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Reviewing the Airdrop Chaos, Hayden Adams Comments on Uniswap's Own Airdrop: Unprecedented Innovation

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Reviewing the Airdrop Chaos, Hayden Adams Comments on Uniswap

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Exploring the Uniswap Airdrop: Unprecedented Innovation

Hayden Adams tweeted that when Uniswap distributed retrospective governance token UNI through an airdrop, it was essentially an unprecedented move. The protocol has been running for several years, boasting hundreds of thousands of users and achieving strong product-market fit.

At that time, the Uniswap team believed:

No one can replicate the Uniswap airdrop.

This is because they believed that every future airdrop would be manipulated. Hayden Adams pointed out that almost every project now conducts airdrops, with the majority of them being subject to some level of manipulation.

He then discussed the pros and cons of airdrops.

The Pros and Cons of Airdrops

Advantages:

  • Financially changing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people globally, as claimed by Hayden Adams.

  • Rewards early adopters and fosters a user culture.

  • Fairer, more widespread value distribution.

  • Simpler self-adoption that encourages the public to try new things.

  • Good airdrops can achieve early liquidity and price discovery.

Disadvantages:

  • Airdrops have become industrialized, with users expecting every project to conduct them.

  • Project teams mistakenly view airdropped users as a product-market fit.

  • Teams are harassed and pressured for airdrops ("wen airdrop").

  • Project teams exploit potential airdrops, continuously disappointing users expecting them.

How to Execute a Successful Airdrop?

In conclusion, Hayden Adams suggested that project teams should clearly define their goals to design airdrop mechanisms, while also understanding 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, but the true first airdrop was for OMG Network's OMG to ETH holders in 2017.

Note: OmiseGo was rebranded as OMG Network in June 2020.

Although Hayden Adams spoke with conviction, when SushiSwap copied Uniswap's protocol code and launched liquidity mining in September 2020, Uniswap seemed compelled by the situation to announce its own airdrop of governance token Uni and start liquidity mining within less than a month to end the liquidity war. Uni, which only had governance voting functions, was often criticized.

SushiSwap's liquidity migration ahead, Uniswap may lose 80% of liquidity overnight