LayerZero Labs CEO announces pause of Sybil 'bounty-hunter' process after influx of reports
Quick Take LayerZero Labs CEO Bryan Pellegrino announced that the current phase of the platform’s airdrop, the bounty-hunting process of reporting suspected Sybils, would pause for “the next day or two” in order to tweak its design. The excitement around the blockchain interoperability protocol’s upcoming airdrop led to chaos in what Pellegrino described jokingly as a “warzone.”
LayerZero Labs, the company behind the blockchain interoperability protocol LayerZero, is aiming to establish a gold standard of fairness and smoothness with its first airdrop by attempting to limit so-called Sybil activity, where users control multiple wallets in an attempt to unfairly cash in on airdrop rewards.
However, while the eventual fairness of the airdrop remains to be seen, the chaotic launch has been anything but smooth—just ask the protocol's CEO.
"...Waking up to a warzone :D. We always knew this was going to be PvP [player versus player] but this is something else," wrote LayerZero Labs CEO Bryan Pellegrino in a post on X.
Just hours following the latest stage of LayerZero's airdrop, in which users hunted for Sybils who did not self-report in exchange for a bounty, LayerZero had received over 3,000 bounty reports and 30,000 appeals, according to Pellegrino . In addition, since the reports were hosted on GitHub, some users had reported the accounts of accusers in order to get the account, and thus the report, removed from the site.
Pellegrino has now announced a pause to the reporting process for "the next day or two" in order to combat these issues. One possible solution Pellegrino floated is implementing a .02 eth bond (about $60 at current prices) in order to submit a report in an attempt to cut down on automated reporting systems.
"The main things to solve for are -- best bounty hunters can still get reports in (bond is not prohibitively expensive) and ideally observably fair on what who was the first eligible report in collisions," Pellegrino wrote. "For now -- lots of reports and appeals to go through in the meantime." Pellegrino didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from The Block.
LayerZero's final snapshot found six million individual wallets had interacted with the protocol, which reached a $3 billion valuation following its last funding round in April 2023. Up to 100,000 addresses had self-reported as Sybils before the bounty hunter stage of the airdrop process.
Disclaimer: everything in the article represents the author's point of view and has nothing to do with this platform. This article is not intended to be used as a reference for making investment decisions.
