Original Content:
Original | Odaily Star Daily
Author | Azuma
It has been several days since the launch of the ZKsync (ZK) airdrop, but the aftermath of the event continues.
On the evening of June 22nd Beijing time, a user named k1z4, who claims to be a co-founder of Memeland (this identity has not been verified), provocatively posted: “Hey, ZKsync, I want to tell you that I have finally completed the claiming and transfer of 350 wallets. Each wallet received an average of 18,871 ZK tokens. Unfortunately, I still don’t have enough money to buy a Lamborghini or a mansion in Beverly Hills… I was expecting more tokens, you really disappointed me!”
According to the screenshot posted by k1z4, which appears to be from the Binance exchange, the user eventually received a total of 6,605,139 ZK tokens, which is worth nearly 1.2 million US dollars even at the current declining coin price.
After k1z4 publicly boasted, the news quickly spread on CT.
In the early morning of June 23rd, k1z4 posted several more updates, roughly explaining his strategy to evade the witch detection of ZKsync as a “senior witch.”
First, k1z4 candidly admitted that he was engaged in “airdrop farming,” but emphasized that the infrastructure he used to farm the 350 wallets is more complex than most Layer2 solutions currently available, to the extent that no one, including ZKsync, can distinguish his robots from real users based on address behavior – “My robots look more real than most humans.”
Specifically, k1z4 revealed that he used 350 IP addresses with independent cache, cookies, RPC, VPN, hosting services, and a series of AI tools. It took him several days to write the code so that the robots could interact like real humans, using various common “airdrop strategies” on X as reference.
As a result, these 350 addresses are not only difficult to trace, but their interaction behaviors are also completely different. k1z4 then revealed that the amount of airdrops received by these addresses varies, with the lowest receiving about 9,000 tokens and the highest receiving 70,000 tokens.
However, k1z4 subsequently mentioned that having technical capabilities alone is not enough, and “airdrop farming” itself requires a substantial amount of capital.
k1z4 revealed that in order to operate these 350 robot addresses smoothly, he spent 29.68 ETH on network gas fees alone. Building the robot infrastructure cost an additional $21,000, and he paid 50,000 ZK as remuneration to two assistants who helped monitor the robots. In addition, he allocated 200 ETH for the robots to participate flexibly in the liquidity pools of major DeFi protocols on the chain.
k1z4 also mentioned that he invested a lot of time and energy into ensuring the normal execution of the strategy, which are intangible costs that cannot be priced.
When asked by the community whether he was doing this for researching new technologies or for money, k1z4 showed his values: “Initially, it was only for researching new technologies, but later I found out that it can be monetized… and now you already know.”
However, although k1z4 ultimately received airdrop profits far beyond that of ordinary users, he is still dissatisfied with this result.
When evaluating the airdrop profits, k1z4 finally expressed his dissatisfaction: “I am not satisfied with this number. I expected much more. But what can you expect from a blockchain that raised $400 million and still cannot operate properly?”
