The "free airdrop hunting" community's plans have collapsed Monad: "The logic of the testnet 'free airdrop hunting' race has fallen apart"

Author: Hu Tao, ChainCatcher

Yesterday, the highly anticipated Layer1 public chain Monad’s token MON officially launched, once falling below the cost basis for public sale users. Currently, the FDV remains in the $3-3.5 billion range, which is not only lower than the $8 billion mainstream market cap predicted on Polymarket but also far below the $15 billion valuation of the early Pre-TGE market.

And this is not only a heavy blow to the Layer1 narrative but also a “tragic” milestone for the grab-and-moo crowd.

Previously, Monad was valued at $3 billion, making it the highest-valued unissued Layer1 in the market, and was highly anticipated by the mooing community. Its testnet has accumulated over 300 million interaction addresses, with many studios registering Monad addresses using millions of addresses. At the end of October, Monad officially opened for airdrop queries, but unexpectedly excluded all testnet interaction addresses from the airdrop scope.

The logic of the mooing crowd is that “sunshine always shines,” which is a common practice among many project teams. As long as there are frequent interactions, users can potentially earn tokens worth a few dollars to dozens of dollars. The accumulated token value across multiple addresses can still be significant. However, Monad’s official team did not follow the mooing crowd’s wishes and excluded all testnet addresses from the airdrop.

“The addresses that interacted on the testnet are all anti-mooed, and participating in various NFTs basically has no use. The only addresses that received the Monad airdrop are some old addresses that never interacted with Monad but traded on Hyperliquid,” said A Du, head of a mooing studio in Hangzhou, to ChainCatcher.

For a time, Monad became the target of fierce criticism from many mooing users, but the Monad team remained unmoved. According to well-known KOL Fengmi, the idea behind this airdrop was to bind contributors, identity, and potential people to Monad—focusing on identity + contribution, such as Monad ecosystem developers, heavy DeFi users, and high-quality NFT holders.

Famous alpha blogger Spark received a reward of 3 million MON tokens in this airdrop, worth about $110k. This was not due to his interaction record but because he served as a moderator in the Monad community for three years and established the Monad Chinese community. The Monad team regarded this as a substantial contribution, which is also a common criterion for airdrops by most projects.

For project teams, the significance of airdrops is twofold: on one hand, to reward long-term supporters and demonstrate their value for community users; on the other hand, to incentivize active participants and influencers in the surrounding ecosystem, attracting them into their own ecosystem through airdrops. From Uniswap to Gitcoin, Arbitrum, Scroll, Berachain, Aster, and thousands of other projects, airdrops have become an essential way for projects to attract users.

During this period, the standards for airdrops have continued to diverge and evolve. Some projects emphasize fairness and generosity, being quite accommodating to mooing participants, while others set strict rules for testnet/mainnet interactions, implementing rigorous “witch-hunt” screening based on points. This time, Monad completely abandoned testnet interaction users, or retail investors.

“If a network neglects retail investors for a long time, it will make the network overly elite in its early stages, losing a broad community foundation. In the early days of Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and BSC, it was all about a group of seemingly insignificant retail investors—they brought network effects and community vitality,” Fengmi said on X. He believes Monad should give grassroots retail investors a space to grow gradually, even if just a little, so more people can truly become part of the MON network community.

Zhuifeng believes that mooing people contribute not only transaction fees, data, and traffic but also serve as excellent publicity. He personally thinks they should be incentivized. “Monad’s approach is really thoughtless, shaking the trust foundation of the entire industry,” said Bingwa on Twitter.

From the project perspective, they need to formulate airdrop strategies based on long-term development needs. “Mooing people have no loyalty; they sell immediately after receiving the airdrop and move on to the next project to moo. For projects, this only causes selling pressure and no long-term benefits. Is it necessary to give them tokens?” said an anonymous KOL, describing mooing communities as “parasites” in the crypto ecosystem.

Australian master brother also believes that the industry’s airdrop logic is changing. “In the past, when CEXs evaluated a project’s fundamentals, they paid close attention to on-chain data activity and active user metrics. During cold starts, projects needed popularity. For a long time, project teams tacitly allowed or even reached an understanding with mooing armies: you come moo here, help me get listed on major exchanges, and I’ll give you airdrops in return, sharing the profits. But now, CEX listings no longer look at on-chain data and user metrics because everyone knows these data are heavily inflated,” he tweeted.

The business logic is cold-blooded. As the on-chain data bubble becomes more severe and mooing pressure negatively impacts many projects’ token prices, Monad’s choice is reasonable. However, this will not be the path most projects take, because Monad, as a capital-heavy public chain project, still has many cards to play. Its technical strength and potential explosive power in ecological applications could bring it a large community of users. But for most projects, which are essentially marketing projects, they must rely on airdrops to attract attention and market hype.

In the long run, airdrops remain one of the important sources of value in the crypto industry, but the logic and targets of airdrops are undergoing profound changes. “The results of Monad’s airdrop basically mark the collapse of the testnet mooing race, and in the future, no one will likely be spamming testnets anymore,” said Australian master brother.

In fact, many KOLs predicted this “table-flip” by Monad. Like Australian master brother, Bingwa, Zhuifeng, and others, many early on stated they would not participate in Monad interactions. It is understood that top KOLs will focus more on “mouth mooing,” arbitrage, and other diverse markets, while also concentrating on high-quality projects like Polymarket to create premium content.

Additionally, several interviewed studios reported that their earnings are now less than last year and below expectations. “The key is to find areas where you have advantages—whether it’s low labor costs, advanced technology, keen investment research to spot early projects, or influential KOLs for mouth mooing. Just following the crowd to moo for profits is now quite difficult,” said A Du.

As the market cap of top projects like Monad has fallen far below expectations, and many projects lock user airdrop shares for long periods after TGE, mooing’s position in the project benefit distribution ecosystem continues to decline, with token values shrinking. The mooing logic based on volume is no longer sustainable.

“So, the retail newcomers who entered the primary market for cheap dividends by providing labor are indeed finished. The door has long been closing, and Monad’s airdrop was just the last crack closed,” sighed Australian master brother.