Airdrop Hunters Fail on Monad: "The Logic of Testnet Airdrop Farming Has Collapsed"

Author: Hu Tao, ChainCatcher

 

Yesterday, the highly anticipated Layer1 public chain Monad's token MON was officially launched. At one point, it fell below the public sale users' cost price, and its FDV is still hovering in the $3-3.5 billions range. This is not only lower than the mainstream predicted market cap of $8 billions on Polymarket, but also far below the earliest Pre-TGE market valuation of $15 billions.

This is not only a heavy blow to the Layer1 narrative, but also a milestone "tragedy" for the airdrop hunters.

Previously, Monad became the highest-valued unreleased Layer1 in the market with a $3 billions valuation, raising high expectations among airdrop hunters. Its testnet accumulated over 300 million interactive addresses, with many studios using millions of addresses to register Monad addresses. At the end of October, Monad officially opened airdrop queries, but unexpectedly excluded all testnet interactive addresses from the airdrop range.

The logic of the airdrop hunters is that "sunshine airdrops" are a common practice for many projects. As long as you maintain frequent interactions, you might receive token rewards ranging from a few to dozens of dollars, and the cumulative value from multiple addresses is still considerable. However, Monad's official team did not act as the massive airdrop hunter community had hoped, excluding all testnet addresses from the airdrop.

"All addresses that interacted with the testnet were completely excluded, and participating in various NFTs was basically useless. Ironically, the only ones who received the Monad airdrop were some old addresses that had never interacted with Monad but had traded on Hyperliquid," said A Du (pseudonym), head of an airdrop studio in Hangzhou, to ChainCatcher.

For a time, Monad became the target of fierce criticism from a large number of airdrop users, but Monad's official team remained unmoved. In the view of well-known KOL Feng Mi, Monad's airdrop strategy this time was to bind contributors, those with identity, and those with potential to Monad, focusing on identity + contribution, such as Monad ecosystem developers, heavy DeFi users, and quality NFT holders.

Famous alpha blogger spark received a reward of 3 million MON in this airdrop, currently worth about $110,000. This was not due to his interaction record, but because he served as a Monad community Mod for three years and established the Monad Chinese community. Monad's official team considered this a substantive contribution, which is also the main target for most project airdrops.

For project teams, the significance of airdrops lies on one hand in rewarding long-term supporters of the project, reflecting their emphasis on community users, and on the other hand in rewarding active participants and influencers in the surrounding ecosystem, using airdrop rewards to attract them into their own ecosystem. From the earliest Uniswap to later projects like Gitcoin, Arbitrum, Scroll, Berachain, Aster, and thousands of others, airdrops have become an essential way for project teams to attract users.

During this period, the standards for airdrops have also continuously diverged and evolved. Some projects focus on equal distribution and pleasing everyone, being generous to airdrop hunters who participate in interactions, while others set strict rules for testnet/mainnet interactions, conducting rigorous sybil checks based on a points system. This time, Monad completely abandoned testnet interactive users, or in other words, retail investors.

"If a network ignores retail investors for a long time, it will become too elitist in its early stages and lose a broad community base. In the early days of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Bsc, it was a group of seemingly insignificant small retail investors who brought network effects and community vitality," Feng Mi said on X. He believes Monad should give grassroots retail investors a space to grow, even if only a little, so that more people can truly become part of the MON network community.

Chasing Wind believes that airdrop hunters not only contribute fees, data, and traffic to project teams, but also play a good promotional role, and personally thinks these people should be given some incentives. "Monad's approach is really inconsiderate and shakes the foundation of trust in the entire industry," Bingwa also commented on Twitter.

But from the perspective of project teams, they need to formulate airdrop strategies based on the long-term development needs of the project. "Airdrop hunters have no loyalty. Once they receive the airdrop, they sell and move on to the next project to hunt for airdrops. For the project, this only creates selling pressure and brings no long-term benefits. Is it necessary to airdrop to them?" An anonymous KOL described airdrop hunters as "parasites" in the crypto ecosystem.

Master Brother from Australia also believes that the logic of airdrops in the industry is changing. "In the past, when CEXs evaluated a project's fundamentals, they paid great attention to the liveliness of on-chain data and active user metrics. Project teams needed popularity during the cold start phase. So for a long time, project teams tacitly agreed or even reached an understanding with the airdrop army: you come to hunt airdrops and help me get listed on major exchanges, and I'll airdrop you in return, and we all share the profits. But now, CEX listings no longer look at on-chain data and users, because everyone knows these numbers are heavily inflated," Master Brother from Australia wrote on Twitter.

The logic of business is cold. As the on-chain data bubble becomes more severe and the selling pressure from airdrop hunters negatively affects the price trends of many project tokens, Monad's choice is reasonable. However, this is destined not to become the choice of most projects, because as a public chain project with heavy capital investment, Monad still has many cards to play. Its technical strength and the potential explosive power of its ecosystem applications could bring it a large number of community users. But for most projects, they are essentially marketing projects and must use airdrops to gain attention and market heat.

In the long run, airdrops are still one of the important sources of value in the crypto industry, but the logic and targets of airdrops are undergoing profound changes. "The result of the Monad airdrop basically announces the collapse of the testnet 'black slave' interaction airdrop track logic. In the future, it's highly likely that no one will farm testnets anymore," said Master Brother from Australia.

In fact, Monad's "flipping the table" this time had already been anticipated by many KOLs. Many, like Master Brother from Australia, Bingwa, and Chasing Wind, had openly stated early on that they did not interact with Monad. It is understood that top KOLs will focus more on "verbal farming," arbitrage, and other more diverse markets, and will also focus on selected quality projects like Polymarket to build premium accounts.

In addition, several interviewed studios said that their returns were not as good as last year and did not meet expectations. "The key is still to find areas where you have an advantage, whether it's low labor costs, advanced technology, sharp research to discover early projects, or influential KOLs who can farm verbally. It's difficult to get substantial returns by simply following the crowd," said A Du.

As the market value of top projects like Monad falls far below market expectations, and many projects lock up user airdrop shares for a long time after TGE, the status of airdrop hunters in the project team's benefit distribution ecosystem continues to decline, and the value of tokens received keeps shrinking. The logic of winning by volume for airdrop hunters is no longer sustainable.

"So, the era when retail newbies could enter the primary market and get cheap dividends by providing labor is indeed over. The door has actually been closing for a long time, and Monad's airdrop just shut the last little gap," sighed Master Brother from Australia.