The issue of user coordination lies at the heart of blockchain protocol design and financial incentives are one of the means to achieve it. These incentives are threaded in the architecture of the protocol and should enable extensive decentralization among network operators. Several projects have tried to achieve decentralization by employing different models based on financial incentives, each model tailored to the objective function of the protocol. Proof of Work (PoW) and the various iterations of Proof of Stake (PoS) exemplify the incentive models used to align network participants and reach consensus.

Presently, numerous Layer 2 (L2) smart contract platforms built on the Ethereum network compete for market share and aim at network decentralization. In an effort to achieve decentralization within the network and to attract users from the broader ecosystem, these L2 platforms have incentivized usage of their networks through the distribution of their native tokens via 'airdrops'.

Our goal is to build an online dashboard, named Airdrop User Retention Analysis (AURA), that can be accessed for free and could potentially inform incentive design choices for protocols that would consider employing airdrops in the future. Key to the realization of the dashboard is the definition of a metric that evaluates user retention over time on a dollar cost basis. Through the establishment and generalization of this metric, we aspire to devise a framework that facilitates comparisons between the effectiveness of the incentivization strategies employed by different L2 Networks.