Author: Hu Tao, ChainCatcher

Yesterday, the Layer1 public chain Monad's token MON officially launched, briefly falling below the public offering user cost price. Currently, the FDV still hovers in the range of $3-3.5 billion, which is not only lower than the mainstream predicted market value of $8 billion on Polymarket but also far below the early Pre-TGE market valuation of $15 billion.

This is not only a heavy blow to the Layer1 narrative but also a "tragedy" for the profit-seeking community.

Previously, Monad, with a valuation of $3 billion, became the highest-valued unissued Layer1 in the market, with high hopes from the profit-seeking community. Its testnet has accumulated over 300 million interactive addresses, and many studios have been using millions of addresses to register Monad addresses. At the end of October, Monad officially opened the airdrop query but unexpectedly excluded all testnet interactive addresses from the airdrop eligibility.

The logic of the profit-seeking community is that "sunshine for all" is a common practice among many project teams. As long as they maintain a high frequency of interactions, they might receive token rewards ranging from a few dollars to several tens of dollars, and the cumulative token value from multiple addresses remains considerable. However, Monad's official team did not respond as the large profit-seeking community wished, excluding all testnet addresses from the airdrop.

"All testnet interactive addresses were excluded, and participating in various NFTs was basically useless. The only ones who received the Monad airdrop were some old addresses that had never interacted with Monad but had traded on Hyperliquid," said A-Du (pseudonym), head of a profit-seeking studio in Hangzhou, to ChainCatcher.

In no time, Monad became the target of intense criticism from many profit-seeking users, but the Monad official team remained unmoved. According to well-known KOL Feng Mi, the airdrop strategy this time was to bundle individuals with contributions, identities, and potential into Monad, focusing on identity + contribution, such as Monad ecosystem developers, heavy DeFi users, and quality NFT holders.

Famous alpha blogger Spark received a reward of 3 million MON in this airdrop, currently valued at about $110,000. This was not due to his interaction record but because he served as a Mod in the Monad community for three years and established the Monad Chinese community. This was considered a substantial contribution by the Monad official team, which is also a key target for most project airdrops.

For project teams, the significance of airdrops lies in rewarding long-term supporters of the project, reflecting their importance to community users, and rewarding active participants and influencers in the surrounding ecosystem, using airdrop rewards to attract them into their ecosystem. From the earliest Uniswap to thousands of projects like Gitcoin, Arbitrum, Scroll, Berachain, and Aster, airdrops have been seen as a necessary path for project teams to attract users.

During this period, the standards for airdrops have been continuously diverging and evolving. Some projects emphasize equal distribution and generosity towards participating profit-seekers, while others set strict rules for interactions on testnets/mainnets, implementing rigorous witch hunts based on a points system. This time, Monad completely abandoned testnet interactive users, or rather, retail investors.

"If a network ignores retail investors for a long time, it will become overly elitist in its early stages, losing a broad community base. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and BSC all relied on a group of seemingly insignificant small retail investors in their early days, who brought network effects and community vitality," Feng Mi stated on X. He believes Monad should allow grassroots retail investors to have a space to grow gradually, even if just a little, to enable more people to truly become part of the MON network community.

Chasing Wind believes that profit-seekers contribute not only transaction fees, data, and traffic to project teams but also play a good promotional role, stating that these individuals need to be incentivized. "Monad's operation is indeed too shortsighted, shaking the trust foundation of the entire industry," said Ice Frog on Twitter.

However, from the perspective of project teams, they need to formulate airdrop strategies based on the long-term development needs of the project. "Profit-seekers have no loyalty; they will sell off their airdrops and then run to the next project to profit. For projects, this only creates selling pressure without long-term benefits. Is it necessary to give them airdrops?" an anonymous KOL described, stating that profit-seekers are like "parasites" in the crypto ecosystem.

Master Brother from Australia also believes that the logic of airdrops in the industry is changing. "In the past, when CEX assessed a project's fundamentals, they paid great attention to the activity level of on-chain data and active user metrics. Project teams needed popularity during cold starts. For a long time, project teams tacitly allowed or even reached an agreement with profit-seeking armies: you come here to profit, help me get listed, and I will give you airdrops in return, and we will share the profits. But now, CEX listings no longer look at on-chain data and users because everyone knows these data are heavily inflated," Master Brother from Australia stated on Twitter.

The logic of business is ruthless. As the on-chain data bubble becomes increasingly severe and the selling pressure from profit-seekers negatively impacts the price trends of many projects, Monad's choice is reasonable. However, this will not become the choice of most projects, as Monad, being a capital-heavy public chain project, still has many cards to play, and its technical strength and potential explosive power of ecological applications could bring it a large number of community users. But for most projects, they essentially belong to the marketing category and must rely on airdrops to gain attention and market heat.

In the long run, airdrops remain one of the important sources of value in the crypto industry, but the logic and targets of airdrops are undergoing profound changes. "The results of the Monad airdrop basically announce the collapse of the logic of profit-seeking interactions on testnets, and in the future, it is highly likely that no one will interact on testnets anymore," Master Brother from Australia said.

In fact, many KOLs had anticipated Monad's "table-turning" move, with figures like Master Brother from Australia, Ice Frog, and Chasing Wind openly stating early on that they did not participate in Monad interactions. It is understood that top KOLs will focus more on "mouth profits," arbitrage, and other more diverse markets, while also concentrating on high-quality projects like Polymarket to focus on building premium accounts.

Additionally, several interviewed studios indicated that their earnings are not as good as last year and do not meet expectations. "The key is still to find areas where you have advantages, whether it’s low labor costs, advanced technology, or keen investment research to discover early projects, or having influential KOLs to generate mouth profits. It is quite difficult to achieve substantial returns by simply following the crowd to profit-seek," A-Du stated.

As the market capitalization of first-tier projects like Monad significantly falls below market expectations, and many projects lock user airdrop shares for extended periods after TGE, the status of profit-seekers in the project teams' interest distribution ecosystem continues to decline, and the value of tokens in hand keeps shrinking. The logic of winning by volume has become increasingly unsustainable.

"So, the era for retail investors to enter the primary market and take advantage of cheap dividends has indeed ended. The door has long been closing; Monad's airdrop merely shut the last remaining gap," Master Brother from Australia lamented.

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