Last month, I ran into Lao Zhou at a barbecue stall in Shenzhen—the same Lao Zhou who was so busy issuing cryptocurrencies last year that he couldn't sleep. His project had VCs lining up to pour money in during fundraising, but on the day of the mainnet launch, the price plummeted from 0.8 to 0.1. You can guess why: his studio created 20,000 alt accounts, claimed the airdrops, and dumped the price just ten minutes later.
He squatted by the roadside and said something to me that I still remember: "I thought I was working on a project, but I was actually working for scientists."
When we met this time, this guy was completely different. His phone screen had a TokenTable application open, with a list of names: StarkNet, ZetaChain, DOGS, and Kaito. I was stunned—weren't these all among the projects that had the most stable airdrops last year?
"I don't issue my own coins anymore; I issue them for others." He chuckled and chatted with me for a while.
He gave me a breakdown of the costs. In 2024, how much damage did Sybil attacks related to airdrops cause on-chain? In the Celestia attack, over 55% of the airdropped tokens were stolen by Sybil addresses, amounting to over $500 million at the highest price; Arbitrum was even more outrageous, with 150,000 Sybil addresses taking 253 million ARBs, accounting for 21.8% of the total airdrop. I hadn't thought about these figures in detail before, but now that I hear them, they're truly shocking.
Old Zhou said that the TokenTable system he's currently using is specifically designed to cure this problem. It's not a simple one-click token issuance tool—anyone can make that—it's more like a "Goldman Sachs on the blockchain." What does that mean? In traditional finance, Goldman Sachs is responsible for stock issuance, investor introduction, and market making. TokenTable does the same thing in Web3: how to issue tokens, who to issue them to, when to unlock them, and how to prevent market crashes—it all arranges everything clearly for you.
I asked him how to do it specifically. He demonstrated it to me:
The first step is to figure out "who will receive it." Previously, airdrop lists were managed using Excel spreadsheets, making it impossible to detect when studios were manipulating accounts. Now they use Sign Protocol—which you can think of as a digital notary office. It turns users' on-chain behavior, community contributions, and even offline event participation records into verifiable digital certificates. Want to get an airdrop? First, work in the community: write posts, create memes, answer questions for newcomers, translate documentation, and accumulate enough points to obtain your identity NFT. Those "Support Warrior" and "Orange in the Veins" signs are as hierarchical as an imperial examination.
The second step is deciding "how to release." TokenTable's Unlocker tool supports various locking schemes—cliff-like release, linear release, phased unlocking—locking you up like a Russian nesting doll. The team wants to secretly change the unlocking terms? The automated auditing system will catch them red-handed.
What's most outrageous is their SBT identity system. What's the logic behind traditional airdrops? The project team issues an announcement, and those looking for freebies create thousands of accounts to rush in, claim their rewards, and then dump the stock. But the logic of this mechanism is: you turn speculative costs into sunk costs. A user, in order to get the "Outstanding Content Creator" badge, stays up all night for three consecutive months creating memes and spamming Twitter with orange glasses emojis every day—at this point, if anyone dares to dump the stock or criticize the project team, the first person to get angry won't be the team, but themselves.
Old Zhou showed me some data: TokenTable processed $4 billion in asset distribution last year, served over 40 million users, and generated $15 million in revenue in 2024 alone. Its client list includes leading projects like StarkNet, ZetaChain, and DOGS. In January of this year, CZ's YZi Labs led a $16 million Series A funding round, a rare occurrence with three Sequoia Capital regional offices investing simultaneously.
"You think issuing a coin is a technical job? Actually, issuing a coin is about understanding human nature." Old Zhou took a sip of beer. "The real skill is whether you can make holders reluctant to dump their coins or rush to sell."
I've been pondering his words for days. Of the projects that failed in the past two years, how many were truly technically incompetent? Most of them failed because they didn't understand token distribution. VCs dumped their tokens as soon as they unlocked them, the community took the tokens and ran, while the team was still diligently writing code, only to find the token price had plummeted to zero.
In essence, Sign acts as a brake on the token economy. It doesn't decide how to distribute tokens for the project team; instead, it transforms the distribution process into a transparent, open, and unbiased game where no one can cheat. Investors trust this, and the community accepts it.
I asked him what he was doing now. He said he was helping project teams develop airdrop strategies, configuring distribution rules using TokenTable, and also accumulating some Sign ecosystem niches for himself. "Don't just focus on the ups and downs of the secondary market, go and see who is helping project teams solve their real pain points. This industry doesn't lack people who issue tokens, it lacks people who can ensure that the tokens don't collapse after they're issued."
The more I think about what he said, the more reasonable it seems to me. When everyone is chasing hot topics and hyping up concepts, what's truly valuable are often those unnoticed "water carriers." Sign is that player quietly collecting tolls in the on-chain distribution sector—with 15 million in revenue last year, it's expected to double to 30 million this year.
Oh, and before he left, he showed me something: a digital identity system called SignPass, which is collaborating with the Sierra Leonean government on a blockchain-based permanent residency program and is also helping the UAE streamline its golden visa application process. I said, "You've even gotten to the government level?" He smiled and said, "While others are still playing guerrilla warfare with the SEC, we've chosen to help governments solve their problems."
This approach is indeed unconventional. @SignOfficial $SIGN #Sign地缘政治基建