will be excluded from the airdrop.

Starting from May 18th, the sybil report will be conducted in collaboration with on-chain analysis experts Nansen and Chaos Labs.

The study will consider the quality of transactions made by each address in the community with specific evaluation criteria, aiming to detect suspicious activities and exclude wallet clusters that appear to be linked to the same person or funded by the same entity.

At the end of the report publication, there will be the final phase of identifying the sybils, also heavily criticized by some representatives of the crypto world.

Basically the entire community will be invited to “be the spy” and report to LayerZero a list of individuals attributable to sybil through a bounty program.

The addresses provided by the user (after confirmation by the team) will be removed from the list of eligible users, and the spies will receive a 10% share of the sybil airdrop.

Some have ironically described this practice as “Snitch Hunting“, indicating how it could create bad blood within the community.

By doing so, there is a risk of generating tensions and widespread discontent, especially considering that many will go as far as to report anyone in front of them in order to receive a larger allocation from the airdrop.

Anyway, it is still early to evaluate whether this move by the LayerZero team will bear fruit and manage to exclude a wide range of dishonest users from the airdrop.