Reviewing the Chaos of Airdrops: Hayden Adams Comments on his Uniswap Airdrop – an Unprecedented Innovation
Review of Uniswap Airdrop: Unprecedented Innovation
The airdrop introduced by Uniswap was considered an unprecedented innovation, according to a tweet by Hayden Adams. The protocol has been operating for several years now, with hundreds of thousands of users and a strong product-market fit.
At the time, the Uniswap team believed that no one could replicate their airdrop. They believed that every future airdrop would be manipulated. Hayden Adams pointed out that almost every project now conducts airdrops, and most of them have some degree of manipulation.
He then discussed the pros and cons of airdrops.
Advantages:
– Financially changing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people (Hayden Adams claimed to have heard many stories).
– Rewarding early adopters and users’ culture.
– More fair and widespread value distribution.
– Simpler self-adoption, making the public willing to try new things.
– Good airdrops can achieve early liquidity and early price discovery.
Disadvantages:
– Industrialization of airdrops, with users expecting every project to conduct them.
– Project teams mistaking airdrop users for product-market fit.
– Harassing teams and demanding airdrops.
– Project teams exploiting potential airdrops and constantly disappointing users’ expectations.
How to execute a successful airdrop?
Hayden Adams suggested that project teams should clearly define their goals in order to design the airdrop mechanism. They should also understand that speculators will always exist, and anything that can be manipulated will be manipulated.
He also mentioned that in terms of influence, Uniswap’s airdrop was unprecedented. However, the true first airdrop was conducted by OMG Network (OMG) in 2017, targeting ETH holders.
Note: OmiseGo was renamed OMG Network in June 2020.
Although Hayden Adams spoke strongly, when Uniswap’s protocol code was copied and liquidity mining was launched by SushiSwap in September 2020, Uniswap seemed to be forced by the situation to announce the airdrop issuance of governance token Uni and the launch of liquidity mining in less than a month. This resolved the liquidity war, but Uni, with only governance voting functionality, has often been criticized.
(SushiSwap’s liquidity migration ahead, Uniswap may lose 80% of liquidity overnight)
Additional Reading
Which airdrops have earned the most recently? TIA, JTO, BONK have all created significant value.
Proposal approved! Uniswap will sell ten million UNI tokens to maintain the foundation’s two-year operation.
