Author: Golem (@web3_golem), Odaily Planet Daily

"xxx sent you a cash red envelope!"

After the Yuanbao cash red envelope event started on February 1, many long-dormant project/investment research exchange groups were completely transformed into mutual aid groups for "Yuanbao cash grabbing".

For many in the crypto world, the shift from being a respected crypto trader to a "freebie hunter" seeking easy profits from virtual currency rewards is a reluctant one.

Starting January 31st, global financial markets experienced a sharp decline. Previously surging precious metals quickly collapsed, with spot silver nearly erasing all of its year-to-date gains, and spot gold briefly falling below $4,500. The cryptocurrency market fared no better. Bitcoin broke below the $75,000 support level on February 2nd, hitting a low of $74,604, while ETH fell to a low of $2,157.14, and SOL even dipped below $100, hitting a low of $95.95.

According to Coinglass data, the total amount of liquidations in the cryptocurrency market reached $2.5615 billion on January 31, setting a record for the highest single-day liquidation volume since the "1011 crash". As a result, "losing so much that I don't want to talk" has become the true psychological state of many people in the cryptocurrency circle (such as Yi Lihua, who has become silent).

For those in the cryptocurrency world who have just experienced a bloodbath, the "golden treasure red envelope" (a type of virtual currency) may be a drop in the ocean in terms of recovering losses, but it can provide some psychological comfort and a temporary escape from the harsh reality of the market.

 Jokes in group chat

Crypto airdrops: From feeling cheated to passionately defending their rights

It's not just a gimmick that Yuanbao's cash red envelopes are the biggest airdrop for people in the cryptocurrency circle right now.

The cash bonus that Yuanbao distributes to each user isn't large, mostly ranging from ten to several tens of RMB. However, its value lies in its simple interaction and truly zero cost. Users only need to spend a little time recruiting others and following the steps to experience the product features to earn cash bonuses, and the task cycle is short, allowing for quick returns.

In contrast, cryptocurrency airdrops are all distributed in the form of tokens, and you only truly profit when the tokens are sold. Although the amount received may seem much more than gold coins, how much is left after deducting the costs of time, research, opportunity, wear and tear, and potential losses?

A user who had been participating in the Infinex airdrop for 406 days shared their experience. On January 31, the decentralized perpetual contract trading platform Infinex announced the TGE and airdrop applications. The project team successfully claimed their shares, but the community was collectively exploited.

The user "Ten Million is a Cat" (X: @RXu107) is a typical example of someone who was cheated out of their money. On February 1, he posted that he had spent more than $11,900 (equivalent to RMB 82,000) on this project (4,400 USDT to buy NFTs and 7,500 USDT to participate in the public offering), and had been a community member for 406 days. However, by the time of TGE, he had not only failed to recover his costs, but also suffered a loss of more than RMB 100,000 (2,900 USDT + 11,284 INX tokens that had not yet been unlocked).

Faced with the backlash, the blogger had no choice but to repeatedly tell his friends how uncomfortable he felt.

 The blogger, who was cheated by Infinex, confided his frustration to a friend.

Infinex's fully diluted market capitalization at TGE was only $150 million. The total investment in Tencent's Lunar New Year red envelope campaign, converted to USD, was approximately $140 million. What does this mean? It's equivalent to Tencent directly buying Infinex at its maximum valuation and then giving it away to the entire nation for free.

Faced with the pain of being cheated and deceived, most people in the community would choose the same approach as "Ten Million is Just a Cat"—to suffer in silence. However, some people would choose to stand up and confront the project team.

Crypto blogger IceFrog (X: @Ice_Frog666666) is a typical example. He started out by exploiting airdrops, but ironically, in 2025, IceFrog was either fighting for airdrop rights or on his way to fight for airdrop rights. He is currently still negotiating with the prediction market project Space (Odaily note: Space raised $20 million in its public offering, and the team took $13 million privately), and has even taken legal action.

Web2 can deliver on airdrops, Web3 can't keep its promises.

The most ironic thing is that the current imbalance between "effort and reward" in cryptocurrency airdrops is not due to the "moral depravity" of a single project, but rather the result of a change in the entire industry structure.

In 2020, Uniswap ushered in the era of airdrops for cryptocurrency projects. Since then, there have been numerous stories of people getting rich overnight by airdropping cars, houses, or A8 tokens, attracting wave after wave of people to the airdrop farming arena and creating a beautiful image of an "industry in a growth phase".

But by 2025, all of this had changed. Market narratives dried up, primary funding weakened, and secondary market buying was insufficient. Airdrops were no longer about sharing the future with early users, but rather about mortgaging the future to current data, creating an exit path for the project team or exchanging it for the next round of financing. As a result, big airdrops disappeared, small airdrops shrank, and being "fleeced" became the norm in the industry.

So-called airdrops are simply rewriting advertising budgets into reward pools, bypassing third parties to establish growth relationships directly with users. Whether it's the 1 billion RMB given by Web2's Yuanbao or the fixed airdrop allocations given by Web3 projects in their token economics, the essence is the same logic.

The difference lies in the fact that Web2 giants use cash to buy user certainty, while Web3 uses token rewards as a potentially realizable promise. This results in two different fates despite using the same approach.

The certainty of Yuanbao cash red envelopes comes from cash flow and constraint mechanisms. Tencent's strong cash flow ensures that Yuanbao can be distributed, and the constraint mechanism under mature laws ensures that Yuanbao cannot be repaid. In addition, the simple and mindless interaction makes users naturally understand it as a "benefit".

In contrast, cryptocurrency investors not only pay several times the cost (such as capital, time, and energy) compared to Web2 freebies, but also have to worry about being targeted by witches, token unlocking periods, and constantly changing airdrop rules. Ironically, all of this ultimately yields less profit than gold coins.

Therefore, today's airdrops in the cryptocurrency world have long since degenerated from direct growth rewards into promises that are constantly postponed or even not fulfilled. If this situation does not change in 2026, user retention will be sacrificed along with it.

From user acquisition to retention, the effectiveness of airdrops can only sustain the first half at best.

Using airdrops to boost sales has always been the most common and direct way to deal with powerful competitors in the business world.

Tencent's 1 billion RMB cash injection to support Yuanbao is due to the formidable strength of its competitor, Doubao, which is projected to be the first AI product in China to surpass 100 million daily active users by the end of 2025. The same applies to Web3. In the prediction market sector, Polymarket dominates, and to attract users, Opinion, predict.fun, and Limitless have all adopted similar incentive strategies, such as point-based giveaways, to directly draw users into their products.

In the short term, airdrops can indeed create a huge influx of users, but in the long run, user retention is still determined by factors such as product-market fit, user experience, and ecosystem synergy. In the business history of Web3, there are numerous examples of projects that were incredibly popular before airdrops but were subsequently ignored. Therefore, both Web2 and Web3 face the same "post-airdrop problem": how to retain users.

Ten years ago, Tencent, a company adept at imitating and then surpassing, propelled WeChat Pay into a national-level entry point with "WeChat Red Envelopes," proving its profound understanding of the "user growth → retention → habit formation" chain. Whether they can recreate the miracle of Yuanbao in the same way is a matter of debate, but they certainly have ample experience in "how to convert airdrops into user retention."

In response, Odaily contacted an insider at Yuanbao (a Chinese investment platform) to inquire about how the Web3 project airdrop could be improved from a product perspective. The insider's answer was very pragmatic:

"As one of the largest internet companies by market capitalization, Tencent may not have direct references to Web3 projects, but the core of airdrops as an incremental method is to improve user retention. This requires a series of follow-up actions after the airdrop, such as public relations and marketing thinking about how to further spread the gameplay, and the product side also needs to do more to achieve this."

From the perspective of Web3 practitioners, simply talking about traffic strategies is superficial. What features, beyond tokens, can help products retain users is a question worth exploring.

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