AirDropper

AI First Flight #5
Beginner FriendlyDeFiFoundry
EXP
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Submission Details
Severity: low
Valid

Claim fee too low → economically impractical for owner to withdraw accumulated fees

Description

  • Normal: The per-claim fee should be set high enough that the owner's claimFees() transaction cost is justified by the accumulated fees.

  • Bug: The fee is set to 1 Gwei (1e9 wei). On zkSync, the gas cost for claimFees() (~30,479 gas at ~0.02 Gwei/gas ≈ 609 Gwei) exceeds the fees collected unless there are at least 609 successful claims. With only 4 whitelisted addresses, the owner can never economically withdraw fees.

// src/MerkleAirdrop.sol:19
uint256 public constant FEE = 1e9; //@> 1 Gwei — too low to be economically viable

Risk

Likelihood: Every deployment with the current FEE value makes fee withdrawal unprofitable for the owner.

Impact: The owner has no economic incentive to call claimFees(). ETH accumulates in the contract but is practically unrecoverable. The fee mechanism is functionally useless.

Proof of Concept

function test_GasExceedsFeeClaimAmount() public {
uint256 assumedZksyncGasPrice = 0.00000000002 ether; // 0.02 Gwei
uint256 airdropFee = airdrop.getFee();
vm.deal(collectorOne, airdropFee);
vm.startPrank(collectorOne);
airdrop.claim{value: airdropFee}(collectorOne, claimAmount, proof);
vm.stopPrank();
// Owner claims fees
uint256 gasBefore = gasleft();
vm.prank(owner);
airdrop.claimFees();
uint256 gasAfter = gasleft();
uint256 gasCost = (gasBefore - gasAfter) * assumedZksyncGasPrice;
// gasCost (~609 Gwei) > fee collected (1 Gwei per claim × 1 claim = 1 Gwei)
assertGt(gasCost, owner.balance);
}

Recommended Mitigation

- uint256 public constant FEE = 1e9;
+ uint256 public constant FEE = 0.001 ether; // or remove the fee entirely
Updates

Lead Judging Commences

ai-first-flight-judge Lead Judge about 11 hours ago
Submission Judgement Published
Validated
Assigned finding tags:

[L-01] It Can Be Economically Impractical for the Contract Owner to Claim Airdrop Fees

## Description The low `MerkleAirdrop::FEE` (1 Gwei) makes it economically impractical (ETH-wise) for the owner to claim fees, even with the low gas cost of the zkSync chain. The fee should either be removed or increased to make it economically practical to claim by the owner. ## Vulnerability Details The low `MerkleAirdrop::FEE` (1 Gwei) makes it economically impractical (ETH-wise) for the owner to claim fees, even with the low gas cost of the zkSync chain. The gas cost for the owner to call `MerkleAirdrop::claimFees` is 30,479 gas units. Using the average zkSync gas price of 0.02 Gwei, the effective total gas cost would be ~609 Gwei or 0.000000609 Ether. For it to be economically sensible to claim fees (using the current fee price of 1 Gwei), there would need to be greater than or equal to 609 successful airdrop claims to meet or exceed the gas cost. Compared to the current number of addresses that are a part of the merkle tree, there is a significant discrepancy. <details> <summary>POC</summary> ### `MerkleAirdropTest.t.sol` ```javascript address owner = vm.addr(1); ... // deploy contracts as an EOA instead of contract function setUp() public { vm.startPrank(owner); token = new AirdropToken(); airdrop = new MerkleAirdrop(merkleRoot, token); token.mint(owner, amountToSend); token.transfer(address(airdrop), amountToSend); vm.stopPrank(); } ... function test_GasExeceedsFeeClaimAmount() public { uint256 assumedZksyncGasPrice = 0.00000000002 ether; // 0.02 Gwei uint256 airdropFee = airdrop.getFee(); vm.deal(collectorOne, airdropFee); vm.startPrank(collectorOne); airdrop.claim{ value: airdropFee }(collectorOne, amountToCollect, proof); vm.stopPrank(); // assert the contract and owner have the proper balances assertEq(address(airdrop).balance, airdropFee); assertEq(owner.balance, 0); vm.startPrank(owner); uint256 gasBeforeClaim = gasleft(); airdrop.claimFees(); uint256 gasAfterClaim = gasleft(); vm.stopPrank(); // assert the contract has had its fees claimed by owner assertEq(address(airdrop).balance, 0); // assert that the amount of gas spent is greater than the fees obtained (in wei) uint256 gasDelta = gasBeforeClaim - gasAfterClaim; assertGt((gasDelta * assumedZksyncGasPrice), owner.balance); } ``` ### Run Test ```bash forge test --match-test test_GasExeceedsFeeClaimAmount --gas-report -vvvv ``` #### Example Output ```bash Ran 1 test for test/MerkleAirdropTest.t.sol:MerkleAirdropTest [PASS] test_GasExeceedsFeeClaimAmount() (gas: 129297) Traces: [129297] MerkleAirdropTest::test_GasExeceedsFeeClaimAmount() │ ... ├─ [0] VM::assertGt(620640000000 [6.206e11], 1000000000 [1e9]) [staticcall] │ └─ ← () └─ ← () Suite result: ok. 1 passed; 0 failed; 0 skipped; finished in 2.38ms (690.20µs CPU time) | src/MerkleAirdrop.sol:MerkleAirdrop contract | | | | | | | -------------------------------------------- | --------------- | ----- | ------ | ----- | ------- | | Deployment Cost | Deployment Size | | | | | | 540806 | 2502 | | | | | | Function Name | min | avg | median | max | # calls | | claim | 59686 | 59686 | 59686 | 59686 | 1 | | claimFees | 30479 | 30479 | 30479 | 30479 | 1 | <--- | getFee | 225 | 225 | 225 | 225 | 1 | ... Ran 1 test suite in 5.26ms (2.38ms CPU time): 1 tests passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped (1 total tests) ``` </details> ## Impact There exists an economic disinsentive for the owner to claim fees from the contract. ## Recommendations Either remove the need for a fee to be paid during a claim or increase the claim fee to make it economically practical.

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