Airdrop Game

+-----------------------------------------------------------+
|                    AIRDROP GAME                            |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
|                                                           |
|   How to airdrop like Tiesun (Pacman)                     |
|   Phase-based strategy for maximum extraction             |
|                                                           |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+

Understanding Why Airdrop

Your Persona

You aspire to be the next Tiesun (Pacman), the next penguin emperor. You’ve already closed a round or got on board with institutions, hoping to smoothly list on Binance and maximize cash-out.

Why Airdrop (Instead of Direct Selling)

Often because you can’t directly sell:

Reason	Description
Reach doesn’t support	Without airdrop, KOLs can’t find risk-free promotional hooks
Compliance doesn’t support	Direct ICO/IEO not compliant in many jurisdictions
Terms don’t support	Exchanges supervise unlocks and distribution, can’t cash out at listing

Airdrop Essence:

• Marketing cost to maximize later token sales profit
• Disguised ICO
• Hide chips to get more cash-out opportunities

---

Phase One: Before Lead Investor

Without sufficient endorsement, user trust cost is high.

Strategy

Use zero-cost or low-cost, simple but repetitive activity formats
        ↓
Increase time sunk cost
        ↓
At this stage, do data at all costs
        ↓
No need to consider future airdrop fulfillment issues

Data Type Selection

Four types of data: TVL, trading volume, DAU, protocol revenue

Selection: Choose the format with no unit cost and easiest to farm (generally exclude protocol revenue)

Format	Data Farmed
Testnet faucet transactions	Trading volume
Register and click-click-click	DAU

Key Design

• Unify task progress to visualized standards (e.g., Linea’s LXP, Initia’s game-style points)
• Don’t worry about whether points issuance is reasonable, unrelated to final airdrop
• Don’t set barriers for multiple accounts, make script creation simple
• Find English-speaking influencers to post testnet tutorials, Chinese farmers will follow

---

Phase Two: Before Exchange Listing

Exchange Three Priorities: Compliance, new users, new buying pressure

Strategy

"Compliance": Find good white gloves (ecosystem) to do what main entity can't
"New users, new buying": Must make users spend money to generate "protocol revenue"
        ↓
Run a split scheme, make users spend as much as possible
        ↓
Raise their future chip costs

Reserve Insider Position Space

Strategy	Purpose
Add activity dimensions	Cover more asset targets and trading behaviors
External ambiguity	Don’t let outsiders identify “favorite sons”, muddy waters
Internal clarity	True favorite sons are projects that eat customer losses, tilt airdrops toward them

ZKSYNC is the best example: Mix in zero-value dog projects to get airdrop, eat and take both

---

Phase Three: Before TGE

The real accounting moment. After confirming exchange, need to determine the relationship between points and airdrop.

Start with the End

Farmers have POW mentality, don't expect them to buy on secondary
        ↓
Goal is good secondary performance
        ↓
All actually distributed airdrops treated as sell pressure
        ↓
Sell pressure cannot exceed first-day exchange buying

Core Formula

First-day exchange total buying ≥ Expected first-day average price × (TGE unlock + TGE actual airdrop)

Example:

• Current valuation $80M, TGE valuation $200M
• No VC unlock, three second-tier exchanges estimated $3M buying
• First-day actual airdrop cap: 1.5%

Blast Case Study

Initial release: 17% = 17B
Main exchanges: Upbit, Bithumb, Bybit
Reference Taiko first two days, estimate $3-5B trading volume
Assume 20% is secondary turnover, pure buying ~$3B
Current ~$0.024 (FDV $2.4B) = Very reasonable

Handling the Gap

Difference between published tokenomics airdrop percentage and actual distribution requires:

Method	Effect
Lockup	Delay sell pressure
Anti-Sybil	Reduce actual distribution
Lower certain dimension weights	Targeted reduction

Balancing Three Factors

• Maximize per-farmer FDV equivalent
• Keep single-account returns within community non-FUD range (no widespread losses)
• Maximize insider position holdings

When balance impossible: Prioritize emotional stability of highest-influence accounts, cut super-large and super-small accounts

Don’t be like L0 and ZKSYNC, offending the loudest majority in the market

---

Core Formulas

Airdrop Three Phases:
├── Before lead investor: Zero-cost data, ignore fulfillment
├── Before listing: Run split scheme, raise chip costs, reserve insider positions
└── Before TGE: Accounting, ensure sell pressure < first-day buying

Actual Airdrop Cap:
├── First-day buying ≥ Expected price × (Unlock + Actual airdrop)
└── Handle gap through lockup/anti-Sybil/dimension reduction

Emotion Management:
├── Prioritize influential account emotions
├── Cut super-large and super-small accounts
└── One can be reasoned with, one has no voice anyway

---

Airdrop PUA is a marathon, for prey and hunters alike

Project teams must always remember why they started - begin with the end in mind