Merkle Airdrop is a smart contract mechanism for distributing blockchain tokens efficiently.
Merkle Airdrop is a smart contract mechanism for distributing blockchain tokens efficiently.
Smart Contracts and Blockchain Merkle Airdrop, a smart contract solution for fast blockchain token distribution, is now available.
Unlike previous Airdrops, Merkle Airdrop is a novel technique to share tokens with a large number of users on the Ethereum blockchain network at the same time. This technique is efficient, cost-effective, faster, and more secure, and it allows organisations to easily contact a huge number of customers or users. Many token owners are taking advantage of this new technology to distribute their tokens. That is why we recommend reading this post to learn more about how this process works.
The old-fashioned Airdrop
Projects that try to break into the market by releasing their tokens to thousands of random addresses use the traditional airdrop method of token distribution. Many of these address owners may be uninterested or unaware of the project's existence, and they may consider it spam.
This method of spamming users with little amounts of tokens is inefficient and wasteful. This is because most people who have these tokens in their wallets are unable to spend them because exchanging such a little amount of tokens is not cost effective.
Traditional Airdrop project owners, on the other hand, incur significant costs to operate their network server due to increasing network traffic and transaction fees associated with an increased number of non-active users.
In addition, substantial quantities of money are given to software engineers to keep the distribution's scripts up to date in order to keep them from crashing. The baseline is that this method is inconvenient for project owners and users, necessitating the need for a new strategy, which is where Merkle Airdrop comes in.
What is Merkle Airdrop, and how does it work?
On the Ethereum network, Merkle Airdrop is a smart contract that is used to distribute tokens in mass. Many people believe that this is a far superior option than regular airdrops.
Merkle Airdrop helps you to tackle many challenges linked with a huge directory of user addresses utilising a smart contract by constructing a flawless algorithm. Adding thousands of addresses to a smart contract and allowing them to act on the contract is now impractical due to the enormous expense of preserving every single data byte on the blockchain.
To resolve this issue, project owners block tokens from being sent to random parties via the smart contract, and the contract is programmed to check whether an address is whitelisted before performing a required action.
The answer is that the Merkle-root is stored in the contract, and the user or customer then validates whether the address is whitelisted. This procedure aids in the verification of the data source's integrity.
Users of a specific token can also be notified on their platform or through social media that they have a certain quantity of tokens that they can claim from the project, avoiding spam and gas fees.
Case Study of the Lotto Finance Project
The Merkle Airdrop has already been applied by expert DeFi developers in a popular project known as “LOTTO,” a token for the lotto financial lottery. The first lottery token, LOTTO, was delivered to DeFi members via Airdrop.
Our client gathered approximately 900,000 unique addresses from a list of specific token holders on the lottery smart contract blockchain, with a significant number of individuals claiming the lottery financing token on their website. This also raised Lotto finance's profile among lottery players.
We alerted the lottery community with an airdrop alert (airdropalert.com). The website is known and monitored by "Lotto People." On Ethereum, we were able to construct the first 100% decentralised lottery coin. The idea was to push the boundaries of what smart contracts, tokens, and blockchain as a whole can do.
The success of the Merkle Airdrop method built by blockchain DeFi developers pleased the project's proprietors. The developers stands themselves as a trustworthy development firm for comparable projects.
The Merkle (or hash tree) is a tree that is used for hashing.
Hashing is the process of converting a variable-size input into a fixed-size output. This is accomplished through the use of hash functions, which are mathematical formulas (implemented as hashing algorithms).
Merkle's airdrop makes use of the hash tree to create a whitelist of individuals who are eligible to receive tokens based on their knowledge and interest in a project. Merkle tree is a smart contract cryptography method that distributes tokens to specified users rather than randomly. Users must request a token transfer to their wallet, and the transaction fee is passed on to them.
According to the idea, customers must verify that their account is on the list by performing a huge calculation on their end and paying the transfer fees.
This benefits both the project owners who distribute the tokens and the users who pay for and receive the tokens because they save money. Users, on the other hand, only add tokens to their wallets that they prefer. This procedure generates a community of people who are enthusiastic about the project.
Merkle airdrop advantages and downsides
Here are some of the Merkle Airdrop's benefits and drawbacks as compared to traditional script-based distribution.
Advantages:
Less ether is used for transactions requiring tokens even though the amount needed for gas depends on the size of the generated white list
The client-side application performs all the necessary operations
The launched smart contract does not require any support or surveillance by the programmer
The deployment method is simple.
Increased dependability
Safety (Due to the integrity of the smart contract itself)
This method enables you to integrate lists of practically any size with minimum storage use on the blockchain.
Disadvantages:
The address list needs to be uploaded to a public resource.
The client code will have to process all contact details in the white list and undergo quite resource-intensive calculations.
It is a centralized process, and Decentralization is preferable.
There is nothing hidden in this algorithm, and the intensive calculations of client-side applications offset the contract storage savings to verify that addresses belong to the list. This approach shows the difference between using smart contracts in contrast to traditional centralized systems.
Conclusion
The Merkle Airdrop approach offers many advantages over the traditional sending tokens, which are cumbersome, expensive, and time-consuming. The development by solidity developer DeFi and deployment of a Merkle Airdrop on your platform is actually not a big deal, even for a non-tech savvy person.