In this airdrop game, why are you always the one getting hurt?
Friend, do you still remember the excitement when you first heard about "airdrop"?
At that time, it always felt like, as long as you interacted a few times with a flick of your finger, you could easily pick up the benefits from the project party, it was simply the most conscientious design in the Web3 world. But over the past two years, things seem to have taken a turn—watching Berachain testnet users working tirelessly to earn an average of 1 dollar while 6 NFT whales effortlessly split 300 million dollars, I suddenly realized: airdrops are no longer the wealth creation myth for ordinary people, but a slaughterhouse where capital hunts retail investors.
To be honest, I have been cut too. Last year, I followed a tutorial and messed around with 30 addresses on ZKsync, cross-chain, interacting, doing tasks, burning 0.5 ETH in gas fees. As a result, on the day of the airdrop, the tokens distributed to each address weren't even enough to buy a cup of milk tea. Looking around, those big players holding Pudgy Penguins NFTs effortlessly took away hundreds of times my earnings. What's even more magical is that LayerZero, to prevent "witches", cut off a million addresses across the board, even legitimate ENS domain users were mistakenly harmed.
What is this if not an airdrop? It's clearly a wealth transfer game colluded by project parties, VCs, and whales.
Have you noticed that the rules are becoming increasingly absurd:
Contributions to the testnet are worthless, buying an NFT can instead earn you money
The number of interactions is not as important as the "locked amount", if you have no money, don't even think about sharing the cake
Even the anti-witch mechanism has become a weapon that accidentally harms ordinary people
Project parties shout about "decentralization", while in reality, they are using algorithms to provide backdoors to capital.
But I don't believe in this evil. Recently, I saw the LayerZero community revolting, demanding the public disclosure of the airdrop algorithm; Gitcoin has come up with an on-chain resume system, allowing ordinary people to finally prove their innocence. What's even more exciting are projects like Jito, which are starting to issue rewards based on contribution duration— the longer you stake, the more you earn, now that makes sense!
So, don't be discouraged. 2025 might be the turning point for airdrops:
Either project parties learn to respect ordinary users,
Or the awakened community votes them out with their feet.
Next time you see the words "airdrop", ask yourself three questions:
Are the rules clearly written in black and white?
Is the cake of the whales ten times bigger than mine?
Am I contributing to the ecosystem, or working for VCs?
Remember, we are not lambs to be slaughtered.
When enough people refuse to play the black box game,
Fair rules will finally grow from the ruins.
#空投