UNCHAINED: LayerZero Fought the Sybils and Airdropped Its Token. Did the Team Win?

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4.7 • 698 Ratings

🗓️ 21 June 2024

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

LayerZero’s token ZRO is now live. Founder Bryan Pellegrino delves into all the controversies, challenges and criticisms of its anti-Sybil campaign—and its requirement of a donation to the Protocol Guild. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pods, Fountain, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Castbox, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. LayerZero’s token claims went live on Thursday, and as with every recent airdrop, there was plenty of controversy. In this episode, Bryan Pellegrino, cofounder and CEO of LayerZero Labs, joined to discuss their ambitious anti-Sybil campaign and the subsequent token distribution. He delved into the challenges of ensuring genuine user participation, the decision to offer a self-report option for Sybil attackers, and the complexities imposed by industrial-grade farmers. Bryan shared what he would have done differently and why a mandatory donation to Protocol Guild was imposed. Also, are airdrops dead? How can the industry improve this not-so-effective distribution method? Show highlights: 0:30 Why LayerZero launched an anti-Sybil campaign with its airdrop, and what challenges they faced in ensuring genuine user participation 4:00 Why LayerZero offered a self-report option for Sybil attackers, and how this strategy revealed both the complexities and the creativity within the crypto community 09:28 How the anti-Sybil campaign uncovered over a million fraudulent accounts 12:43 What Bryan would have done differently in their campaign 15:33 What alternative methods, such as KYC and proof-of-humanity protocols, LayerZero could have used for their anti-Sybil campaign 16:53 How LayerZero navigated the cat-and-mouse game with industrial airdrop farmers 21:30 Why they decided to impose a donation to Protocol Guild to claim the ZRO token 30:33 What caused the dramatic drop in LayerZero's activity post-announcement of their anti-Sybil campaign, and why the team is optimistic despite the decline 33:53 LayerZero's plans for future airdrops 37:11 What Bryan thinks the future holds for airdrops in crypto, and how the current broken system can be improved to achieve better distribution and user engagement Visit our website for breaking news, analysis, op-eds, articles to learn about crypto, and much more: unchainedcrypto.com Thank you to our sponsors! iTrustCapital Polkadot Guest Bryan Pellegrino, cofounder and CEO of LayerZero Labs - Unchained Podcast is Produced by Laura Shin Media, LLC. Distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Michele Musso and Executive Producer is Jared Schwartz. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:49.7	And yes, you have some tails of 20%, 10% of these people who are like really bought in and
0:55.0	interest in the thing that you're doing, but you just have this ball of money or activity
0:58.9	that's jumping around. And so there's just this disconnected relationship between give us,
1:04.0	give us these tokens and we release how many tokens we're giving and how we're doing us.
1:07.8	Like, give us more tokens. Like if you don't give us more,
1:11.2	then the community is going to hate you. And there's, there's so much entitlement.
1:19.7	Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host,
1:24.3	Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto nine years ago, and as a senior editor at Forbes, was the first
1:30.7	major major reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time.
1:33.3	This is the June 21st, 2024 episode of Unchained.
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