Here, we tell the truth, Zama announced what it proudly called an “Zama Airdrop Revolution.” A creator program supposedly designed to reward creativity, originality, and authentic contributions. But after two full seasons, the mask has fallen.
This is not an airdrop revolution. It’s just another reach contest.
Season 1: The Broken Promise of the Zama Airdrop Revolution
At launch, the idea was seductive: a fair system rewarding quality content over bots and fake engagement.
The reality? The broken promise of the Zama Airdrop Revolution was obvious from the start. The leaderboard was dominated by big accounts from day one:
- Top 10 → all had between 50k–200k followers.
- Example: @HottieBabeGem (Rank #7) → 110,632 followers, 191k impressions in one month.
- Rank #100 → 69,558 impressions, 9k followers.
- Even at Rank #250, creators needed thousands of followers and over 10k impressions.
👉 No small account (<1,000 followers) ever entered the leaderboard.
👉 The “creativity reward” turned out to be a Cookie.fun/Kaito-style reach game.
Season 2: How the Zama Airdrop Revolution Confirmed Its Bias
Some hoped Season 2 would fix the imbalance. Instead, it confirmed it.
- Top 20 → again, dominated by accounts with 20k–80k followers.
- Example: @WY_mask (Rank #2) → 82,053 impressions, 314k reach.
- To reach the Top 100, you needed at least 5k followers and tens of thousands of impressions.
- Even at Rank #250, participants still had 1.5k–5k followers and 10k+ impressions.
👉 AI videos, memes, creative storytelling, none of it mattered. The algorithm only rewarded raw visibility.
The Algorithm: Kaito in Disguise
Zama presents its scoring system as innovation. In reality, it’s just a dressed-up marketing leaderboard.
Key factors:
- Quality followers → identical to Cookie3.
- Reach & impressions → main driver of score.
- Posting multiplier → spam more, get +40%.
- Engagement caps → punish small accounts with “too high” ER.
In practice:
- ER >20% → disqualified.
- ER >10% with <50k impressions → -70% penalty.
Translation: if a small account goes viral, it gets punished instead of rewarded.
And payouts?
- Top 100 split $50,000.
- Ranks 101–500 → NFT only (no cash).
- $30 CPM cap redistributes rewards upward, ensuring big reach accounts dominate.
👉 The so-called “revolution” is just Kaito-style marketing where reach = power.
Why We’re Speaking Out
We never expected to win. With 50 followers (brrr….), we knew from day one our chance was zero.
We joined Season 2 not to compete, but to test the system from the inside:
- We produced original AI avatar videos, memes, and creative storytelling, formats nobody else was using.
- We played by the rules, tagging @zama_fhe and using the official hashtag.
- We tracked the leaderboard and studied how the algorithm really worked.
And the result was clear: creativity didn’t matter, only reach did.
We speak out not out of frustration, but out of clarity:
👉 We’re not “salty losers.”
👉 We documented an experiment.
👉 The data proves the so-called airdrop revolution is just a marketing contest for big accounts.
That’s why we will not join Season 3. And that’s why we don’t recommend it to small creators.
Warning for Season 3 of the Zama Airdrop Revolution
Yes, Season 3 expands the leaderboard to 1,000 spots. But don’t be fooled.
The numbers don’t lie:
- Season 1, Rank #100 → ~70k impressions, 9k followers.
- Season 2, Rank #250 → 1.5k–5k followers, 10k+ impressions.
- Even at Rank #500, thousands of followers were required.
👉 Expansion to 1,000 won’t suddenly make it fair.
👉 Smaller accounts will still remain invisible, while big accounts farm impressions.
👉 And when the $ZAMA token finally launches, most of those big winners will dump on the community on day one.
Conclusion: The Real Revolution Lies Elsewhere
After two seasons, the conclusion is clear: This is not an airdrop revolution.
We won’t join Season 3.
We don’t recommend it for small creators.
When the $ZAMA token launches, the rewards will flow to the same large accounts who dominated Seasons 1 and 2, and most will dump instantly. Very nice marketing operation, congrats team!
If Zama truly wanted a revolution, it should have looked at Nillion’s airdrop model, still one of the most respected, community-driven examples in Web3.
Because the real invisible revolution is not about chasing a biased leaderboard. It’s about building your own spaces, your own communities, and refusing to be reduced to a marketing metric.
Creativity deserves better than being buried under reach algorithms. When a proof of impact or a proof of contribution ?
