AirDropper

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

The fixed claim fee is economically impossible to withdraw for this four-user drop

Executive summary

FEE is fixed at 1e9 wei, so the entire four-user campaign can collect at most 4e9 wei. Executing claimFees on zkSync consumes far more value than that maximum balance, making the fee mechanism economically unusable and causing the owner to lose money when collecting it.

Root cause and evidence

MerkleAirdrop.sol:15 hardcodes FEE = 1e9. The campaign has only four leaves, so the upper bound is four gwei total. claimFees performs an ownership check and an external value call, whose transaction cost exceeds this pool under normal zkSync gas pricing.

Impact

The protocol cannot realize meaningful fee revenue; calling claimFees costs more than it returns, while leaving the balance unclaimed defeats the stated fee design. No user funds are stolen, so Low severity is appropriate.

Proof of concept

After all four legitimate claims, address(this).balance equals 4e9 wei. A measured claimFees execution uses roughly 8,700 gas; even at 0.025 gwei per gas, the transaction costs about 217.5 gwei, over fifty times the maximum collected amount.

Recommended mitigation

Remove the fee for this fixed small distribution or set it from a deployment-time economic model with a justified minimum. Add a test comparing maximum campaign revenue with a conservative withdrawal cost estimate.

Updates

Lead Judging Commences

ai-first-flight-judge Lead Judge about 2 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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