Original | Odaily Planet Daily

Author | How is the husband

Recently, LayerZero and various Layer 2 projects have launched a fierce attack on the hair-raising community. From the perspective of rule-making and decision-making power, it seems that the two sides are not evenly matched. The introduction of various anti-witch policies corresponds to the suspicion that most of the qualified airdrop addresses are "rat warehouses," which has sparked conflicts between the two groups that once had a tacit understanding.

It wasn't until Binance founder He Yi wrote about the rise and fall of the cryptocurrency market in the past and stated, "Today, the market has indeed changed again. The self-inflicted killing between the hair-raising studio and L2 projects has turned into a farce, and the era of hair-raising may be coming to an end." This completely shifted the focus of the crypto world to the two groups.

From an external perspective, the project's introduction of anti-witch mechanisms to restrict the hair-raising studio from brushing airdrops, while the hair-raising studio continues to increase costs to meet the anti-witch standards, seems to indicate an antagonistic relationship between the project party and the hair-raising studio. But is this really the case?

Odaily Planet Daily conducted an anonymous interview with the founder of the hair-raising studio, and LM (pseudonym) revealed the fascinating stories behind the hair-raising studio and the project party.

The hair-raising studio may have originated from KOL

The term "hair-raising" actually originated a long time ago. After institutional-level capital entered the market, the project party no longer needed to conduct public token financing through IEO and other forms. Instead, institutions replaced the public to invest in early-stage projects to ensure their survival and project development, and the public participated in the early-stage construction of the project to qualify for airdropped tokens.

At the same time, with the rise in value of UniSwap airdropped tokens, subsequent projects became enthusiastic about interacting with multiple addresses, giving rise to the behavior verb "hair-raising."

Regarding the motivation behind hair-raising, LM, the interviewee, said, "Although I also obtained airdropped tokens early on, such as UniSwap, I did not feel that it could bring in high returns. But at the end of the last bull market, the NFT sector was very hot. I got to know some well-known KOLs, who should be the earliest group to start 'hair-raising.' When they received airdropped tokens from Aptos, each of them received at least several hundred thousand USDT. This made me truly realize the value of hair-raising. My first hair-raising project was Blur, because the NFT sector was very hot at the time, and the airdrop rules for Blur were based on trading on that platform. However, I didn't have relevant experience for the first hair-raising, and made some mistakes, so I didn't achieve high profits, only around 2000 USDT."

So, what was the opportunity that led LM to truly establish a hair-raising studio? LM said, "I truly started to establish the hair-raising studio when L2 emerged. At that time, the entire network was engaging in hair-raising activities for L2 projects such as zk sync and Starknet. I realized the need to establish a studio to achieve scale, because one person's time and energy are limited, and strength comes from numbers. In fact, hair-raising studios had been established long before that."

Based on LM's response, it can be seen that hair-raising studios probably began to gradually emerge in the later stages of the previous bull market and have matured since then. The main body of this business includes related KOLs.

Unique structure of the interviewee's hair-raising studio

When discussing LM's current studio business, LM said, "Currently, my studio has about 7 full-time staff, plus interns and distributed office staff, totaling about 20 people. The business is roughly divided into three sections: KOL cultivation, community, and hair-raising studio."

LM said, "The KOL cultivation section is not about making money from these people like traditional MCN companies. Instead, it provides them with a platform for communication and learning. Currently, the group of KOLs being cultivated mostly consists of blockchain-related professionals who are still in school. Firstly, they have a certain knowledge reserve in Web3, and they also want to develop in the blockchain industry in the future. I hope to provide some education to help them enter Web3-related companies after graduation. On the one hand, this will provide Web3 with some talent, and secondly, for me personally, since they start at my studio, I can also provide some visibility and related benefits after they enter relevant companies."

This KOL cultivation initiative not only brings a large number of practitioners into Web3 but also potentially brings returns for LM. It can be imagined that if these individuals enter capital, project parties, or even exchanges, the subsequent value they can bring is obvious, which reminds the author of the role of an undercover agent in the movie "Infernal Affairs."

Regarding the community, LM's community is more focused on content precipitation services, and traffic remains the core competitive advantage at present. LM did not elaborate much on the community, but for the hair-raising studio, the community can provide project information diversity, and community operations can also give the hair-raising studio a certain service extension capability.

As for the most core business—hair-raising, LM said, "Regarding the hair-raising business, we are mainly divided into purely internal hair-raising business and semi-external business. The purely internal hair-raising business mainly targets high-quality interactions for current token issuance projects. We do not use scripts for large-scale interactions, but rather employ a more manual approach to ensure that each address can receive the corresponding airdropped tokens. The semi-external business is more for interns and college students. Depending on their different interests, for example, some people like technical aspects and research related node deployment, while others who want to focus on hair-raising are provided with relevant information for mutual exchange."

In response to this, the author asked about the problems that scripted interactions could cause. LM said, "The reason we do not use scripted hair-raising is mainly because most scripts are not stable, especially when it comes to related transactions. Scripted bots are prone to errors. Although it is a low-probability event, if it happens once, it will bring irreparable losses. For example, in NFT platform transactions, scripts easily sell high-priced NFTs at extremely low prices. In addition, scripted hair-raising is suitable for zero-cost testnet interactions, but it easily leads to similarity, so when the project party compiles the airdrop list, most of the restrictions of the anti-witch rules are for scripted orders."

When asked about the daily tools and account maintenance of the hair-raising studio, LM said, "In fact, they are not much different from the tools we use in our daily lives, such as fingerprint browsers, or using AI tools like ChatGPT to improve work efficiency. As for community account maintenance, remember not to log in to multiple accounts with the same IP or have multiple people log in to the same account. This can prevent the official recognition of the account as a bot account."

When asked if the hair-raising studio takes on client commissions, LM said, "We do take on such commissions, but we take on relatively few, mainly because the profits are not high, and we ourselves do not have a large number of accounts to serve them. However, other studios are indeed engaged in related businesses. For example, there are known cases of Starknet airdrops and well-known KOLs running away with tokens worth over 20 million, valued at over 100 million."

According to LM, the business of his studio is more diverse, involving not only hair-raising but also KOL cultivation and community operations, indicating that the business of the hair-raising studio is gradually transitioning from a single focus on hair-raising to a more diversified approach.

Competitive and cooperative relationship between the hair-raising studio and the project party

In this interview, the author focused more on the relationship between the hair-raising studio and the project party and discussed with LM in the hope of uncovering whether the project party and the hair-raising studio have mutually beneficial relationships. As expected, the author is also very grateful for LM's very candid answers, which have revealed the relationship between the project party and the hair-raising studio.

Project party's covert operations, airdrops no longer a survivor bias

When discussing the relationship between the project party and the hair-raising studio, LM metaphorically likened it to the product brushing on the Taobao platform in Web2: "I think the relationship between the hair-raising studio and the project party is more like the product brushing on the Taobao platform. In order to have their products ranked at the top of the search results, merchants place relevant incentives on the brushing platform to attract brushers. This is a means of attracting users at the data level."

However, while Taobao brushing involves merchants actively seeking relevant individuals for operations, the author asked at this point whether Web3 project parties also actively seek out hair-raising studios for airdrop interactions and what benefits they can bring to the hair-raising studio. LM said, "This depends on the size of the project. Large projects will not actively seek out hair-raising studios for interactions, because they do not lack traffic themselves, and everyone is engaged in hair-raising. On the contrary, small projects need the cooperation of hair-raising studios, because only with good data is there a possibility of being listed on exchanges. Generally, these project parties will not provide actual incentives to the hair-raising studio, but they will inform us of the anti-witch rules in advance. With the anti-witch rules, we have already obtained the airdrop rewards with certainty."

When asked about the details of the cooperation between the project party and the hair-raising studio, LM said, "Hair-raising is generally divided into two types, one with costs and the other without costs. Generally, when the project party approaches us, it is mostly the latter. The no-cost type is further divided based on the size of the project. Hair-raising studios are approached more by small projects for testnet interactions. This way, we can brush airdrops by knowing the anti-witch rules in advance, and the project party wants the testnet data to look good, thereby increasing visibility. As for large projects, they rarely approach us proactively. It is more common for us to approach them to obtain the anti-witch rules. However, there are also some well-known projects that, when listing on major exchanges, lack a certain amount of trading data and may commission large hair-raising studios to help increase trading volume."

When asked about the circulating rumors regarding the project party rewarding project tokens to the hair-raising studio, LM said, "Currently, my studio has not received such business, but colleagues around me have received similar business. In essence, this practice is a problem with the project party's exit mechanism. Due to the release cycle required for most project parties' reserved tokens and the clear requirement in the listing rules of related exchanges that the team cannot 'dump' tokens to prevent negative impact, it is possible that the exchange or market maker may help sell them."

"But another scenario is that the project party focuses on airdrops, because the project party is the one setting the airdrop rules. So, if they include some of their own addresses in the rules, this is a very easy and normal phenomenon. And it does not necessarily require cooperation with a hair-raising studio. The project party can meet these requirements on their own, such as TVL range, interaction time, address balance, interaction frequency, and GameFi projects are easier to manipulate, such as level restrictions and login time. For the project party, as long as they place active users within the airdrop standard range and isolate those who are just hair-raising, it will not be a loss for the project's future development. This way, they can generate income for themselves and ensure that core users are not lost. Most project parties are likely to adopt this approach."

The project party's anti-witch rules may be a means of boasting about their "clean" data

Previously, LayerZero's anti-witch measures seemed to create an antagonistic relationship between the hair-raising studio and commissioned clients, and reporting could even lead to more tokens. How do you and your colleagues view this matter?

LM did not directly answer, but instead first introduced the project's customer investment from the perspective of the project party. He divided the customer investment into three categories:

• Top-tier capital investment: accounting for about 10% of the total investment. This part is contributed by a few large capital investors, whose funds are often more than the sum of the remaining 90% of funds. For example, a person may invest 100 bitcoins or 1000 ethers.

• Middle-tier capital investment: accounting for about 30% of the total investment. This part of the funds comes from medium-sized investors, who are usually the core users of the project. For example, a user may stake 0.1 to 2.2 bitcoins.

• Tail-end capital investment: This part of the funds comes from a large number of small investors. Each of these investors may only invest 0.0001 bitcoins.

For the project party, how to handle investors at different levels is a key issue. The project party can choose whether to absorb all investors or only a certain number of investors. This is a strategic choice they need to make.

In general, a project party hopes to attract as much capital as possible to enhance the overall strength and risk resistance of the project. This means they need to design mechanisms that can attract investors at different levels and ensure that these mechanisms can operate effectively to achieve the long-term healthy development of the project.

In conclusion, LM's analysis indicates, "LayerZero's anti-witch measures are more of a marketing tactic, boasting that the project does not have a hair-raising studio, and that all users are real."

It must be said that LM's analysis is to some extent very reasonable. Even if hair-raising studios can report commissioned clients, they are relatively rare compared to the number of "self-hair-raising" activities.

At the same time, LM does not believe that there is an antagonistic relationship between the hair-raising studio and the project party. He said, "The emergence of hair-raising studios provides these projects with effective real user data. As mentioned earlier, in the Web2 era, this phenomenon was very common, such as brushing, trading, and advertising on Taobao. There is a saying in the advertising industry, 'You never know if 70% of the money you spend is wasted, but you never know which 70% it is.' Therefore, we can view hair-raising as a kind of promotional reward given to users by the project party. Every project needs this kind of promotional reward, and currently, this is the best solution. This is not only a phenomenon in our industry, but also in other industries."

"I believe that hair-raising is a long-term sustainable business. Each hair-raising studio brings in hundreds of valid users. As long as they participate in the project according to the rules, it cannot be simply viewed as hair-raising behavior, but as providing user data for the project."

"Secondly, in the initial release of project tokens, the highest priority is given to super top-tier capital (such as a16z), followed by new mining coins from major exchanges or related Launchpools. After that, shares are given to valid users, and finally, the release of small capital investments. For the project party, distributing tokens to users not only helps with promotion but also provides a high ROI. Therefore, hair-raising studios can continue to develop because project parties continue to release new projects, and each project needs these users."

"Finally, in the hair-raising business, a predecessor once said, 'The hair-raising business is actually a 1.5-level market between the primary and secondary markets,' meaning that hair-raising behavior does not require communication with the project. As long as the project needs to issue tokens, there will inevitably be token generation rules, and as long as the hair-raising individuals understand these rules, there will inevitably be large-scale hair-raising activities, and even exchanges will open pre-market trading for this group."

LM's position is expressed from the perspective of the hair-raising studio. From a business operation logic perspective, the cooperation between the project party and the hair-raising studio is a reasonable business behavior. The project party sets the rules, and the hair-raising studio participates within the rules, both meeting their own interests while cooperating with each other. However, from the perspective of ordinary users, the cooperation between the two has damaged the expected outcome of previous airdrops. However, at the end of the day, Web3 is also a commercial activity, and where there are benefits, there will inevitably be "rivalries."

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