In this article we explore the world of sybil attacks in crypto airdrops and see what mechanisms different projects have adopted to hinder the spread of these practices.
There are real “anti-sybil” rules that prevent malicious users from receiving airdrops from multiple accounts.
Let’s take a look together at what these are.
Summary
What are “sybil hunters” in crypto airdrops?
Airdrop marketing strategies for crypto-themed projects are becoming increasingly popular, as are sybil techniques that allow users to grab multiple rewards from these events.
Indeed, the term sybil refers to an individual (or group) who unethically attempts to obtain multiple airdrops by performing transactions from dozens of different wallets, thereby getting a huge boost from the reward.
It is clear that if the reward from airdrop per address is, for instance, $1,000, a sybill managing 100 accounts can easily reach $100,000.
With the passing of time, crypto projects have become aware of this malpractice and are implementing solutions to prevent such scenarios from arising, in which obviously the person who succeeds in the feat sells all the tokens that have been airdropped to him or her at market without a hint of recognition.
The presence of a large number of sybills is viewed negatively by the crypto community because it greatly lowers the average reward that should technically be “given away” at each address.
If, for example, 50,000 REAL early users have landed in an ecosystem, but there are 1 million addresses in all, the risk is that in the case of an airdrop, each real contributor receives 20 times less of the reward he or she is entitled to.
In last year’s Aptos airdrop this was an issue that came under the attention of the general public, who were stunned by the large number of sybil addresses that were created through the use of bots and specialized software.
By the time of listing on Binance, the APT token had sunk to the bottom as all sybills monetized the reward received from each wallet.
It is estimated that about 40% of the tokens deposited on Binance on the day of the listing came from sybills themselves: all of which has brought serious damage to the reputation of the project resulting in a loss of trust from the real community.
In any case, it is nonetheless worth admitting that the presence of sybils, even though it can create internal imbalances and must necessarily be fought against, helps to elevate the metrics numbers of the new decentralized networks or protocols.
Data inherent in active addresses, number of transactions, and trading fees increase dramatically because of sybills and help new projects grow in their early stages.
Eligibility criteria to solve the “sybil hunter” problem
As anticipated, several crypto projects have devised anti-sybill techniques that help carry out honest airdrop deployments without a single user receiving hundreds of rewards in allocation.
In this regard, the Arbitrum foundation has released what are the rules they adopted to decree which addresses were found to be eligible for ARB token airdrop.
In detail, all addresses were excluded that:
- had few operations and only within a 48-hour period;
- recorded a balance of less than 0.005 ETH at the time of the snapshot;
- were found to be sybil in the Hop Protocol airdrop.
It is speculated that all users who verified their eligibility on the official site of the airdrop claim on a single IP address for different wallets were also removed, although there is no official confirmation of this practice.
These just listed are just the basic rules that have helped the Arbitrum foundation dispose of a large slice of addresses that likely stem from sybil users.
There are also more complex strategies, such as selecting addresses that were funded by the same source, performed similar transactions, and transferred assets in a cluster greater than 20 addresses.
Real-world example of a cluster with 110 addresses technically eligible for ARB airdrop
In general, even with the help of sophisticated software and complex techniques, the detection of sybil users still remains a major problem for all blockchain infrastructures that want to employ reward distribution via airdrop.
This is because, although the blockchain is public, it is not easy to decree with certainty whether a certain on-chain behavior is legitimate or the result of sybil attempts to turn up more eligible addresses.
Many believe that implementing verification systems via KYC would help solve the problem once and for all, while centralizing the process and undermining community privacy.
Perhaps if Worldcoin and its iris-scanning recognition platform become more popular in the future, a compromise can be made between efficiency in eliminating sybils and respecting users’ privacy principles.
For now, sybils continue to frequent Web3 circles and occasionally manage to break through with multimillion-dollar token allocations.
Useful tips for succeeding in crypto airdrop hunting without appearing sybil
Within the crypto world, there are individuals dedicated to airdrop hunting activities, who while not equipped with bots or special implementations, simultaneously manage 4-5 different addresses to get a boost in rewards.
While this practice is not entirely ethical, it remains far less detrimental to the community than strategies in which hundreds of different wallets are used.
Unfortunately, in earning money there is no ethics, and as long as there is an opportunity to monetize these “vigilance errors,” there will always be someone ready to take advantage of them.
To the delight of small sybils, we can say that so far clusters the size of 4-5 accounts have rarely been excluded from previous airdrops, while those with more than 20 addresses are being ousted.
A useful tip to avoid resulting as a sybil if you run an amateur practice like this is to leave at least $50-100 in ETH as a balance on each wallet and never pass funds between addresses.
If you really need to move assets, better to do it through a centralized exchange, where usually withdrawals always start from a generic address that is difficult for on-chain analysts to detect.
It is a different matter if you want to DEPOSIT on a centralized exchange: usually project teams that manage airdrops, identify as sybil individuals who deposit on the same address as a CEX.
Another tip is to do transactions, such as token swaps and bridges, multiple times over time without just doing “the little task” once.
Furthermore, it is better to do different transactions between different wallets and not replicate the exact same moves for each address.
By applying these simple rules and following the guidelines that have been provided in previous articles, you can easily make a profit of the likely range of $10,000 (or more) on airdrops from zkSync, LayerZero and Starknet.
Of course, nothing is given away: each address will have to be subsidized with at least $500 and you will have to make a variety of transactions over time, paying the associated fees, of course.
