Review of Uniswap airdrop: an unprecedented initiative

Hayden Adams tweeted that when Uniswap conducted a retroactive airdrop of the governance token UNI, it was basically an unprecedented initiative. The protocol has been running for many years, has hundreds of thousands of users, and has achieved a strong product market. Fit.

At that time, the Uniswap team believed:

No one can replicate the Uniswap airdrop.

This is because they believe that every airdrop in the future will be rigged. Hayden Adams pointed out that almost every project will have an airdrop now, and most of them have some degree of manipulation.

He went on to comment on the pros and cons of airdrops.

When we did the retroactive UNI airdrop it was basically unprecedented

Uniswap protocol had been live for years with hundreds of thousands of historical users and strong product market fit

At the time we said to ourselves “no one can ever replicate this” because every future…

— hayden.eth (@haydenzadams) January 16, 2024

Advantages and Disadvantages of Airdrop

Advantage:

  • Financially changing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world (Hayden Adams claims to have heard many stories).

  • A culture that rewards early adopters, users.

  • Fairer and broader distribution of value.

  • Easier self-service adoption makes the masses willing to try new things.

  • Good airdrops enable early liquidity and early price discovery.

Disadvantages:

  • Airdrops are industrialized, and users expect every project to be airdropped.

  • The project team mistook airdrop users for a product-market fit.

  • Harass the team and request airdrop "wen airdrop".

  • The project team uses potential airdrops to continuously attack users who expect airdrops.

How to perform a successful airdrop?

Hayden Adams suggested at the end of the article that the project team should clearly define its goals to design the airdrop mechanism, but also understand that speculators will always exist, and anything that can be manipulated will be manipulated.

He also mentioned that Uniswap’s airdrop is unprecedented in terms of influence, but the real first airdrop should be the airdrop of OMG Network (OMG) to ETH holders in 2017.

Note: OmiseGo changed its name to OMG Network in June 2020.

Although Hayden Adams was right, when SushiSwap copied the protocol code and started liquidity mining in September 2020, Uniswap seemed to be forced by the situation and announced an airdrop in less than a month. The governance token Uni and the launch of liquidity mining have lifted the liquidity war. However, Uni only has a governance voting function and is often criticized.

(SushiSwap’s liquidity migration is ahead of schedule, and Uniswap may lose 80% of its liquidity overnight)

This article reviews the airdrop chaos, Hayden Adams comments on his own Uniswap airdrop: an unprecedented initiative first appeared on Chain News ABMedia.