Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )
Author｜Nan Zhi ( @Assassin_Malvo )
In the past month or two, the popularity of Meme has plummeted, with top AI projects falling by an average of more than 90% from their peak. Pump.funs daily transaction volume and graduation rate have dropped significantly, and other chains besides Solana have not effectively taken over the traffic and revived the Meme track.
On the other hand, several star projects such as Berachain, Story, and Myshell have completed coin issuance and airdrops. Some are happy while others are sad, but it also proves that there are still opportunities in the interactive airdrop track.
We cannot tell whether Meme will recover again in 2025, so what are the tracks worth participating in for retail investors? As a once extremely low threshold and extremely high ceiling, rubbing hair may be one of the important opportunities. In this regard, Odaily Planet Daily interviewed a group of long-term rubbing hair users, aiming to show and explore the opportunities, future gameplay and other key information of this track for readers.
In the order of connection, the accounts of the interviewees on the X platform are: Lumaos Pomelo ( @adolyb2 ), Big Gambler ( @y95277777 ), Watermelon ( @CryptoMelon365 ), Ice Cream War God ( @Hy78516012 ), Dreaming of Becoming a Scientist (@Btc_Crush), and Crypto Dog (@JiamigouCn).
Core Viewpoints
There are still opportunities in the wool-pulling track, but competition is intensifying and the threshold is rising
Several interviewees generally believe that the airdrop track will still be profitable in 2025, but it needs to be operated in a more refined and professional manner. The traditional multi-account minimum living security model is gradually becoming ineffective, and the popularity of studios and scripts has forced retail investors to turn to strategic interactions (such as improving the quality of single accounts and simulating real user behavior).
Anti-witch technology and cost control are key
The project party has upgraded its anti-Witch methods (such as clustering algorithms and multi-chain interactive verification). The interviewees emphasized the need to combine automated tools with manual operations, and to improve the address quality and scoring weight through multi-chain and mainnet interaction records. At the same time, the cost needs to be accurately calculated to maintain stable growth.
Layer 1, testnet or new opportunities
Most people believe that Layer 1 (such as Monad, Sahara AI) and testnet projects have more potential because of their high certainty of coin issuance and controllable costs. However, Layer 2 has a relatively reduced chance of critical hits due to address saturation, weak certainty of coin issuance, and high interaction costs.
What is the size of the LuMao team? Is it an individual or a studio?
Lumaos Pomelo: There are both studios and individuals. Studios are in the form of partnership with others and are responsible for writing (interactive) scripts. Basically, the scripts written for the studio can also be used by yourself.
Big Gambler: Husband and wife
Watermelon: With my girlfriend
Ice Cream Warrior: Individual
Dream of becoming a scientist: Individuals gradually shift from manual to semi-automated
Encryption dongle: Lumao Studio
What project in which year was the biggest gain for you since you started participating in the Maori movement?
Hairy grapefruit
The biggest income for the studio was MOVE, which earned nearly 200,000 in total, but I didnt get much myself. Then the biggest income for me personally should be from 3 projects, ARB in early 2023, NOSTR in late 2023, and STRK in early 2024, all of which earned around 30,000-35,000 U.
Big Gambler
In 2024 , the cost of Hyperliquid was less than 500 U. As for the specific income, it is not convenient to disclose it. I sold most of it, but my wife held most of it. Because there are still NFTs waiting to be issued, there will be a lot of income in the future.
watermelon
I officially entered the industry with Galxe in 2022, and then in 2023 I earned more than a 7 on multiple projects including Arbitrum, Starknet, and ZKsync.
Ice Cream Warrior
Officially entered the circle in November 2023, in 2024 , Pirate S 1 single number 1000 U 50 numbers.
Dream of becoming a scientist
The airdrops in April and June of 24 really helped me turn things around. Although I am an individual player, I often played inscriptions and NFTs at the end of last year. I received 4 RUNESTONEs and 20 PIZZA airdrops. After the airdrops, I got about tens of thousands of Us. It felt like money falling from the sky. God suddenly found that I was quite poor and gave me a subsidy. When I played NFTs, I didn’t think that I would get airdrops because of a bunch of garbage pictures, so as long as I was in the circle, I would do good things and not worry about the future.
Dongle
I often say in my blog: I once earned enough money to brag about my whole life because of airdrops. Before a large number of studios entered the market, airdrops have always been a money-making opportunity to win big with a small investment. For example, Uniswap, dYdX, ampl, and lowb in 2021 and earlier were all super airdrops for me and a feast for participants. As long as dYdX interacts, there will basically be airdrops. It was magical at the time. I saw the advertisement of dydx and deposited 200 U in it to increase the transaction volume. After the airdrop, I sold all the coins and bought a hatchback Civic for my girlfriend. Ampl is a stablecoin project. Its gameplay is very interesting. At that time, I left 0.3 U of ampl in my wallet, and later airdropped me 140,000 yuan of forth. As a meme coin, lowb is issued in a standard community model. As long as you post your own address under the official lowb push, it will give you airdrops. I pushed a lot of coins, and later I made 800,000 yuan on this project.
However, many excellent projects have emerged in 2024, such as Jito, Wormhole, ALT, Ethena, Manta Pacific, BounceBit, UniSat, ListaDAO. Most of these projects are 0-cost staking or low-cost interaction, with order numbers ranging from 600-1000 U/account (most projects can have multiple accounts, and Mantas low-security account yields are even higher). Blast also has a relatively low yield. There is also an alternative project, zkFair, where the order number burns USDC like crazy, and there are thousands of U of income after the coin is issued (provided that the shipment is shipped at the right time).
What will the profit be in 2024? Will it be affected by the Solana Meme and reduce the airdrop business, join the Meme PvP
Hairy grapefruit
The income is positive. I was not affected by PVP. I played for a while and finished all my SOL, then I stopped because I felt that I was not suitable for PVP. In addition to playing PVP, I also like mining/arbitrage, and mining has also brought a lot of income (there are also losses, such as becoming the liquidity for others to arbitrage and exit, but overall it is still positive).
Big Gambler
I have won a great victory in 24 years of Mao. I am currently paying attention to the sol Meme market, but I personally don’t consider sweeping the chain 24 hours a day. A healthy body is far more important than money.
watermelon
The overall return in 2024 is not as good as that in 2023, but it still achieved a lot of results (ZKsync, etc.). The key problem is that the test network was not particularly promising in 2024. I didn’t expect Movement to not check witches (this changed the subsequent judgment and participation. The test network is an interactive object with clear and controllable costs and stable profit and loss ratio). At the same time, Linea occupied a lot of funds but did not issue coins.
I have participated in Meme but the investment is not big. I prefer the model of staking. Because once the assets in the staking industry are accumulated, it is difficult to go back to poverty , while other ways of playing are particularly risky. As long as staking can effectively calculate the costs of water, public chain gas, etc., it can continue to maintain a step-by-step growth state.
Ice Cream Warrior
Since I entered the circle at the end of 2023, I got zeus in 2024 (order number is about 200 U), wen given by jup (order number is about 50 U), pirate s 1 (order number is about 1000 U), pirate s 2 (order number is 200-500 U), I didn’t do much with Bear Chain, there were too many addresses, so I gave up selectively. There were also some small airdrops in the middle, such as SQD (order number is 20 U) given by filling out the form, lingo (order number is 100 U), kip (order number is 50-100 U), nodepay (self-public script, order number is about 50 U), etc. In general, I feel that I am lucky, but I didn’t get the big money, such as MOVE and VANA, which are projects that many people a 7 for a single project.
I dont feel that I was too greatly impacted. I seldom do pvp, and I have a few coins in my diamond hands, with decent returns. I bought scihub, rif, uro, etc. at the bottom, all of which were confirmed by the chat records in the tg group. I also helped group members to earn 50x and 100x.
Dream of becoming a scientist
The income is OK. I havent become rich yet. I did make some money from inscriptions. The overall income in 24 years is still positive, but its not as good as before. I work harder. The PENGU wave was like giving my brothers some meal tickets, and I made a small profit. I was a little depressed while playing, and I felt like I was carrying bricks at a construction site every day.
I am still losing money on SOL. Although I stay up late every day to play PVP, I still don’t have a stable strategy to make money. I have to work hard to polish it. It’s just a matter of time before I make money. It’s really tiring to play with money. I spend more time studying memes and new stocks. After all, five minutes of memes may be a lifetime salary, but I still need to learn more and think more~
Dongle
Our team has always been walking on two feet, that is, the Meme+Airdrop model. Since the inscription wave, we have built an on-chain monitoring and automatic ordering system. Since we are not an account with PVP attributes such as calling others to carry a sedan chair, we seldom say on social accounts how much we earn from memes, and we guarantee that there are mixed profits and losses and some profits.
What do we expect in 2025? Where will the opportunities emerge?
Hairy grapefruit
I think there will be considerable profit margins in 25 years, but there are few opportunities and only some people can catch them. For example, recently, KOL has been staking Yap, and retail investors can only take over. Other similar plumes have also made people rich, but they are all scripts that swipe hundreds/thousands. Only when there are things like move can it be said that retail investors have a chance to get a share of the profits, and I think they have to be very diligent and self-disciplined to do so. And now it feels like the bull market is almost over, and there will be fewer opportunities. I don’t know where the opportunity will appear, and my predictions are usually inaccurate, but I know that the opportunity is unlikely to appear in staking , which is more suitable for financial management ideas.
Big Gambler
There will still be considerable profits in 25 years of scalping. Many public chain projects and new Perps protocols are emerging , and the old public chain is also undergoing 2.0 reconstruction (Sonics predecessor Fantom), and points airdrop activities are also underway. In addition, Sonic DeFi ecology is very strong. With the support of AC, I am very optimistic about Sonic at this stage this year .
watermelon
I believe that 2025 will be even better, because coin-mining is an industry to VC. As long as VC exists, there will inevitably be a need to brush data, and it will inevitably need to distribute chips (issue coins) . Opportunities will appear in Layer 1, testnets, and other projects with controllable costs . Because Layer 1 issues coins as soon as it goes online , but Layer 2 does not necessarily, and there are so many addresses in Layer 2 now that it is difficult to have big coins. The cost of all-star projects is particularly high, and they will inevitably face the problem of being difficult to crit (interaction costs dozens or hundreds of U per time, and generally tens of thousands of U costs will not and should not be invested in projects with unclear prospects). Testnets and other Galxe activities can clearly calculate the cost of coin-mining and other basic costs, and the benefits are clear, with a high input-output ratio.
Ice Cream Warrior
I think there is. Staking and staking for free are still the best ways for retail investors to participate with small funds. As I personally hate staking , I think the opportunities are still on the public chain . I look forward to the Monad testnet that will be launched soon.
Dream of becoming a scientist
Yes, but the threshold is getting higher and higher, and it is not easy for retail investors to get in. The era of making a lot of money by simply pulling a few tricks is over. Now the project owners are getting more and more sophisticated, and they are more strict in preventing witches than I was in the class teacher. But I think that you can still make money in 25 years: Strategic wool pulling, not just multiplying accounts, but studying interactions, on-chain identities, and playing the role of a high-quality user . In short, wool is always there, but it is getting harder and harder to pull.
Dongle
Before answering this question, let’s take a look at a set of authoritative data:
(1) The cryptocurrency developer survey report released by Electric Capital shows that the number of new developers who contribute code to the cryptocurrency community is on the rise. During the bull market of 2017-2018, more than 40,000 new developers contributed code to the community or projects; during 2021-2022, a total of more than 100,000 developers entered the community.
(2) According to Statista data, global blockchain solution spending is expected to grow to $15.9 billion in 2023, which has created a huge demand for Web3 developers. Taking the United States as an example, software development jobs are expected to grow by 22% by 2030, with the demand for Web3 developers increasing by 400%.
(3) According to Hired data, the average salary of developers is between US$150,000 and US$175,000, which is 20-30% higher than the income of traditional software developers. Web3 developers have entered the first echelon of technology development, on par with artificial intelligence (AI) developers.
The above is the original words of a report, which can be searched directly.
Whether it is the supply-side demand reflected in the labor market or the fair competition between excellent independent developers and technology giants on the same starting line, it is predictable that there will be endless new concepts in the future, and the birth of each revolutionary concept is likely to create a huge wealth effect.
With so many DApps, a large number of users are needed. Ethereum has only about 10 million users, accounting for 0.2% of the total number of Internet users. Even if TON converts 1% of Telegram users, Web3 will still be a niche.
In a limited user market environment, the increase in the number of DApps means that the user conversion cost of the project side has risen sharply. In Web2, the cost of converting a user by an APP is about 100 RMB. In Web3, there is no need to pay the customer acquisition cost to the intermediary platform, but to give it directly to the user in the form of tokens. This is why almost all Web3 projects after 21 years will reserve a large part of the quota for the community in the token economy, in order to make the project cold start better. It can be said that the development of Web3 is inseparable from the support of the community. The attitude of the project side towards the community determines the distribution of tokens. In the later stage, most projects will adopt community incentives to cold start.
If there is an opportunity in 25 years, will retail investors still have the opportunity and value to participate? Or will only professional players/studios be able to make profits through stable anti-witch technology/programmed and automated means?
Hairy grapefruit
There are opportunities and value, but it will be very difficult. The haircuts like arb op strk seem to have reached their limit, and this type of haircuts are almost covered by scripts. Now is the era of refined haircuts, and you have to find your own advantages to do haircuts , such as being good at writing scripts, good at discovering projects, strong execution, etc. Of course, if you just want to make a little money, it shouldnt be difficult, but if you want to make more money, you have to find a way.
Big Gambler
I personally think that the current environment for wooling will be more refined . The cost of mass wooling is high, and once it is a witch, the loss is heavy. Refined wooling not only prevents witches, but also has a much better airdrop weight than low-security accounts .
watermelon
Anti-witch and automation technologies are essential, as well as basic tools such as fingerprint browsers (such as Ads). Project parties often use clustering algorithms to check witches (see Review: Why I Was Stolen 100W LXP by Linea Witch for details). An important experience is that it is recommended to incorporate manual operations into automated interactions, and at the same time pay attention to the multi-chain interaction of addresses. An address with a mainnet interaction record will be much better than other addresses .
Ice Cream Warrior
Retail investors must participate. Not to mention professional players, the professionalism of the studios is actually mixed. If retail investors want to get a share of the profits, they must work harder and do more. Putting their eggs in many baskets will always give them a chance. Participating in multiple projects once will already bring in more income than ordinary work.
Dream of becoming a scientist
Retail investors still have a chance, but they have to be smart and stop fooling around. Don’t think about getting 100 accounts to fight for witch defense. You might as well study the project logic and become a “high-quality account” . Nowadays, studios have hundreds or thousands of accounts per person, and ordinary people can’t compete. But studios often pursue quantity, and the quality is average. Retail investors can play with refinement, for example:
Use a clean wallet and real social accounts to increase account weight;
Ambush some potential projects in advance, and dont necessarily have to compete with the studio for the first-line hot spots;
Participating in high-quality DeFi and NFT ecosystems, not only interacting but also doing some real gameplay, will bring greater benefits in the future.
Dongle
There is still room for profit in airdrops, but different groups of people need to develop different strategies. I divide the airdrop population into the following segments:
1. We have money but no time or skills
When I say having funds, I don’t mean users need to have hundreds of thousands or millions of RMB. Users who have this amount of funds but don’t have time can directly participate in DeFi or exchange Launchpool and other activities. If you know how to operate, you can still get an annualized return of 10-35%.
When I say have funds, I mean people who can take out less than 100,000 RMB and have a stable job. If you want to get airdrops after get off work, you can participate in trading airdrops, such as DEX to increase trading volume. If it is a derivative project, you can use two accounts or two platforms to hedge, which can achieve low losses, such as blue, and previous ones such as Uniswap, Jupiter, dYdX, 1INCH...
(ii) Those who have plenty of time, few assets, and no skills
For example, the disposable funds are 10,000 yuan, which is the general amount of funds for many users to enter the circle, but it is very small for cryptocurrency, only about 1,500 U. If you take advantage of the airdrop and have multiple accounts, you can only play one round, and the gas fee will be consumed after one round.
So the first stage depends on execution. Here I classify the testnet airdrop and the game NFT as the 0 cost to get rich stage. You need to do a lot of testnet, Odyssey, 0 cost games and NFT new issuance to get the snowball rolling. I have written many tutorials on this, you can go and have a look.
Can you share the fur-pulling projects you plan to participate in or are currently participating in in 2025?
The hairy grapefruit: Sahara, Monad, sxt (@SpaceandTimeDB)
Big Gambler: Eclipse Cattle Farming (@EclipseFND), Variational Chain Contract (@variational_io), Meteora LP, Polymarket Betting
Xigua: Monad, Kraken’s Layer 2 ink (@inkonchain), Succinct (@SuccinctLabs), Sahara (@SaharaLabsAI), and other testnet projects
Ice Cream Warrior: Monad must be involved. In addition, I am also involved in the following projects: linera, sahara ai, abstract, eclipse, yala network, etc., as well as some niche projects, which I will share on my Twitter.
Cryptodog: Airdrop projects that like to say ambiguous things are generally discouraged. This is worse than gambling. At least Texas Holdem can improve the winning rate through strategy or teamwork, and Baccarat can also gain benefits according to the phased rules. For projects that do not clearly state the announcement of community incentives, it is unknown where the potential rate of return is. Interacting with such projects is both time-consuming and a waste of money. I think what this netizen said is very correct and very suitable for the current environment.
There are many things to do now. I have the most accounts deployed in the testnet airdrop. The following are being deployed:
Walrus Protocol, Monad, Eclipse, Sahara AI, Lens Protocol, Mind Network, MegaETH, Initia, Grass, Teaprotocol, Fragmetric, Abstract, Meteora, Silencio, AethirCloud, Natix, DAWN
Other shared content
Youzi who is doing the money-grabbing: Actually, I feel that many ways can be considered as money-grabbing, such as some opportunities with a very short window period, such as arc 20s atom, Binance wallets bid, and even Trump. Or like working on NFTs to get on the project party whitelist, community identity, etc. You can choose the direction of money-grabbing based on your strengths and preferences. For money-grabbing, I think its best to walk on two legs. Sometimes, if you dont get any benefits for a long time, you really want to give up.
Xigua: Meme is PvP, and you earn money from your opponent’s pocket. However, Lumao is PvE and toVC. Users in the circle are very friendly and willing to share with each other. I suggest that new users actively interact, exchange and learn.
