PUA and Profit-Chasing Studios Face Collapse Wave Amid Crypto Winter
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PUA and Profit-Chasing Studios Face Collapse Wave Amid Crypto Winter
Those getting drained aren't necessarily project teams—they might be the studios themselves.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: TechFlow Janitor
On August 15, when SEI/Cyber officially launched on Binance, the airdrop farming community erupted in despair. Many claimed they had been "PUA'd" or counter-farmed, quickly reaching a consensus: "Chinese projects only know how to PUA; real opportunities lie with foreign teams and well-funded projects."
Bizarre rumors also began spreading—such as that the founder of SEI was actually Huang Zheng, younger brother of Pinduoduo founder Colin Huang. SEI staff told TechFlow this was entirely false, confirming that SEI’s founding team is American. Later investigation revealed this originated from community jokes about SEI's progress always being stuck at 99%, which then spiraled into misinformation.
The hardest hit were professional airdrop farmers. Many took to Twitter exclaiming, "Farming studios are facing a wave of shutdowns." And indeed, we’ve observed numerous small-to-medium-sized farming operations already entering hibernation or ceasing activity altogether.
Jin Lian built his fortune through airdrops from dYdX, ENS, and Arbitrum, later establishing a farming studio in a tier-2 Chinese city, hiring relatives and college students to farm full-time. But two months ago, he shut it down—the Sui airdrop marked their final attempt. "We kept investing without seeing returns," Jin said. Most small studios operate on a "farm-to-farm" model—relying on previous gains to fund new efforts. High expectations led to blind expansion in headcount and wallet addresses, burning through gas fees prematurely. With no major new airdrops emerging and increasing PUA tactics from project teams amid a market lacking wealth effects, these studios can no longer sustain themselves.
Another reason Jin no longer wants to invest? Farming has become excessively competitive—small studios like his simply can’t outcompete larger ones.
In June, a team hosted a Zksync offline event in Shenzhen attended by over 100 people collectively holding hundreds of thousands of addresses—and growing.
In Jin’s view, the era of wild-west-style farming studios is over. Operations are becoming institutionalized and centralized. Only large-scale studios will survive in the future.
A mature farming studio must now have:
(1) Infrastructure: secure fingerprint browsers, IP pools, in-house KYC capabilities...
(2) Loyal, obedient employees—including "scientists" who analyze data;
(3) Capital—to endure for two years, or offer farming-as-a-service or pre-launch participation, monetizing early while shifting risks to retail users.
"Project teams have also grown smarter—they know most addresses belong to bots who'll farm and dump. So they fight back," says one observer. In this evolving battle, farming is shifting from "low cost, high return" to "high cost, low return"—even "high cost, negative return."
It’s not just projects getting farmed—sometimes, it’s the studios themselves being farmed.
Today, as Layer2s battle for dominance, opportunities abound—but so do dangers.
Most current Layer2 solutions still have centralized aspects: transactions are batched and submitted via sequencers. The gas fees users pay consist of two parts—actual network gas and service fees, with the latter making up a significant portion that flows directly into project treasuries.
Inspired by the OP/ARB airdrop legends, massive numbers of people and capital have flooded into farming, desperately hunting for any new public chain or Layer2 yet to launch its token. Layer2s dominate interaction volume, generating hundreds of thousands—even millions—of wallets performing what are essentially "meaningless" transactions.
Layer2s are laughing all the way to the bank. ZkSync Era, operating its centralized sequencer, rakes in transaction fees hand over fist—farming studios have become their primary profit source.
Meanwhile, multi-chain farming has made cross-chain bridges essential. Orbiter Finance, specializing in low-cost L2 bridging, has emerged as the biggest winner—earning millions monthly in "toll fees," over 90% paid by farmers.
The rise of OP Stack and "one-click L2 deployment" has intensified the L2 war. Exchanges and projects alike are launching their own Layer2s—Coinbase, Bybit, Frax, Gitcoin, DeBank... More are undoubtedly coming.
Their first targets? Airdrop farming studios. Even though these studios know they may be nothing more than revenue streams for project teams, they keep coming—chasing the dream, gambling once more—perfectly embodying the essence of PUA.
One thing is clear: projects that both issue tokens and collect fees are the ultimate winners in this farming game.
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