Too many false reports! LayerZero Labs suspends Sybil "Bounty Hunter" reporting program

LayerZero Labs is a company dedicated to the LayerZero blockchain interoperability protocol. They are working on establishing a fair and smooth airdrop standard - one that limits Sybil activity. Sybil refers to users controlling multiple wallets to receive airdrop rewards, creating unfairness in the airdrop process. The ultimate fairness of this initiative remains to be seen, and this airdrop has stirred up controversy. Many players who attempted to obtain the airdrop using multiple wallets have expressed dissatisfaction, and people have started to report each other, leading to an abundance of informants.

Chaos in the Launch Process of LayerZero

The final snapshot of LayerZero shows that there are six million unique wallets interacting with the protocol, which reached a valuation of $3 billion after its latest round of funding in April 2023. Before the bounty hunter stage, up to 100,000 addresses self-reported as Sybil. According to statistics, there are a total of 800,000 addresses that could potentially be Sybil accounts.

After the open bounty hunters reported addresses that did not self-report, there was a surge in reports, as well as numerous complaints...

CEO of LayerZero Labs, Bryan Pellegrino, wrote in a tweet: "Waking up is like being in a battlefield. We knew this would be PvP [player versus player], but this is something else entirely." Hours after the start of the latest phase of LayerZero's airdrop, users began reporting Sybil accounts that did not self-report in order to claim bounties, resulting in over 3,000 bounty reports and 30,000 complaints received by LayerZero.

GitHub Flooded with Complaints, to Temporarily Halt the Process

As these reports were implemented on GitHub, some users went to report the accusers' accounts, prompting GitHub to delete the accounts and their reports.

Pellegrino announced today that the reporting process will be paused for "a day or two" to address these issues. One proposed solution is to implement a 0.02 ETH deposit, approximately $60 at the current price, to submit reports to reduce the use of automated reporting systems.

Future Solutions

Pellegrino stated: "The main issue to solve is that the best bounty hunters can still submit reports without the deposit being too expensive, and the submission of reports should be fair in cases of conflict. For now, we need to handle a large number of reports and complaints."