TL/DR;

“Bro, I got $100k in airdrops last year alone, follow me for alpha” is highly unreliable, archaic method for proving one’s ability to find alpha that belongs to the old days of Web2. “Check the past airdrops I received via my Sismo zk badges” is a better way of proving authenticity of claims and reputation by crypto influencers. Don’t trust - verify, is a Web3 mantra that shouldn’t only be applied just to checking contracts, it should also be applied to claims on crypto social media.

We’ve come up with an example zk badge that can be displayed by those who managed to score impressive 5 multipliers and up for $OP airdrop by Optimism. Only 672 managed to do this, so having this badge is potentially a better way to prove OG-ness than the current “Trust me, bro”. Minting this badge to one’s public wallet won’t reveal their private wallet thanks to the zero-knowledge technology.

Proving which airdrops a crypto influencer managed to score is just an example of a much bigger usecase - proving about any on-chain claims on social media while preserving privacy.

The Problem

In the recent years, Web3 ‘alpha’ (be it how to land airdrops or how to find best strategies) was gated and closely-guarded information. However this has since changed. As one Discord user put it nicely:

Back in the days you had to hunt for alpha. Nowadays alpha hunts for you.

There are currently numerous accounts that share their airdrop strategies for free on Twitter, Lens, Mirror, YouTube or all of the above (i.e. the so-called Alphors). And this number continues to grow every day, propagated by the recent surprise airdrop of Aptos.

This sudden proliferation of Alphors comes with the following challenges for both the follower and the account holder:

1. Problems faced by followers. How do the followers know which of the Alphors are true OGs and which ones are simply farming for followers by promising easy airdrops if follow their advice? Almost everyone claims to have received multiple lucrative airdrops in the past but private wallet ids are never disclosed for verification.

   Alphors’ disclaimer state NFA, but most of their followers still lock up $000s in apps without doing own research following advertised airdrop strategies. In TradFi, investors would at least be able to get information on past returns from their financial advisors. In crypto social media however, you have to rely on someone’s claims.

2. Problems faced by Alphors. How can Alphors prove their OG-ness without resorting to the “Trust me bro” or revealing their private wallets? Revealing private wallets would encourage everyone to track their every transaction and potentially interpret it as call for action, thereby stripping the Alphor of privacy.

   One workaround is to use the “I told you so” move - i.e. share your opinion on how to get an airdrop, then prove your OG-ness after the said airdrop takes place (assuming the prediction was correct). However, new writers/Alphors are disadvantaged, as they wouldn’t be able to show any track record even though they might have been successful with their on-chain strategies.

The Solution: zk badges by Sismo

Clear solution to both of the above problems is using zk Badges by Sismo.io

What are Sismo zk badges?

In simple terms, Sismo zk badges are soul-bound tokens that can prove some on-chain (or certain off-chain) event without revealing the identity of the wallet that made this action. This is possible thanks to the zero-knowledge technology.

More information on how it all works can be found here:

How can they solve the problem of Alphor authenticity exactly?

Anyone can create Sismo badges on factory.sismo.io. It is possible to create a number of badges that prove receipt of particular airdrops. These badges can be based on what the crypto community views as achievements. For example, some of the surprising and hard-to-achieve airdrop examples have been Paraswap, Optimism 5 or 6 multipliers, etc. Assuming existence of Sismo zk badges that prove receipt of specific airdrop:

1. Alphor verifies that their private wallet is eligible to claim this airdrop achievement badge

2. Alphor mints this badge to their public wallet (no link between private and public wallets are revealed)

3. Alphor can now display a link to their Sismo badges proving that some of their private wallet earned this airdrop

Both of the above-mentioned problems of proving authenticity of claims and preserving privacy are solved.

ZK Badge for those who managed to get 5+ multipliers for $OP airdrop

As mentioned above, we have created a badge that can be claimed by those who managed to achieve 5 multipliers and up for Optimism airdrop. As there are only 672 eligible wallets, Optimism airdrop introduced a new concept of multipliers that not many managed to predict. On one hand scoring 5+ multipliers could have been attributed to luck. On the other hand, the more similar hard-to-get airdrop achievement badges are minted and displayed by the same Alphor, the less is the likelihood that their prediction capability is mere luck.

We invite all Alphors to mint the Optimism airdrop badge via the below link and display it to their followers:

Next steps

• We plan to work on creating more hard-to-get airdrop badges on Sismo. What are some of the good candidates? Some of the airdrops that we could think of are: Paraswap (multiple hard-to-predict criteria used), Forta (only a few qualifying wallets, the project was really under the radar with only few true OGs following it)

• It would also be great if Sismo badges could one day be integrated with Lens ecosystem. This way, there would be no need to make any public statements as your badges would be displayed on your landing profile page right away - aiding potential followers in deciding whether to follow someone or not. For example, this is how it could look like on Lenster:

• Finally, we believe that the above is just one example of the same use case for Sismo badges that can prove about any on-chain action claims on crypto social media. Sismo badges can serve as proof of competence for social media accounts.