Project party must read: Say goodbye to airdrop traps, let the model of "the wool comes from the pig" achieve long-term rise.

In recent years, it has become standard practice for encryption projects to distribute Airdrops just before token issuance (TGE). By enticing users with free Tokens, the project party hopes to accumulate enough hype and user attention before going live. However, the reality is often that the project experiences "peak immediately after launch," with hype and prices quickly sliding down in a short period. Users often sell immediately after receiving Airdrops, leading to pressure on the Token market, cooling community enthusiasm, and causing the user base that the project party has just built to collapse.

Although the traffic brought by airdrops is considerable in the short term, it is difficult to truly convert into community assets or product users. Due to the lack of real commercial scenarios supporting most projects, after the airdrop, they often rely on continuously issuing tokens to maintain user activity, which essentially overdraws future value. In the end, most of these tokens and user traffic flow into the arbitrage cycle of "wool party," wasting the resources that truly support project development. What was originally designed as a means to launch the ecosystem has instead become a burden that weakens the vitality of the project.

To break out of this vicious cycle, the conclusion is: the project must become a "wool can be taken from the pig's body" project. The benefits to be provided to users should truly be borne by willing third parties. The phrase "wool comes from the pig" refers to platforms providing products or services to users for free, while other market entities foot the bill. In the context of Web3, this means that the project party does not profit directly from the user end, but instead first provides benefits to users, with other stakeholders covering the costs, resulting in a win-win for all three parties: users benefit for free, the project expands its influence, and the paying party gains users, data, or brand exposure.

Implement a three-step method: build an ecological closed loop.

If you are a project party, you might be thinking: "I also want others to pay for my users, how should I do that?" I suggest thinking in three steps:

Identify the core user group: Please specifically define who the most important users of the project are at this stage. Are they the seasoned traders primarily trading on your platform? Or are they the everyday users of your product? Or perhaps the investors holding your Token? In other words, you need to first answer "What kind of user behavior counts as success?" Only by identifying the core user group that can truly deliver results can subsequent strategies avoid deviating from the target.

Excavating Unique Competitive Advantages: Analyze the project's moat and identify advantages that others cannot easily replicate. This could be cutting-edge technical strength (such as robust infrastructure), a large active user community, unique data assets, etc. Ask yourself: "What unique skills do we have that other projects lack but desperately need?" Only by clarifying your core value can you confidently charge others.

Finding the paying "pig": Identify partners who need your resources the most and are willing to pay. For example, if an exchange or public chain project has strong liquidity, you can collaborate with a new project where they use Tokens or funds to purchase the opportunity to enter your platform; if you operate a DApp with a large number of active users, other project parties looking for users may be willing to pay to conduct Airdrops or promotional activities through your channel. In short, whoever lacks your advantages is the "pig" willing to pay.

Through the above three steps, you will find that "others providing you resources to benefit your users" is not a fantastical idea, but a designable business model. Essentially, you are using your core resources to help partners achieve their goals, and the partners invest to benefit your users, forming an ecological closed loop. This not only allows users to continuously enjoy benefits, but also solidifies your ecological stickiness.

Typical case: Binance's liquidity strategy

Taking the world's largest exchange Binance as an example, its core advantages are strong liquidity and a large user base. The target users of Binance mainly include traders and BNB Token holders. It proposes to new projects: willing to exchange tokens or funds for liquidity and exposure opportunities. Binance distributes new project tokens for free to users holding BNB or participating in mining through activities such as Alpha Airdrop. This method helps new projects quickly gain user attention and liquidity, while also providing additional benefits to Binance's loyal users, thereby enhancing the stickiness of BNB holders. The Alpha Airdrop distributes new project tokens to active users who participate in locking, trading, and providing liquidity, achieving a win-win situation of "users gaining dividends and new projects gaining exposure."

By the way, a common question is: "Why doesn't Binance give airdrops to ordinary spot trading users?" The answer is that the trading volume on the main site is largely provided by market makers (MM), and these market makers themselves earn profits from liquidity. Binance needs to retain these core market makers, so it is more willing to allocate airdrop benefits to a larger number of small and medium retail users, promoting new projects by expanding a broader user base. This approach aligns with the spirit of "the wool comes from the pig": giving retail users free scratches, while the ones actually spending money are the project parties in need of liquidity and the market makers maintaining the market.

Another noteworthy case is the social incentive platform Kaito. Its operational mechanism essentially uses user behavior data and content participation on social media (mainly Twitter) as "assets" to attract traffic, and then collaborates with other encryption project parties to distribute these projects' Tokens as rewards to content contributors. In this structure, users accumulate points or receive Airdrops by "outputting attention and discourse power", while the ones truly bearing the incentive costs are the new project parties that hope to expand their influence through social volume before the TGE.

On the surface, this is a typical "the wool is pulled from the pig" business model: users benefit for free, the Kaito platform meets the demand, and the project party pays for the exposure. However, there are obvious structural risks to the sustainability of this model. Its core reliance is on whether Kaito has the ability to occupy the social attention entry point in the long term. If in the future, the project party has more efficient or cost-effective ways to acquire customers, Kaito's value as a "middleman" will significantly decline.

Win-win cooperation: Core values determine the ecological lifeline.

Whether it is a technology-based project or a community-based project, the premise is to always maintain its core competitiveness. Once the unique value that makes others willing to pay is lost, this model will no longer work. The "wool" ultimately relies on the "pig" recognizing the value and being willing to spend money. If it is difficult to identify one's own advantages, then consideration should be given to adjusting direction or focusing on the areas where one is best at.

For project parties, instead of just pouring money into hype, it's better to think about what resources they have that can be exchanged with others. Finding suitable partners to bring external forces into their own ecosystem is essential. For example, your strong user community can bring traffic to other new projects, or your unique data resources can help projects make decisions. These are values that others are willing to pay for with funds or Tokens. Once successful, your users enjoy tangible benefits, you strengthen ecosystem stickiness, and partners achieve their goals—everyone is happy.

Investor perspective: More emphasis on sustainable empowerment

Nowadays, the hype in the encryption market has subsided, and investors are becoming more rational, which is a sign of maturity in the industry. As an industry observer, I believe that projects capable of long-term survival must either have breakthroughs in technology or product levels (providing long-term value) or innovate in their business models (providing a positive cycle). Projects that can combine both naturally have greater advantages.

For investors, the next time they encounter a project boasting loudly, they should first ask whether it has the blood-making ability of third-party buyers: can the project truly make "pigs fly continuously"? After all, only those collaborative models that can make "pigs trade daily and ensure sheep never starve" can ultimately succeed in this market.

The idea that "the wool comes from the pig" is not just a slogan, but a feasible strategy for guiding project operations. It requires the project party to clarify its own value, design an ecological subsidy mechanism, and jointly build growth with partners.