LayerZero Tells Sybil Farmers To Out Themselves Or Face Airdrop Exclusion

The development team behind LayerZero Labs, the popular cross-chain interoperability protocol, has vowed to weed out sybil farmers ahead of its upcoming airdrop.

On May 3, LayerZero Labs announced it will conduct an internal investigation intended to identify sybil farmers and exclude them from receiving allocations as part of its future token generation event. The project said it will then follow up with a reward program offering 10% of sybil farmers’ intended token allocation as a reward for bounty hunters who identify additional sybil users.

“Almost 6 million unique wallet addresses have interacted with LayerZero since its initial launch over two years ago,” LayerZero Labs said. “We believe it is in the protocol’s best interest to distribute tokens to durable users — not sybil farmers,” the team added via tweet.

Sybil farming refers to the practice of creating multiple wallets controlled by a single user to generate large volumes of activity on a network or protocol in a bid to maximize their airdrop allocation.

In 2022, Optimism disqualified more than 17,000 wallets suspected of engaging in sybil activity from its airdrop — equating to 6.83% of wallets eligible for the token drop. In September, 21,877 wallets were accused of comprising a sybil network farming activity on ZkSync Era, with the wallets found to be transacting a closed-source token amongst each other using a private decentralized exchange.

LayerZero Labs flagged a variety of on-chain activity as grounds for exclusion from its drop, including a single entity participating in “industrial farming” via multiple wallets, users that minted “‘valueless’ NFT[s]” for the sole purpose of moving it between networks, users that repeatedly bridged a minuscule value of assets between chains, and users interacting with well-known sybil farming applications.

“If you think you are a sybil, you are most likely a sybil,” LayerZero Labs said.

However, LayerZero Labs said sybil farmers can self-report through signed on-chain messaging until May 18 and still receive 15% of their intended airdrop allocation. The project will also provide an API allowing industrial farmers to self-report.

LayerZero Labs also noted that airdrop eligibility will be subject to “legal or geographic requirements,” suggesting that sybil farmers operating from countries posing regulatory risks such as the United States or North Korea may have little to gain from self-reporting.

LayerZero announced it had taken the first snapshot for its long-awaited airdrop last week. In December, the project said it would distribute a token to early adopters in the first half of 2024, suggesting the event will take place within the next eight weeks.