Investment banks switch to Web3? Entered the circle in 2017, played DeFi Summer in 2020, but accidentally discovered the airdrop track? Has the number of tens of millions of results been obtained in 4 years?
How did the airdrop master Feng Mi @Kui_gas do it? If you are also a fleeting person, you must read this Sunflower Manual——
Fengmi believes that the key to airdrops is losing Gas, that is, where is the Gas consumed? There are two points to consider: 1. Does the consumed Gas increase the weight; 2. Does the consumed Gas increase the on-chain image.
This is the Friends of OKX series of interviews. This series aims to explore the career stories, industry thinking and lessons of KOLs from different backgrounds for new users to learn from. This interviewer is Mercy @Mercy_okx. Welcome to follow~
Article Navigation:
Chapter 1: Entry experience: How to get in touch with masturbation and become an expert
Chapter 2: The core strategy of LuMao: How to screen high-quality airdrop projects
Chapter 3: The Future of Airdrops
Chapter 4: Advice for beginners: How to start from scratch
Chapter 5: Suggestions for OKX
Chapter 1: Entry experience: How to get in touch with masturbation and become an expert
1. What was the opportunity to enter the circle? Why is rubbing hair a gold mine?
I majored in finance, specializing in securities investment and management. I have worked in hedge trading and investment banking in traditional finance. I entered the cryptocurrency circle in 2017, and in 2020, I played DeFi Summer and discovered the airdrop track.
In fact, I knew about BTC in 2009. It was worthless at the time. I used a laptop to mine it when it first came out, but I didn’t understand the technology very well. It was mainly because I had a low level of knowledge at the time and didn’t understand the value of this thing at all. As a result, I missed it. Later, I really started to participate seriously in the bull market in 2017 and was attracted by the surge. I wanted to make a lot of money. This was the purest motivation at the time. Then I gradually came into contact with defi in 2018-2019, such as MakerDAO, Compound, Uniswap and other protocols.
In the DeFi Summer of 2020, I found that Defi mining and airdrops can be combined, and the compound interest effect is very obvious!
I really realized that squeezing was a feasible strategy when Uni and Sushi launched their tokens, so I found a lot of protocols that I was optimistic about, including ENS and Paraswap. And from that time on, I started to hold multiple accounts. Later, ENS and Paraswap launched airdrops, and the rewards for ENS airdrops exceeded 100,000 RMB, and PSP airdrops started at 10,000 USD. This was the first big bonus I got in this track, which verified that the way to make money through airdrops was feasible. It felt like I had found a gold mine.
2. Why did you want to create 33DAO ? What was your original intention? What impact has it had on you since its establishment?
33DAO is a co-created, co-built, and shared DAO organization, and I am one of its founders. It has been running for 4 years and currently has 35 people around the world. We must hold meetings every week and all members must attend. I simply calculated that 33DAO has held no less than 200 weekly meetings in the past 4 years.
The original intention was simple - to bring together a group of capable and thoughtful individuals, and to form a community that can truly provide value through regular exchanges, in-depth discussions, and collisions of ideas. At the same time, we are also constantly outputting external content, such as tutorials, market perspectives, Space discussions, etc., to help airdrop partners get started faster and better understand Web3.
Regarding the impact on me from its establishment to now, I feel there are three points: First, I think the most direct one is that I have met a group of awesome people, and everyone has achieved very great results through this, and these members encourage and influence each other, improve their cognition, and finally realize it. I think this is a very good process.
For example, during the recent Chinese New Year, the Trump token was issued by a member within ten minutes of its release. At first, everyone thought it was stolen, but through members digging up data from each other, they confirmed that the information was true, and then everyone immediately took positions. I remember that it was about 0.5-1 US dollars at the time. It rose by about 10 0x in 2 days. In the end, many people got very, very big results. Unfortunately, I was abroad at the time, and I bought too little and broke my thigh! At the same time, I also deeply understood the importance of small circles, and it is important to communicate with the right people.
Secondly, the existence of 33DAO will force me to continue to output. This means that I have to continue to do research and share my views. Many cognitions are not innate, but evolve through continuous learning, deep thinking, and discussions with community members. This mechanism of forcing myself to grow has a great impact on me. For example, many projects we have focused on, such as ARB and Strk, we exchanged and encouraged each other during the bear market, and finally got very good results.
Finally, the accumulation of resources and connections. 33DAO gives us the opportunity to directly communicate with top overseas projects. Many projects were first launched through the power of the community.
Through many project exchanges, we will have a broader perspective. At the same time, members will interact with each other through projects, which will make them more closely connected. This is the true integration of Diaosi into the Web3 ecosystem.
Chapter 2: The core strategy of LuMao: How to screen high-quality airdrop projects
1. How do you screen high-quality airdrop projects? What indicators do you pay most attention to? (such as team background, token economic model, community activity, etc.)
The indicators of high-quality projects include: track, financing background, ecological layout, team background, on-chain data, technical innovation, etc., and of course market ability, ability to make things happen, and ability to organize. When screening and analyzing projects, I personally pay attention to the odds and probability of the project, as well as the cost. I personally think this is a very complicated process, and each link is a practical methodology that I have summarized over the years.
Classify the tracks and focus on the mainstream.
There are only a few major categories of tracks, and you can naturally distinguish them after watching them more. First, go through the mainstream tracks to form a basic understanding, such as L1/L2, ZK DeFi, LSD, Restaking, BTCFi, Move language, etc. I usually sort the projects in the ecosystem, and then analyze the odds and probabilities separately.
Other highlights include protocol technology innovation and protocol characteristics.
After reading a lot of content, I will focus on what is the core advantage of the project? What is the difference compared to the same track competitors? If you have time, you can read the white paper and official documents, but in the early stage, it is recommended to form a track cognition first, see a project and quickly determine what it does, and then study it in depth. I am more impressed by mavrick,... on zksync, high APR, discovered huge opportunities.
Focus on institutions, investors and multi-dimensional perspectives.
With the support of institutions, the credibility is higher, especially the star-level ones will basically not run away, and it is easier to be listed in large firms, and the ceiling is higher. Institutional financing + investors, VC perspective. The institution has helped to screen, which can effectively filter out ordinary projects and increase the winning rate. I personally prefer to focus on the institutions I like, such as Hack vc.
Core idea: First look at the track, quickly determine the positioning, then look at the highlights of the project, and finally look at institutional investment, find the alpha of the project, analyze the market activity ideas of the project, especially from the perspective of the project party. Explore from multiple angles and dimensions.
I treated this process as the self-introduction process in a real blind date. What do you do? What does your family do? Do you have money? Do you have a house or a car? Do you have a job? Do you... To put it bluntly, I have to be very clear about why I want to take on this project.
2. Project parties usually use technical means to identify witch attacks. How do you use the multi-account strategy reasonably without being identified as a witch attack?
This is a good question. Due to time constraints, I will try to be as comprehensive as possible.
Let’s first talk about what a witch attack is: a person or a team creates a large number of accounts to manipulate the network and protocol resource allocation. This is a typical batch operation, programmed operation, robot operation...
The project owner does what he wants: The project owner and the ecosystem hope that real users will participate in the network, and rewards will also be given to real users. The project owner will use technical means such as on-chain data analysis, address association, and behavior pattern detection to identify them. The most typical one is nansens AI clustering analysis.
The nature of witches: Using multiple accounts does not necessarily mean that they are witches, but those who generate junk accounts that do not contribute in batches and abuse the rules to obtain airdrops are witches. The core of the project partys witch investigation is de-scripting and de-massing
Answer your question: How to use the multi-account strategy reasonably?
My point of view is: to create high-quality accounts, high-quality accounts mean that each account has independent + real. There are many classic cases like Pengu some time ago and TIA in the past, where one address ranges from 500 to 2000 US dollars. High-quality accounts mean high-quality accounts, each of which has on-chain records of real users, independent behaviors, and reasonable on-chain asset distribution. Multiple accounts themselves are also the principle of risk diversification. Multiple accounts ≠ witches. Using multiple account strategies is nothing more than the law of approximate numbers and the principle of wide coverage. The odds of the benefits of stacking one account may not be as high as the benefits of multiple accounts.
The specific steps are as follows.
Starting phase-basic principles:
The capital flow is reasonable, and differentiation is achieved as much as possible from the time of starting the account. Including the source of funds
Reasonable capital flow to avoid concentrated deposits and withdrawals
The interaction time and amount are randomized, not mechanically operated.
Multi-chain layout, real user traces make the account more natural
Account cultivation and interaction stage:
No batch operation, each account has independent behavior
Interaction time, avoid pipeline operations, such as randomizing the amount and transaction order during interaction, and combining multiple protocols
Multi-chain layout makes accounts more natural and interaction paths as independent as possible
Create high-quality user portraits and behaviors, hold different assets, and increase account weight
Participate in real activities to increase account weight. Such as DAO voting, NFT Mint, DeFi Staking
Combined interaction, embedded interaction, combined with DeFi strategy, Gas consumption is on the cutting edge
3. How to understand “premium account”?
Premium accounts mean high-quality accounts. Each account has on-chain records of real users, independent behaviors, and reasonable on-chain asset distribution. Of course, everyone has different understandings of premium accounts. The project party also hopes that the addresses distributed to rewards are real and high-quality. Some are equity-based NFTs for their own projects, and some focus on on-chain interaction portraits. Then the focus points are mostly funds, activity, diversity, on-chain identity, loyalty, mainnet data (gas consumption, time, tx, active time), NFT holdings, etc. Its as real as it can be.
Summary of focus: wallet history, interactive behavior, capital flow, asset holdings (token nft), balance retention, multi-chain activity, some social binding...
4. How to control the cost of staking? On chains with high gas fees (such as Ethereum), what suggestions do you have for optimizing interaction strategies?
I personally don’t use IP, ADS, and other programming stuff that many people mention, mainly because I don’t know how to do it. I focus more on the on-chain portrait formed by the gas loss of the account itself.
The cost of my own interactive account is: capital cost and gas cost.
So the key point I care about is where the Gas is consumed, either by increasing the weight or increasing the on-chain image. These two points are the most core range of view for sniping the projects airdrop.
In terms of specific strategy, we try to recover the gas cost of kui as much as possible through defi, arbitrage, trading, mint or project weight tx, and improve the account profile at the same time. This is very reflexive, and we must first learn to lose money and gas.
What suggestions do you have for optimizing interaction strategies on chains with high gas fees (such as Ethereum)? It depends on the situation. In the past few years, gas fees were only expensive in the first year, and the gas fees were very low afterwards. For example, now that gas is 1 and no one is interested, it is a good time to polish a new account. You can interact with the main network data in conjunction with specific projects.
5. Different projects have different requirements for interaction. How do you adjust your strategy based on the characteristics of the project?
Different projects have different requirements for airdrop interactions. Blindly referring to tutorials is not very meaningful at this stage. Everyone hopes to achieve accurate interaction + minimum cost + maximum benefit, which is very rare. This uncertainty and reflexivity requires long-term practice and tracking. It is also the most difficult part of this track.
My strategy has always been to use high-quality accounts + weighted interactions + calculate high input-output ratios + control risks. I combine trading protocols with the strategy of using high-quality accounts to snipe high-quality protocols. Different projects have different airdrop allocation logics, so you can’t just do it in batches, but make targeted arrangements. My experience is that airdropping is not simply about “winning by volume”, but about finding the right interaction strategy that meets the expectations of the project and the project that suits your personality.
For example, L1/L2 must take into account TVL, authenticity, and the selection of native DApps and diverse combinations. Play with the ecosystem from a real perspective.
For DeFi protocols, the project side focuses on deep users and gives priority to rewarding users who provide liquidity and transactions for a long time, such as deposit duration, amount, LP, etc. Specific analysis is based on the on-chain data of a single protocol.
Cross-chain bridges and pledge types are also based on the protocol background. Pledge types may focus on the protocols tge time, security, track position, and input-output ratio. EigenLayer and Babylon are examples of this.
It is more important to make money skillfully than to make a lot of money, especially as the current market pays more and more attention to real users. Therefore, accurate interaction, reasonable allocation of funds, and long-term layout of account maintenance are the current focus. In the current airdrop track, what matters is not the number of wallets, but the research on the project, the understanding of the rules and the execution!
6. After many projects airdrop, people will choose to sell the tokens they received. How do you judge the timing of selling?
I am not good at this. Now I have a lot of altcoins in my hands. I am the typical representative who will hold but not sell. I think there are many reasons. On the one hand, the market has changed. In the last cycle, holders became rich, but in this round, if you hold, you will lose money. I have held OP and ARB for more than 1 year. There are also some projects that I pledged after holding, and they fell by 90%. There are also many projects that turned from big losses to small losses. Some projects are airdropped, and I really haven’t sold them yet, such as EigenLayer. If I really encounter a project that has fallen badly, I will pretend to be dead and wait for it to return to zero, and then include it in the cost price according to the listing price and accrue losses. I have always been in the mentality of not pursuing absolute values, but relative values.
After suffering a lot of losses, according to my personal situation, I will sell about 1/3 of the airdrops I get at this stage, and then judge according to the project and market conditions. Most of the projects I get are vc coins. I mainly focus on the valuation of the last round of the project, the online market value, the unlocking situation, and most importantly, the market situation. We cant actually use it as a reference. The main reason is that airdrops can make you feel emotional, and the core reason is that you cant bear to sell!
Chapter 3: The Future of Airdrops
1. What do you think of the emergence of meme-launching platforms such as Pump, and what impact will this have on LuMao?
Meme launch platforms such as Pump.fun have lowered the threshold for token issuance. Anyone can issue tokens in a few seconds using the one-click coin issuance model and automatically create LPs. In fact, this is the evolution of a new, extremely free asset issuance model. Its emergence is equivalent to the transition from the early ICO and IEO models to the airdrop model and the evolution to the current self-issuance model. It has lowered the threshold for coin issuance and also changed the mentality and strategy of Web3 participants (especially the wool pullers).
Impact on project token distribution
This free asset issuance model lowers the threshold for token issuance. One-click issuance + automatic creation of LPs, no technology or financing required, direct entry into the market. This new model not only affects the Meme track, but also changes the way traditional Web3 projects distribute tokens. Many projects will choose not to go on exchanges first, but go online directly on DEX. Project parties no longer need to rely on traditional financing or token lock-up, but let the market determine the value of tokens directly.
Impact on Lu Sir
Impact 1- Mentality: The period of cashing out has been extremely shortened, which is a huge test for human nature and aggravates the speculative mentality. In the past, people were used to 3-24 months of interaction and long waits for TGE. Now the meme coins pumped can rise a hundred times in a few minutes, or return to zero in a few minutes. In contrast, the cashing out time, uncertain returns, and reverse cashing out are not as exciting as memes.
Impact 2-Benefits: The belief system of Lu Sir collapsed, and the speculative gameplay was infinitely magnified. In the past, the airdrops were about the depth of interaction, on-chain contributions, technical features and value. Lu Sir hopes that the project will develop in the long term. In the Meme model, the core driving force of the token is emotion + narrative + capital FOMO. Many lures no longer lure airdrops, but turn to memes, no longer care about the project itself, and only care about short-term fluctuations, because it is more fun, faster, and has a greater wealth effect. Everyone hopes to be the son of the version.
Impact 3-Gambling: The mentality of Lu Sir is more FOMO, and it is easy to fall into gambling. Traditional Lu Mao emphasizes steady and solid progress, but the Meme ecosystem has brought the market into an extreme speculative mode, and the gambling nature is getting heavier.
2. The future evolution trend of hair pulling: Is there still a chance to lose gas with multiple accounts?
I think there is. Without multiple accounts, you will never get rich and you will not get excess returns. But you need to balance personal funds and the flow and allocation of account funds. It is okay to lose gas with multiple accounts, but dont burn gas. There is a distinction here. The core of future swindling is high-quality accounts. Real interaction + natural capital flow + long-term activity is the optimal strategy. Swindling is no longer just pile up, but a test of strategy + execution + information gap! Those with strong execution capabilities can still pile up high-quality accounts, and pile up more high-quality accounts.
3. What should we do if some projects require both gas consumption and social media accounts to complete tasks?
Some projects use a dual screening mechanism when designing activities, requiring both on-chain interaction (Kui Gas) and social interaction (Twitter, Discord, Galxe tasks, etc.). This model places higher demands on losers. If not handled properly, they may invest too much cost and time, and end up with a mismatch in returns, and then get scolded. My suggestions and strategies are:
First, determine whether the project is worthy of being both KuiGas and social. Before that, you must have your own logical judgment and thinking. At the same time, see if the project suits your personality and formulate differentiated interaction strategies.
Here we distinguish between studios and individuals, and the strategies here should be inconsistent. As a super individual, I personally have a batch of 3-piece sets, all of which were registered one by one with early overseas mobile phones. They are all accounts that have been maintained for a long time. Within my personal ability, they are divided into computer maintenance. Maintaining the 3-piece set here depends more on your behavior. Occasionally, you need to be active in a differentiated manner. The 3-piece set will also check the correlation, activity and other account quality. I wont say more due to time constraints. Anyway, this is infrastructure, it must be there, but there is not much demand.
For a corresponding premium account, you can configure 3 sets to create as many accounts as you can afford, such as 100.
Focus more on on-chain portraits and high-quality tx, and abandon a large number of invalid web3 interaction tasks meaninglessly. Here, judging the activities designed by the project party is a key point.
Will TX be useful? Is the role of trading volume in wool pulling still effective?
As the project partys screening standards and anti-witch mechanisms continue to upgrade, this simple and crude accounting method is no longer the best strategy. Now LuMao emphasizes interaction quality + transaction authenticity. However, TX and transaction volume need to be combined with interaction depth. To make an inappropriate analogy, if you went to the bank more often before, the bank president might know you and occasionally invite you for a cup of coffee. At this stage, it may not be useful just to make a deposit. You have to be a VIP and a long-term customer of their financial management and banking insurance products.
5. What kind of innovative airdrop design will be created in the future to bring win-win results to the community, project owners, and even the entire ecosystem?
This topic is a bit big and wide. How to distribute airdrops is an art for project owners if done well, but it is just selling crutches if messed up. Let me briefly talk about my understanding:
Airdrops have been proven to be an important way for Web3 projects to grow and acquire users in the early stages. However, the traditional airdrop model does have a lot of problems, which has led to projects spending a lot of tokens but failing to attract long-term users. The proportion of low-quality users is too high, and the token economic model is damaged.
A good airdrop is designed to attract new users, reward early users, and retain more users, while growing around the economic flywheel of the project and the ecosystem. A more innovative, fairer, and more sustainable airdrop design should achieve a win-win-win situation for the project owner, community users, and the ecosystem.
Future airdrop models and methods must have the following core principles: long-term incentive mechanism (avoid short-term selling, encourage users to continue to interact and contribute in the long term); combine on-chain data and off-chain community contributions to screen real users and real contributing users; 3- party interests are consistent (user growth = ecological growth); open and transparent (make every rule and reason clear), and avoid insider trading.
There are many specific methods, for example: gradual release mechanism, refer to OPs airdrop, continuous multiple rounds of airdrops, large and comprehensive and continuous rewards for long-term contributions, and more elements can be added on this basis, and the airdrop strategy and design are more perfect. There is no perfect solution, we can only take care of small and medium retail investors and more real users as much as possible.
Chapter 4: Advice for Newbies
1. How to start from scratch? For beginners, the amount of capital may be several hundred U. How should they start?
Lumao is a path and strategy to enter Web3 at a low cost and make some money, but it is not a simple free money game. It should be a combination of cognition, strategy, and execution. Different people have different interaction strategies and playing methods at different stages, and there are differences between those with technical backgrounds and those with non-technical backgrounds. For newcomers who are just starting out and don’t know the technology, my suggestions are:
Taoism (conceptual level): correct cognition
Learning: Understand some ways of making money in the industry, the airdrop model, learn to explore the ecology and protocols, and see which points have projects suitable for you in the early stage.
Principle: After you have made your own judgment on the project, it is clear that not all projects are worth investing in. You should have selection criteria before investing in them. The essence of investing in them is low-cost investment. Time, gas fees, and opportunity costs are all your investment, not Fomo.
Direction: Choose the right track. Direction is more important than hard work. You should choose a track with strong future certainty, large amount of funds, and possible long-term incentives.
Investment research: Establish a project database, learn to look at projects, follow up on projects, calculate ROI, look at risk points, odds points, weight points, etc.
Method (implementation level): specific methods
Learn to interact correctly: such as how to swap, bridge funds, how to find tokens, how to complete project tasks with the 3-piece set, etc. The core is to improve interaction skills.
Improve account weight: learn to interact deeply and become an active, real and high-quality user of the ecological protocol.
Control costs: There are many ways to make money, not just kuigas, staking, there are also very high-quality test network projects on the market,
Participation from multiple angles: for example, the user perspective is to deeply participate in the ecosystem, the creator perspective is to help the project write content, and so on.
Summary: Slow to fast, less to more.
2. Common misunderstandings?
Feng Mi: Suffering a loss is a blessing. Some pitfalls must be stepped on by oneself. It is most useful to review your own experience. People cannot teach others, but things can teach people once they are taught.
3. How should a novice obtain high-quality information sources? What information channels or tools do you recommend?
A relatively simple method is to follow high-quality KOLs, Twitter, YouTube, etc. You can find projects from rootdata @RootDataCrypto, find the corresponding X account and team members, as well as financing information.
If you want to learn, there are many basic project tasks in OKXs web3 wallet @OKX Web3_CN that you can use as practice.
Chapter 5: Suggestions for OKX
1. What role and influence does OKX play in the development of various ecosystems?
OKXs wallet supports a lot of ecosystems and chains. As far as I know, it currently supports 127 chains. I personally use OKX as my regular wallet in the interactive wallet. I usually share the same mnemonic phrases with Xiaohuli and OKX.
Features: safe, timely, smooth, too many to list, anyway, it is easy to use. The Movement ecosystem is thanks to the support of the OKX web3 wallet. At that time, Movement needed to download another wallet, but it was not easy to use. After I reported this problem to Haiteng @Haiteng_okx, he immediately pulled relevant colleagues for me and quickly supported Movement, which made it much more convenient for us, and we no longer had to migrate assets.
2. In the future development, which ecosystems do you want to see OKX cooperate with? In what form? What kind of cooperation does the community want to see?
The ecosystem and coverage are very comprehensive. As far as I know, OKXs wallet team is very strong, BD expansion is also very strong, support is rapid, and bugs are solved in a timely manner. I think there may be room for improvement in airdrop interaction. OKX @okxchinese has done a wide range, but not enough depth. There are many users using OKX. Here, some valuable growth systems can be built around the users wallet situation. This system can cooperate with many ecosystems to help both parties attract traffic, or bring more data bonuses and rewards to OKX wallet users.
If the tools have been done well, it will be great, such as the real-time K-line and one-piece trading tokens recently supported on X. In terms of airdrops, OKX can make an airdrop detector, and the users on-chain wallet can detect any unclaimed airdrops.
Conclusion:
Feng Mi: These five years of experience have made me more convinced that the real value lies not in what you know, but in what you can connect and execute.
In this ever-changing market, the strongest competitiveness is the continuous evolution of cognition, forward-looking layout, and super strong execution. Time is short, please correct me if I am wrong!
Mercy: When I first heard about Mr. Feng Mi, he seemed like a legendary figure. Some people even said that Mr. Feng sat in a temple for 365 days a year to collect airdrops... After actually getting to know him, I found that his sincerity and humility in dealing with people, as well as his focus and serious professionalism, are all worthy of Mercys learning and respect.
Mercy gained three key points from the conversation with friends from OKX about the “principle and technique” of airdrops:
Have excellent judgment - Masturbating well is more important than Masturbating a lot;
High sense of responsibility - take every deal seriously;
Strong execution ability - needed by both new and old employees.
I hope everyone can also gain something from it. Finally, I would like to thank Fengmi @Kui_gas for sharing, and welcome everyone to continue to pay attention to the Friends of OKX dialogue series.
Risk Warning and Disclaimer
This article is for reference only. This article only represents the authors views and does not represent the position of OKX. This article is not intended to provide (i) investment advice or investment recommendations; (ii) an offer or solicitation to buy, sell or hold digital assets; (iii) financial, accounting, legal or tax advice. We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of such information. Holding digital assets (including stablecoins and NFTs) involves high risks and may fluctuate significantly. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding digital assets is suitable for you based on your financial situation. Please consult your legal/tax/investment professionals for your specific situation. Please be responsible for understanding and complying with local applicable laws and regulations.
