A Brief History of Web3 Airdrops: Reviewing Twelve Iconic Anti-Cheating Projects

Original author: Biteye

Once, airdrops in the crypto world were a thrilling "myth of getting rich," during the era of Uniswap, ENS, and Arbitrum, where early users and project teams mutually achieved success, and evangelists and builders shared dividends, forming a brief but genuinely existing "golden honeymoon."

However, fast forward to 2023 to 2026, with large amounts of capital influx, extreme competition among professional studios, and the infinite expansion of the appetites of project teams, the airdrop landscape has completely warped.

"Interacting for rewards" has degraded into a "cyber harvesting ground," where milking profits has transformed from early dividends into a systemic reverse harvesting.

Retail investors have been redefined: as free testers, low-cost liquidity providers, and endless data producers.

In an environment where long-term rules are opaque and expectations are rewritten repeatedly, what often awaits is not rewards, but being wiped out, diluted, or even directly eliminated.

In this article, we review 12 iconic "anti-milking" projects in airdrop history, retracing how trust has been gradually consumed.

1. Hop Protocol (HOP): The Beginning of the "Witch" Era.

Anti-milking process: Cross-chain bridge star HOP pioneered the chilling "community witch report (Sybil)" mechanism. The rules are extremely seductive: reporters can seize a portion of the reported address's share. One might mistakenly believe that Shang Yang, who implemented collective punishment thousands of years ago, has crossed over to Web3.
Anti-milking characteristics: Grassroots mutual harm among crowds. The project team offloaded the dirty work of checking on-chain address associations to users, exploiting human greed to instigate community infighting, even uploading the list of reports directly to GitHub for the entire industry to "reuse."
Far-reaching impact: After HOP, witch hunts became the "politically correct" practice for all token issuance projects, turning on-chain interactions from "experiencing decentralized products" into a cat-and-mouse game of extreme internal exhaustion. While cracking down on witches is necessary, completely shifting the review responsibility onto the community, and even encouraging mutual harm, severely disrupts the community ecosystem.

2. Blast: The Evil Father of the "Point System"

Anti-milking process: Leveraging the top-tier aura of Paradigm, Blast abandoned traditional interaction modes, requiring users to lock ETH or stablecoins in exchange for "points." The rules changed frequently, with large holders and top NFT players reaping sizable profits, while ordinary users who locked their assets for months found token returns failing to even match concurrent risk-free financial interest.
Anti-milking characteristics: Financial pyramid schemes and blind box gambling. Users became ensnared in endless FOMO, turning into a free ATM for project team's TVL data.
Far-reaching impact: Since Blast, "point nesting dolls" have become an industry standard. The point system initially hoped to encourage long-term user participation; however, frequent changes in rules and severely imbalanced rewards ultimately led users to lose trust in the project. Web3 yield farmers devolved into Web2 workers, and the decentralization spirit that Web3 prided itself on was completely extinguished under capital's calculations.

3. LayerZero (ZRO): The Critical Point of Trust Collapse

Anti-milking process: After 18 months of cross-chain interactions burning through huge Gas fees, the project team launched the most stringent witch reviews ever just before the token release, even requiring users to "voluntarily confess" to retain a portion of their shares, or else face complete reset. A large number of genuine active users and small studios were wiped out.
Anti-milking characteristics: Extreme arrogance through "presumption of guilt." The project team cleaned up users' contributed exorbitant transaction fees, only to turn around and treat users like thieves, guarding against and humiliating them.
Far-reaching impact: LayerZero personally dismantled the grand narrative of "multi-chain interaction." While reviewing witches is necessary, the brutal enforcement of "presumption of guilt + confession mechanism" further accelerated the collapse of trust. Since then, the stigma of the stinking penguin has persisted, and "anti-milking" has become a sword of Damocles hanging over all yield farmers. Retail investors came to fully understand: in the face of absolute interpretative power, their efforts are worthless.

4. zkSync (ZK): The Complete End of the L2 Airdrop Era

Anti-milking process: Once one of the four kings of L2, zkSync kept the community waiting for years. After accumulating hundreds of millions of dollars in Gas fee contributions, its airdrop rules played out in a shocking black box: significantly reducing the weight of transaction counts and activity, shifting to "fund retention at a specific time" as the core threshold. This caused a large number of long-term interactive users who accompanied the project's growth to receive nothing, while internal front-running and newly created accounts ate up massive shares.
Anti-milking characteristics: Using "activity" to deceive Gas fees, only to use "fund amount" to kick people out.
Far-reaching impact: zkSync's extremely unattractive behavior led the entire market to despair over L2 airdrops. While controlling witches and volume inflators is necessary, the black-box rules left genuine early contributors feeling heartbroken. Subsequent new L2 projects directly faced the embarrassment of being "ignored," as no retail investors were willing to become free on-chain labor anymore.

5. Infinex: The Collapse of the Public Sale Mechanism

Anti-milking process: As a cross-chain DeFi aggregation platform backed by Synthetix founder Kain Warwick, Infinex was once seen as a representative of "orthodoxy" in the community. It lured users to invest large amounts of funds and energy through Patron NFTs and long-term point activities. However, when the public sale opened in January 2026, the community was met with an extremely high FDV valuation, outrageous "mandatory one-year lock-up," and chaotic distribution logic. The participation rate on the first day of the public sale plummeted, forcing the project team to urgently "patch" the rules multiple times amid public outcry.
Anti-milking characteristics: "Public sale reversal" under high expectations. This operation, which first painted a picture with NFT narratives and later abruptly changed the public sale mechanism, turned the investments of long-term supporters into locked-in sunk costs.
Far-reaching impact: The Infinex incident completely exposed the risks of the "NFT + points in exchange for public sale" model, drawing endless critiques from the community towards the project team.

6. Linea: The Origin of the Term "Slave"

Anti-milking process: The art of PUA has been horrifically realized: a Galxe Odyssey task lasting two years with absurdly numerous periods was launched. Users were required to incessantly answer questions, cross-chain, swap, and mint illiquid garbage NFTs like slaves, while ultimately being forced to comply with an extremely cumbersome KYC process.
Anti-milking characteristics: An indefinite fatigue war. Forever doing tasks, forever accumulating LXP points, forever being PUAed, while the mainnet token release remains indefinitely distant.
Far-reaching impact: Linea turned "doing tasks for airdrops" into a full-time job with a very low hourly wage and tremendous mental torment. A large number of users, therefore, became exhausted and exited the circle, marking the total collapse of the OAT (On-Chain Achievement Token) narrative.

7. Grass: The Free Generator of DePIN

Anti-milking process: As a star of the DePIN track, it encouraged users to contribute idle bandwidth while idling. Countless people kept their computers running 24 hours to boost their scores, even spending their own money to purchase overseas clean IPs. Yet when the token was released, the project team reserved or allocated the vast majority of shares to VCs, while retail investors, who had labored for months, found that the money from selling their tokens could barely cover their electricity costs and proxy IP expenses.
Anti-milking characteristics: Dupe and fleece without any effort. Draped in the garb of Web3 construction, it shamelessly scammed Web2 users of their physical resources.
Far-reaching impact: Grass's anti-milking made the market acutely aware that many so-called DePIN projects are essentially "freeloading software," directly causing a cliff-like decline in retail investor participation in similar subsequent projects.

8. Monad: The Terminator of L1 Airdrops

Anti-milking process: As a highly anticipated high-performance L1 project, Monad attracted long-term testing network interactions from the community. The MON airdrop was launched in October 2025, opening claims for 230,000 addresses, yet the overall distribution ratio for the community was only about 3.3%, with a substantial number of genuine testing network users subjected to stringent witch reviews and either cleared out or only acquiring meager shares, while KOLs and some early associates received significant allocations.
Anti-milking characteristics: Extremely low allocations and rigorous reviews after high expectations. The project team attracted a large number of testing network users through technical narratives, then handed all the tokens to KOLs.
Far-reaching impact: The Monad incident further lowered community expectations for airdrops from new L1 projects. Although early announcements excluded the testing network, the lack of deterrence during the process and a TGE devoid of any rewards made genuine early contributors feel betrayed. Participatory enthusiasm for similar high-performance L1 projects noticeably declined thereafter, accelerating the shift in the L1 track from "blooming" to "cautiously observing."

9. Babylon: The Misfit of the Bitcoin Ecosystem and Imitation of Dong Shi

Anti-milking process: Attempting to forcibly transplant Ethereum's staking play into the Bitcoin network. During the mainnet activity, due to the capacity limitations of the BTC chain and extreme network congestion, numerous retail investors paid exorbitant miner fees yet still faced staking failures, directly resulting in substantial financial losses. Those who successfully staked were left disappointed after half a year of locking up, realizing that the airdrop benefits were inferior to simply making trades on exchanges or buying financial products.
Anti-milking characteristics: Extremely high trial-and-error costs. Forcibly generating FOMO emotions on the BTC chain, which does not support smart contracts, ultimately backfired on retail investors through exorbitant Gas fees.
Far-reaching impact: It poured a bucket of cold water on the overheated BTC L2 track. It proved, through blood-soaked lessons, that simply copying Ethereum's PUA model is fundamentally unworkable in the Bitcoin ecosystem, severely depleting the trust and patience of veteran Bitcoin players towards emerging ecosystems.

10. Backpack: The Backlash of Frenzied Volume and the Crisis of Trust in "Local Projects"

Anti-milking process: Raising $37 million, Backpack launched a "transaction volume = points" activity, PUAing the community for two years. Just before the TGE, strict KYC and a "one machine one IP" black-box witch hunt were suddenly enacted, resulting in a large number of accounts being wiped out. The survivors also faced dire consequences: a significant player inflated volume by $15 billion at the cost of $300,000 in fees, returning only $150,000 in tokens (a net loss of 50%), with users' real money converting directly into project profits.
Anti-milking characteristics: A simple and crude "reverse siphoning." While volume inflation indeed requires strict reviews, doing so only after the tokens are released involves glaringly profiting from fees under the guise of an airdrop. Furthermore, the token BP plummeted 68% in the first week following its launch, quietly draining users during the endless volume inflation.
Far-reaching impact: The image of Chinese entrepreneurs collapsed entirely. The Chinese region became a disaster area, as the stereotype of "local projects = anti-milking" deeply burned into the community's consciousness, leading subsequent Web3 projects led by Chinese people to face an unprecedented trust crisis during cold starts.

11. EdgeX: The Downfall of Perp DEX

Anti-milking process: Following the L2 crisis, Perp DEX, which required real capital for transaction fees, was seen by retail investors as the last haven for airdrops. Although Lighter got off to a good start, when edgeX launched its TGE, existing users spent hundreds of thousands in fees only to receive airdrops worth less than a thousand dollars, while over 80 "mouse warehouse" new addresses with no interaction records pocketed nearly $100 million in shares. Subsequently, on-chain detectives confirmed its association with market makers in the gray area, leading to the official account going dark and leaving a mess behind.
Anti-milking characteristics: Openly snatching from mouse warehouses, with retail investors acting as data cattle, while the project team doesn’t even bother to pretend.
Far-reaching impact: The EdgeX farce completely collapsed the narrative of volume inflation in Perp DEX, transforming endorsements from top institutions into a synonym for high-level harvesting. Retail investors fell into utter despair, while smart money hastened to flow back to CEX or L1 natives.

12. Genius: The Last Straw for Yield Farmers

Anti-milking process: Genius was seen as the last hope; however, after the community frantically inflated trading volumes, the TGE came with a reversal gift: receiving an airdrop within 7 days would automatically destroy 70% of the tokens, allowing a maximum retention of 30%; or selecting a one-year lock-up to receive the full amount. Under heavy public pressure, the project team urgently introduced a "refund" option - within 48 hours post-TGE, users could choose to destroy 100% of the airdrop quota in exchange for a refund of the fees charged by Genius.
Anti-milking characteristics: Users invested real money driven by trust premiums, only to be told at the last moment, "Either walk away with a pittance or spend another year with the project team."
Far-reaching impact: Genius's troubling maneuver completely demystified the narrative of "top-tier platform." It was referred to by the community as "the last straw for yield farmers."

Conclusion: Decisive Cuts, Returning to the Source

From HOP's witch-hunt list to Blast's point nesting dolls, to LayerZero's confession slaughter... these twelve projects have collectively penned a farcical yet brutal chronicle of retail investors' blood and tears in the crypto world.

But the truth may be even harsher: this is not only a premeditated harvesting but also a shared enterprise of speculation and greed.

For a long time, the milking circle only cared about "whether to issue tokens, how to distribute airdrops," neglecting whether the product had real PMF and the potential to generate sustainable revenue. The project teams accurately seized this greed - you desire airdrops, and they covet your principal and fees.

Now, with the airdrop bubble burst, countless people have been "anti-milked" to a bloody pulp. While this is certainly tragic, it could also be seen as a decisive cleansing.

The market has finally been forced to return to common sense: the traffic drawn in by expectations of airdrops is ultimately an illusion, and only products with real PMF are worth investing time and funds.

This marks the end of airdrops and the rebirth of Web3. Those projects that started with PUA and black boxes will ultimately be voted out by users with their feet; while those genuinely willing to co-build with the community and return to value itself will gain more precious trust from the ruins.

For yield farmers, this is a painful lesson and also a clarifying turning point.

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