Glossary
Vampire Attack
A growth tactic where a new protocol drains liquidity and users from an incumbent by offering token rewards for migrating their deposits and activity.
A vampire attack is a competitive strategy in which a newcomer protocol siphons liquidity, volume, and users away from an established rival — usually by airdropping or farming its own governance token to anyone who moves funds over.
The canonical example is SushiSwap, which in 2020 forked Uniswap's code, let users stake Uniswap LP tokens to earn SUSHI, then migrated roughly a billion dollars of that liquidity to its own pools in a single transaction. The tactic works because liquidity is mercenary: incentives are easy to copy, so retention after the rewards taper is the real test of whether the attacker survives.