Who Knew Throwing Tantrums Would Be Such an Effective Strategy to Receive a Larger Airdrop Allocation?

Last week, the Eigen Foundation decided to allocate 100 additional Eigen tokens, worth about $1,000, to 280,000 of its users, in addition to the tokens they were already due to receive.

Coming just three days after the Foundation announced details of its airdrop, the move was in response to users going on social media to voice how upset they were with many elements of EigenLayer’s airdrop, such as its linear distribution model that they said favored whales.

The decision to allocate additional tokens to users by the Eigen Foundation was one of several recent instances when a crypto project has received harsh criticism about its airdrop and subsequently decided to change its allocation.

In addition to public criticism, early adopters have threatened to withdraw their assets, terminate their activity, and adversely impact a project’s culture as a means to highlight their dissatisfaction with a project’s airdrop plan and push project team members to enact changes.

EtherFi and Renzo

EtherFi and Renzo are two protocols that, like EigenLayer, are focused on restaking. They also changed their initial airdrop plans following community backlash.

Within 24 hours of unveiling its airdrop plan, EtherFi updated its eligibility checker on March 17. That day, the EtherFi team on X wrote, “We listened to our community and increased our token allocation by over 12M tokens, representing an additional 1.2% of total supply.” This move was aimed to ensure more tokens got in the hands of smaller depositors.

According to EtherFi CEO Mike Silagadze, the quick adjustment helped make the EtherFI airdrop a success. “We did an initial claims check page and then got a bunch of feedback and iterated in 24 hours,” Silagadze wrote to Unchained over Telegram.

Meanwhile, on April 23, Renzo announced its airdrop plans, which was met with criticisms and threats to withdraw from the protocol. The next day, the team acknowledged that the feedback of community members formed the basis of its airdrop update, which included changes in the claim timeline, tokenomics, and airdrop eligibility. One such adjustment was increasing the community’s allocation of the total token supply from 30% to 32%.

‘Tantrums’ or ‘People Responding Rationally’?

Public conversations among protocol users about details of an airdrop “helps these teams get a better understanding of what users were expecting and how they can keep users engaged,” Andrew Van Aken, data scientist at blockchain analytics firm Artemis, said in a conversation with Unchained. While tantrums may not be the best mechanism for negotiations, “it does provide an interesting factor to help the community negotiate or even voice their opinion for the protocols,” according to Van Aken.

Data scientist Carlos Mercado of Flipside Crypto objected, however, to the use of the word “tantrum,” to describe negative community feedback to a project’s airdrop. Outrage, dissatisfaction, or frustration stemming from a project’s airdrop plan is just people “responding rationally,” Mercado told Unchained in an interview.

While coding is challenging, “all the effort involved in getting hundreds of thousands of people to engage with that code is harder,” Mercado added. Early adopters are giving these protocols mindshare for visibility, total value locked, engagement, and “all the onchain metrics.” As such, they are justified in being vocal about their thoughts about a project’s airdrop plan.

Community feedback about an airdrop is “the whole proof of social consensus around crypto,” in which a person’s opinion matters by virtue of being an active participant in the protocol, Mercado added.