The LayerZero witch-hunting event, which lasted for several weeks, officially came to an end yesterday (May 30th). While witch-hunting is a common practice in various project airdrops, LayerZero’s elaborate anti-witch campaign evolved from self-reporting to mutual accusations.
Background:
The Contradiction Behind LayerZero’s Airdrop Witch-Hunt: The Struggle Between Structure and Interests
LayerZero Airdrop Precautions: Reporting Witches Requires a Payment of 0.5 ETH, $ZRO Token Economics, Pre-Trading Price?
Table of Contents:
The Internalization of Witch-Hunting: From Self-Reporting to Mutual Accusations
The Comical Situation of Accusations
Official Criteria for Judging Witches and Bounty Hunters
On May 30th, LayerZero’s witch-hunting event, which lasted for several weeks, officially came to an end. While witch-hunting is a common practice in various project airdrops, LayerZero’s elaborate anti-witch campaign turned into a cryptographic version of the “Prisoner’s Dilemma.”
In the classic case of the “Prisoner’s Dilemma,” two suspects are held in separate rooms for interrogation after committing a crime. Due to a lack of sufficient evidence, the police offer several options: if both resist, they will each be sentenced to 3 years due to insufficient evidence; if both confess, they will each be sentenced to 5 years; if one confesses and the other resists, the confessor will be sentenced to 2 years while the resistor will be sentenced to 7 years.
Now, this classic case of game theory has become a true reflection of LayerZero’s airdrop event. As a highly valued top project, LayerZero naturally became the target of many users. However, the community did not anticipate the harsh witch-hunting review before they could enjoy the benefits.
Earlier this month, LayerZero announced a self-reporting program for witches that lasted for 14 days. As a reward, users who self-reported would receive an expected allocation of 15%, but this list would not be made public. Users identified by LayerZero as witches who did not self-report would not receive any token distribution.
To appease users and demonstrate fairness, LayerZero later stated that “witch self-reporting” was not targeted at individual users but at large-scale witches. LayerZero employees were prohibited from participating in airdrop claims, and violators would be dismissed.
The self-reporting action received the participation of many LayerZero users. In the eyes of many multi-account users/studios, self-reporting could at least retain some of their earnings instead of getting nothing after being identified by LayerZero. According to data released by LayerZero Labs, during the self-reporting phase, over 338,000 addresses self-reported, and more than 803,000 addresses were preliminarily identified as potential witches. Each eligible address would receive 15% of their expected token distribution, while the remaining 85% would be returned to qualified users.
However, self-reporting was just the “appetizer” of LayerZero’s anti-witch campaign, and the “bounty reporting” made this cleansing activity even more entangled.
From May 18th to May 31st, it was the bounty hunting period for LayerZero. According to the submission page of LayerZero, a total of 3,550 reports were submitted.
However, this bounty hunting activity was full of twists and turns, and it opened up a battlefield that tested human nature. According to the rules of LayerZero’s witch-hunting bounty activity, reporters needed to provide at least 20 addresses clearly indicating witch operations. Bounty hunters who successfully reported witches would receive 10% of the expected token distribution, while the remaining 90% would be returned to qualified addresses.
However, if the witch address was supposed to receive 0 tokens, the bounty hunter would also receive 0 tokens. If multiple reports were filed for the same address, the bounty would be given to the first reporter. Of course, to prevent users from being “mistakenly killed,” LayerZero allowed addresses mistakenly reported as witches to file an appeal through a form.
Immediately after the start of the activity, it received many community reports. According to LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino’s previous revelations, within a few hours of the start of the bounty activity, they received over 3,000 witch reports and 30,000 appeals. Due to a large number of spam emails resulting in the suspension of many GitHub accounts, LayerZero had to announce a temporary suspension of the witch-hunting bounty activity two days after its initiation. Bryan Pellegrino also stated that they would introduce a deposit mechanism, where reporters would need to pledge 0.02 ETH to submit reports.
On May 28th, LayerZero Labs announced the reopening of the witch bounty report submission and increased the deposit to 0.5 ETH. The activity would end within 48 hours (8:00 AM Beijing time on May 30th). This means that only addresses providing a deposit would be eligible to submit reports, and upon honest submission or successful reporting, the deposit would be refunded after the TGE.
If the report involves stealing others’ achievements, any form of fraud, lack of methodology, spam emails, etc., the deposit would not be refunded and would be destroyed. According to Ethereum browser data, LayerZero received over 240 ETH within two days of restarting the activity, which means they received approximately 480 reports.
Driven by economic interests, various comical accusations continued to unfold. For example, employees of a studio chose to resign and report internal accounts, the addresses of major holders in a project were reported, users targeted witch clusters of major holders or studios, and even rumors spread in the market that the security institution Trusta once submitted 470,000 suspicious witch addresses to LayerZero. The institution denied this and stated that they would never report any addresses.
However, this reporting mechanism also led to many users being “injured by mistake.” In response to this, Bryan Pellegrino once responded that anyone could put anything they wanted into the report, but not every report was valid. The “conclusive” standard is actually very difficult to achieve.
An analysis of the LayerZero witch report, published by @vga.eth, pointed out several points. The key points of the official witch analysis include:
– Clusters with ten, hundred, or thousand addresses with interactions have obvious traces of fund transactions, such as one-to-many transfers and many-to-one consolidations.
– To increase interaction on a chain, cross-chain amounts of $0.01 or less.
– A large number of worthless NFTs are minted to increase cross-chain interactions, while a small number do not matter.
– Use popular witch interaction programs like L2Pass.
Meanwhile, the key points for witch hunters reporting include:
– Transactions in the same cross-chain direction.
– Addresses with consistent contract calls.
– All contract interaction habits and sequences are consistent, usually with withdrawals through the same centralized exchange account with similar amounts and times.
– The least number of interactions on the mainnet and a small EVM balance (less than $200).
Currently, the final witch list still needs to be confirmed and will be officially announced after LayerZero’s official review. But according to Bryan Pellegrino’s previous statements, it is expected that only 6.67%-13.33% of the 6 million addresses will be eligible for the airdrop. He also responded to user inquiries with the latest update, saying, “90%-95% of the reports must be valid, or even more. Of course, false reports are quickly ‘discarded.'”
As the witch-hunting operation comes to a close, users participating in LayerZero are waiting for a “fateful judgment.”