Author: 3HOUSE user @1234
With the continuous development and growth of the crypto industry, more and more projects are choosing to use Airdrops to help them acquire early users and communities. Airdrops have gradually become an important way for web3 project operations. Conducting Airdrops for the community can help project teams gain long-term and sustainable customers and funds, which is an important way to help projects achieve cold start. Most of the users who receive Airdrops will continue to accompany the growth of the project and become an important force in promoting and applying the project.
However, Airdrops have not been around for long, and some inherent problems have caused them to be widely criticized by the community. Due to the low cost, even zero cost, of creating wallet addresses, a large number of accounts can be easily created, which greatly facilitates the behavior of Airdrop hunters. They register a large number of wallet addresses to participate in project interactions and generate a large amount of interaction data on the chain. This behavior is called a Sybil attack. When projects issue tokens, they often screen addresses and exclude those identified as Sybil attacks. However, there will still be a large number of addresses that are spared from the Sybil screening due to transaction isolation and stealth, and they often collect the Airdropped tokens from a large number of addresses and then sell them for profit on the chain or exchange. These users are not friendly to the development of projects and communities.
As ordinary participants in the ecosystem, we should also pay attention to protecting our addresses and on-chain transactions in the process of interaction to avoid being defined as Sybil addresses by projects during Airdrop screening and losing the value of our on-chain data assets. In addition, we also need to pay attention to avoiding interaction with phishing websites that may lead to private key leaks and asset theft. Crypto is still in its early stages of development and is rightfully called a dark forest, so we should learn some skills to protect ourselves and capture the dividends of industry development.
Risk 1: Phishing scams
First of all, one of the main risks that Airdrop hunters need to pay attention to is phishing scams. This refers to the means of deception that steal users' digital identities to obtain their wallet private keys, mnemonic phrases and other information. Phishers will look for targets from opportunists, then use the guise of exchanging free tokens to lead victims to a seemingly legitimate Airdrop website, guide them to enter personal information and sign authorizations with their private keys. Once the user authorizes a certain asset, hackers can steal their property based on the signature information.
To prevent this risk, users need to be cautious when identifying Airdrops and hunting information. Community users need to remain vigilant when identifying Airdrops and not believe projects that claim to offer free tokens with a particularly high cash value. All gifts in life have already been priced. When applying for Airdrops, users need to ensure that they are going to the real Airdrop website and participating in Airdrops from the correct information source. I have a real example around me. My friend directly used Google Chrome to search for Pancake's official website to Swap during an asset exchange, but what was retrieved was a phishing website. After authorization, the assets were instantly transferred to the hacker's address, resulting in a loss of tens of thousands. In addition, two-factor authentication is also a good way to prevent phishing attacks. We can install some plug-ins that detect hacker addresses or contracts in the browser. These plug-ins will give us risk prompts when we interact with high-risk websites and contracts to prevent us from interacting with them.
Risk 2: Fake airdrops
The second risk is related to fake Airdrops. This fraudulent method often makes users bypass the normal procedure to participate in a non-genuine Airdrop. In other words, some phishers create seemingly valuable Airdrops to obtain users' private key information and sensitive data, and cheat users' money.
As there are currently no complete regulations that can be used for monitoring in the crypto industry, criminals can commit crimes at very low cost and avoid punishment. They publish false Airdrop information in the network to induce people who want to take advantage of the opportunity to participate, and due to the lack of professional knowledge and awareness of danger in the industry, many people are often deceived by false Airdrops, resulting in asset losses.
To mitigate this risk, users must carefully research and analyze Airdrop websites and ensure that they reach a consensus with responsible parties. Specific measures include checking the authenticity of project information, verifying whether they promote their website addresses while posting slogans and information on social media, and checking familiar community activities to make better judgments. Specific Airdrop information can be obtained from the project's official Twitter, Telegram, Medium and other social media channels.
Risk 3: Decentralized exchange (DEX) scams
The third risk involves DEX scams. Many DEXs initially sell high rewards and free tokens as pre-sale privileges to users. However, in some cases, these so-called free tokens are actually false tokens issued by illegal projects and are almost worthless. Therefore, many DEX projects are regarded as scams. In addition to issuing false tokens, they also attract users to recharge and trade through raising the price of tokens. When Airdropping tokens, small exchanges often have a lack of liquidity, which leads to prices in the exchange being much higher than the market price. Many unidentified users see this and recharge their tokens to small exchanges. However, due to the low liquidity, when they sell, the user's selling price is often much lower than the market price, resulting in unnecessary losses.
To prevent this risk and DEX scams, users should choose good DEX platforms that implement KYC procedures according to regulations as much as possible. When trading on DEXs, buyers should verify other operating data, such as market value and white papers, to avoid any unclear or suspicious investment operations on DEXs. At the same time, trading on the mainstream exchanges can avoid larger slippage and price differences, maximizing user profits.
Risk 4: Malware
There is also a security risk from malware, including ransomware, malicious code, and spyware. These software transmitted between digital currency transactions can steal users' private keys, account information, and other related information. They can also extract users' data and funds from time to time. Users may lose their assets and access to their accounts if they carelessly attach malware.
To protect themselves from this security threat, digital currency enthusiasts must ensure that their computers have secure and effective antivirus systems. More attention should be paid to security during software downloads and installations, avoiding any files from unknown sources entering the system.
Risk 5: Sybil attack address screening
During the process of community participation, some users have been marked as Sybil addresses as a precedent for using one-time interaction scripts developed by anonymous developers in the community. In the large-scale Airdrop process of Arbitrum, the Sybil address library of Hop was used, that is, the wallets marked as Sybil addresses during the Hop Airdrop were also used in the Arbitrum Airdrop. Therefore, it is also important to protect our own address interaction data. Every transaction on the chain is our data asset, which will be an important indicator of our Airdrop benefits. If we really need to use multiple addresses to interact, we must also do a good job of isolating addresses, including the source of funds, interaction contracts, and times. It is important to diversify our transaction types and avoid using script transactions to safeguard our data assets and obtain future benefits.
So what have we learned? Crypto is still an undeveloped dark forest, with many opportunities and huge risks. Airdrop hunters should pay attention to the above risks and take corresponding measures to protect themselves. As the crypto industry continues to develop rapidly, we should constantly improve our own knowledge and skills to grasp the dividends of industry development and avoid unnecessary losses.
