Author: Azuma, Odaily Star Daily

On May 2nd, the cross-chain interoperability protocol LayerZero officially announced that the first snapshot (Snapshot #1) has been completed on X and more information will be released soon.

As one of the most highly anticipated potential airdrop projects in the community, LayerZero's brief announcement has been interpreted by the community as "the airdrop snapshot is completed, and something big is coming."

On May 3rd, Layer Zero's official announcement once again hinted at an important announcement to be made that evening, "to demonstrate continued trust in community members." However, just as the community speculated whether LayerZero was about to announce detailed airdrop rules, the final announcement from LayerZero turned out to be a heavy blow to all users - the tokens are indeed going to be distributed, but multiple rounds of witch screening activities need to be conducted first.

Airdrop Background: Six Million Users

According to the official documentation, when LayerZero formulated the token distribution plan, a key factor to consider was how to determine the highest quality user cluster. In LayerZero's view, the highest quality users should be the most "persistent" users, and "persistence" is defined as those most likely to continue using LayerZero in the future or continue their past usage habits.

On the evening of May 2nd, LayerZero co-founder Bryan Pellegrino replied to the community on X, stating that, considering all the networks covered by LayerZero, the actual total user base of the protocol is approximately 5.8 million addresses; while the official announcement last night revealed that LayerZero's current user base is close to 6 million addresses.

Considering past airdrop cases in the industry, over a million addresses already constitute a large-scale distribution. Therefore, for LayerZero, it is necessary to reduce the scope of the airdrop through mechanism design or witch screening, to distribute the tokens in a way that better aligns with the project's expectations to potential users.

Witch Judgment Rules

In the official materials released by LayerZero, specific screening rules have not been provided (possibly to prevent witches from self-inspection, which may affect the effectiveness of the "self-exposure" stage mentioned below), but several possible interactions that may be considered witch behavior have been listed by way of example. Bryan also provided some additional explanations for certain cases on his personal X account.

In summary, interactions that may lead to an address being identified as a witch include:

• Acting as an individual or entity, but engaging in batch interactions using dozens, hundreds, or thousands of addresses;
• Creating a "worthless" NFT for cross-chain transfer of NFTs between different chains;
• Using common "witch brushing" applications such as Merkly, L2 Pass, L2 Marathon;
• Transferring extremely small amounts (e.g. $0.01) back and forth between different chains to leave interaction records on multiple networks;
• If you think you are a witch, then you probably are a witch.

Regarding the judgment of the use of tools like Merkly, some users questioned that this may lead to large-scale "false positives," to which Bryan replied, "If you are a genuine user who has used Merkly to reduce gas fees, you may not be identified as a witch, but if you are only using Merkly to transfer assets back and forth, then you may be a witch."

Witch Screening Rounds

According to the disclosure by LayerZero, the witch cleansing activity this time will be conducted in three rounds.

The first round is the "self-exposure" stage, which will last for 14 days. Users who suspect themselves of being witches can "self-expose" during this stage through the window provided by LayerZero, in order to retain 15% of the airdrop allocation.

It is worth mentioning that, to facilitate the "self-exposure" process, LayerZero also "thoughtfully" provides an API tool for mass address submission.

The second stage is the "trial" stage, during which LayerZero will conduct witch screening according to specific rules, and the screening results will be announced on May 18th. Addresses identified during this stage will not receive any airdrop allocation.

The third stage is the "mutual accusation" stage, which will run from May 18th to May 31st. LayerZero encourages community users to report witch behavior to each other, and successful accusers can receive 10% of the airdrop allocation of the reported address.

The Largest Witch Cleansing Activity in History?

Considering the schedule disclosed by LayerZero, it is likely that the governance token of the protocol will be officially issued after the "mutual accusation" stage ends on May 31st, so the expected token issuance date should be in June.

For users eagerly anticipating the LayerZero airdrop, they will need to endure a full month of witch cleansing activity before receiving the final reward. Considering the enormous user base of LayerZero itself, coupled with the reusable nature of the witch label in different projects, LayerZero's initiative may not only be the largest-scale witch cleansing activity in history, but its screening results may also have a profound impact on potential airdrops of other projects in the future.

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