Airdrops were not meant to enslave you into another job with no guaranteed returns.

Every morning, you dread the same grind:

You wake up, find what new ‘alpha’ is shilled by the KOLs you follow, complete the task, and wait for the next one.

Over time, you have a list of never-ending tasks that waste away your life and burn you out.

Too many airdrops have turned into a mindless grind, where you do activities that you hate just to earn points that could mean something, or even nothing (when the project runs endless point programs).

Some would barely help you break even with the fees you've burned.

You’re trapped in this endless hamster wheel where you’re sold the promise of life-changing gains by KOLs, and the only reason why you’re not getting them is that you’re not ‘grinding hard enough’.

But, what if there’s another way to earn airdrops without even trying that hard?

What if, you could let airdrops come to you naturally while spending as little time ‘in the trenches’?

Most airdrop guides will teach you the latest hack to get maximum points for a project, or how to spam an airdrop with multiple wallets to hit the highest allocation.

I realised that these guides no longer work. There is no edge once it’s shared on CT, because the ‘alpha’ is overdiluted (everything can be replicated at scale).

Instead, I designed my entire model of Airdrop Magnetism to encompass all the lessons from every win and failure I’ve encountered since 2023.

So I’m taking a completely different approach by sharing the principles I’m using to achieve the true goal that we really want (it’s not to be rich or famous):

Money was never the end goal, freedom is.

Money is just a tool to achieve freedom, not a PnL dollar amount that you can flex to the world to build clout.

Why are you trying to please people

Freedom gives you the ability to do whatever you want on your own terms:

• The freedom to design a life that you enjoy

• The freedom to have full control of your time

• The freedom to not worry about money

• The freedom to choose what projects to use (instead of grinding ones we hate)

• The freedom to write whatever we want (without being a slave to the yapper leaderboard)

• The freedom to skip major airdrops if they don’t align with our time or capital constraints (because other opportunities will come)

In particular, time freedom is what we want to achieve.

Time is irreplaceable. Once we spend it, it’s gone forever.

There were too many airdrops where I grinded daily check-ins or simple social tasks in hopes of getting a good return.

I justified that each task only takes ~5-10 minutes to complete. A full checklist that I religiously completed, day in, day out.

lt felt productive, but it never paid off.

These actions are too easily replicated by bots, which overdilute the allocation we receive.

Instead, all these low-value tasks did was increase my cognitive load and distract me from higher-leverage work.

Those that could actually move the needle while I was grasping at scraps that projects throw at us.

So I knew something had to change.

I saw Ali Abdaal’s take on a lifestyle business, and that’s something that resonated deeply with me.

So why can’t we apply the same logic and become a lifestyle airdrop hunter?

We create a routine that serves our lives through:

• Do things we truly enjoy onchain

• Sharing what we did, our results and reflections on social

This is the art of Airdrop Magnetism:

Building a high-signal onchain and social reputation that attracts rewards passively while you reclaim time from grinding mindlessly

Airdrop Magnetism lets you achieve [time freedom](https://x.com/fipcrypto/status/2008163876588904570](https://x.com/fipcrypto/status/2008163876588904570) by building a high-leverage asset that gives you outsized returns:

One that continues working for you, even when you’re asleep.

And here’s how I aim to achieve this:

Imagine instead of you having to slog hard every day just to get a chance of being eligible for the next airdrop, these rewards come to you naturally.

You don’t need to actively chase them. And yet, you keep qualifying for airdrops because projects seem to like throwing tokens at you.

This combination has helped me get rewards (airdrops or access) even when I was not actively chasing them:

• @sanctumso’s Earnestness Allocation

https://x.com/fipcrypto/status/1813247180653883513

• @MeteoraAG’s LP Army Contributors allocation

Both of these were through creating guides based on my experiences of using the platform and answering the top questions that most users would have.

• Access to @megaeth’s presale

I didn’t Yap or talk about MegaETH, but I likely qualified through various signals and criteria that the team used.

That’s what happens when you build a Magnetic Reputation:

You prove to projects that you’re a high-value individual and attract airdrops because of these 2 pillars:

• What you did onchain (proof of work)

• What you say on social media (proof of signal and taste)

Together, both form an authentic reputation that cannot be easily faked by bots, creating an unreplicable footprint that can only be built by you.

Amidst all the fake Sybils trying to pass the ‘human’ filter, your profile stands out and instantly gets included for rewards because of the meaningful contributions you’ve made to the project or the entire ecosystem.

Many would just have one strong pillar:

• A large audience base while barely touching onchain

• Being a DeFi power user who remains anonymous

But I see the value of owning both pillars because it increases our luck surface area through ‘doing X telling’, and attracts the best opportunities to us.

We first have to do cool things, while writing becomes the visibility amplifier, so more people know what cool things we’ve done (compared to just the ones we tell through word of mouth).

And if you’re already doing things onchain, documenting what you did is a natural extension by treating social media as your public journal.

The more you say what you did onchain, the more your footprint compounds to attract more rewards back to you.

To build a magnetic reputation that gives us time freedom, we need to own these 3 skills:

I used to think that just ‘saying what you did onchain’ is a sufficient concept for reputation.

But I’ve soon realised that in this chaotic world, there are more skills required if we are to truly achieve time freedom:

The trust recession is real. We’re living in a world of lies where truth is becoming harder to find.

• Anyone can make any claim without repercussions when they’re called out

• Anyone can fake a video or screenshot to make something believable

• Anyone can create fake drama for clicks, all in the name of attention

Those who shout the loudest are seen as credible voices, just because their message appears everywhere.

But that doesn’t mean that what they say is true.

Your worldview is shaped by others imposing their truths on you. It started with what your parents taught you, all the way to the type of content you consume.

Sensemaking is the skill of finding meaning in the wealth of information from the world and extract signals that align with your truth

Too many of us have outsourced our thinking to either AI or the KOLs that they follow (which will force their truth on you).

We don’t want to think, and that becomes dangerous when we choose to follow others instead of forming our own thoughts.

Instead of passively consuming information and bookmarking content that you’ll never read again, it’s time to become more intentional in finding your truth through these 2 pillars:

• Choosing what you consume

Twitter is an amazing place because it helps you connect with like-minded individuals based on your values.

But it can also distort your perception of the truth, if your worldview is easily swayed by the loudest voices on the timeline.

Too many KOLs have zero personality because they will flip to any new opinion or narrative, just because it’s popular (and they’ll continue getting eyeballs).

If we are convinced by them, then we will continue being lost and led astray.

CT is (finally) fighting back against these KOLs:

• Too many KOLs larp on the timeline, without any onchain proof to back up their claims

• Others are notorious for shilling anything for a paycheck, with some doing undisclosed shills

Along with time, your attention is a scarce resource that you have to protect at all costs.

We have limited time, so what you give your attention to will shape your worldview.

Choose your truth, before the platform chooses your truth for you

We have the power to decide what content we consume to shape what we believe is true.

So wherever possible, avoid noise and dopamine like the plague. Be intentional with the content you consume by curating your feed.

Otherwise, the algo will serve you quick dopamine hits that have zero value.

• Choosing what actions you do

Truth can be found by reading, but it’s even more powerful when you find signals through your actions.

So find your truth by trying things out and making mistakes to see what works for you.

Here’s how this played out for me:

When I started airdrops in 2023, Ardizor was (embarrassingly) my source of truth. I thought that he was credible because of the thousands of views he gets for his airdrop guides.

I followed every thread he posted religiously until I started questioning what’s so special about his guides.

Looking deeper, most were teaching you to perform low-value actions that can be easily replicated by Sybils.

At the same time, many airdrop accounts were telling us to farm multiple wallets and space out the same actions to avoid getting filtered out as a Sybil.

I tried it out and was horribly burnt out because of this nonsensical grind. And once LayerZero started the mass Sybil witch hunt, I knew that multiple wallets were not the answer, which grew my conviction in onchain footprint.

I started focusing on building out my onchain footprint, which led to some wins like Optimism S5 that was unexpected.

But InfoFi then exploded, which led to the rise of yapping for rewards, even without touching the project.

Many called me a ‘fool’ for not choosing to yap,

but I saw no way that this would be sustainable for projects, until it eventually died.

I’m sticking to my truth of how reputation plays a key role in future airdrops or access, instead of pivoting to whatever that’s popular now (like perp DEX farming).

Sometimes you’ll look like a fool for not winning in the short-term, but choose to build the long-term convictions that give you outsized returns.

We build a magnetic reputation by attracting those who resonate with our worldview.

And just like an AI model (garbage in, garbage out), the outputs we produce are determined by our inputs (what we do and consume).

So we first need to become a synthesiser of (our) truth:

• One who filters the noise and stands on their convictions, instead of getting swayed by others’ opinions just because they sound ‘convincing’ or shout loudly

• One who displays critical thinking and does what they believe is right, even when others mock them for it

• One who both consumes and takes action intentionally to find signal

Moving forward, my content will share more about finding your truths in this sea of noise, including curating your feed or finding KOLs that you should mute.

Probably the easiest portion to understand because it’s the main one that I’ve been harping on:

Signal is created when you earn insights through the actions you perform, which cannot be replicated easily by others (or even AI).

The results you get from your actions shape your opinions, and your beliefs get updated based on the real outcomes you have.

Signal creation is meant to first serve yourself, while it naturally gives value to others who are on the same discovery journey as you.

You make sense of the world and cut through the noise by doing first, and then documenting and reflecting on what you did.

Signal is the clarity gained by doing the action in the real world, observing the result, and reflecting on what changed your understanding.

Everything else is just noise, because it’s based on what you consume or what others have done, without you adding anything meaningful (because you didn’t do the action in the first place).

This is what many KOLs like to generate, because all they do is share what’s popular without their own opinions or insight.

Once you gain clarity for yourself, you become a beacon of signal for others who agree with your worldview, and that’s how we build a reputation that others want to follow.

Instead of someone sharing the same hollow takes that AI can generate at scale.

The 2 pillars of signal creation involve authority and growth:

• Authority

No one will trust you when you’re just building out your account. So you give them a reason to believe what you’re saying with the DDRR framework:

1. Do the action

2. Document

3. Result

4. Reflect

You document what you did, and share the result (success or even a failure) from your actions.

In this trust recession, having an onchain proof of what you did becomes the ultimate source of truth, since it cannot be faked.

Regardless of it being a massive win or failure, there will be a key lesson that you can take away from that experience.

A failure is still signal on what to avoid in the future, yet so many are too afraid of sharing more about how they failed.

While you document for yourself, your reflections are valuable to others who are 2 steps behind you.

Both the documentation and the result make your reflections more believable because you have proof that you’ve actually done the action (instead of the larpers that are everywhere).

• Growth

After you have given others a reason to trust you, we can now share our authentic ideas online.

No one would care about our ideas if we started sharing them right from the start, so we need to build our authority first.

Writing out our ideas (just like what I’m doing here) helps us to gain clarity and share our worldview that is based on:

1. All of our experiences

2. The content and truths that we synthesised from our consumption

The more we write (and the more signal we create), the more we refine our taste (the final human moat).

Taste decides what ideas we choose to present to the world based on the patterns we observe from our actions.

Taste is what makes us stand out from everyone else, because we share opinions that are true to us (instead of writing what’s trending).

50% of the world will hate it because it doesn’t align with their truths. But instead, we focus on the other 50% who will resonate deeply with what we share.

And that’s how we build out a cult-like audience that follows us because they like us, and not just for the topic we share about.

Building out growth and authority helps us become a beacon among the sea of noise. We have clarity on what we want, and how we can achieve it.

We create signal by saying what we did:

• We build an authentic onchain history proving that we’re a DeFi power user, and not just another extractive Sybil farmer

• We share our results, reflections, and opinions on social media to give value to others at scale, even strangers whom we’ve never met before

And that’s how we achieve these 2 outcomes:

• Sybil-proof: Our wallets will never be labelled as a Sybil because they are risk-on, and would qualify for multiple retroactive airdrops

• Algo-proof: We form a strong connection with our audience such that they will actively search for our content instead of waiting for the algo to serve it to them

Signal Creators do not optimise for views that get them the highest views or followers. Instead, they focus on building out a library of content that they’re truly proud of, where each article is interconnected so it keeps the reader hooked once they enter into your ecosystem.

There’s no need to check our post’s stats or yaps, because we don’t write for the algo.

No performances are required where we have to shout the loudest or make outrageous claims to get noticed. We write what we truly believe in, and others with the same worldview will naturally find us.

Giving consistent value (and helping others solve problems) leads to trust, and trust builds up your reputation.

You create enough goodwill by giving freely, and others start to talk positively about you, especially when you’re not in the room.

And this becomes a powerful indicator of your humanness and uniqueness when others are willing to vouch for you (such as letting you enter exclusive reputation networks like [ ]).

The longer you can delay your ask, the greater the value you’ll receive. This can be in the form of money, information, or access.

Many platforms are shifting towards reputation-gated rewards distributions and access, including:

• @legiondotcc’s reputation-gated access launchpad

• @fluentxyz Connect and Prints that provide incentives or rewards for being highly reputable

• Protecting our reputation is just as important

As we’re building out both our onchain and social reputation, we have to protect it at all costs.

Imagine wasting all of our time on becoming someone reputable, only for one mistake to throw our onchain and social accounts to a hacker who reaps the rewards of our hard work.

That’s why signal protection is just as important as creation:

We need to implement good OPSEC with our onchain wallet and social accounts.

In particular, seed phrases have the greatest risk since exposing it to hackers means they will be forever in control of your wallet.

As compared to social accounts, which can still be recovered by a centralised authority if it gets hacked.

The Trust Wallet hack showed how vulnerable any hot wallet can be, with any supply chain attacks or developer errors exposing your seed phrase, even when it’s not your fault.

This is why I still prefer using a hardware wallet, even though it’s more troublesome to use.

Signal creation is the art of doing, but what you choose to do plays its role too:

Naval shared how judgment is the most important skill to own, and I agree fully with it.

We’re truly living in a world of permissionless leverage. You can literally build or do anything, as all the information and tools are available at your fingertips (there are simply no more excuses).

So the only limiting factor right now is time. We all only have 24 hours in a day, and we choose how we spend them with judgment:

• What airdrop should I interact with, or skip?

• What paid promotion deal should I take for my account that won’t harm my reputation?

• What vibe coding project should I build?

Judgment is the ability to predict the long-term consequences of your actions and choose the path of maximum leverage under your current constraints

Everyone has different time and capital constraints, and it’s up to us to find high-impact actions that give us maximum returns (instead of grinding everywhere).

And the only way to improve your judgment is through skin in the game (a term that’s so hated by airdrop farmers).

You can’t find what’s best for you by just consuming.

You have to actually do and experience it first-hand to learn what works for you (and what doesn’t).

• The more you take action, the more you reflect, and the more you iterate, the more you hone judgment.

• The more you are accountable for your actions (instead of blaming other factors), the more you hone judgment.

• The more failures you face, the more indicators you have of what doesn’t work to hone judgment.

Those with the best judgment are not overly emotional.

They are calm and analytical, not letting emotions cloud their judgment, but focus on iterating fast to see what works.

How I built out this entire philosophy of Airdrop Magnetism was through writing out my thoughts every week.

If you noticed, my Twitter bio has been changing frequently over the past year as I tried to find the best way to communicate my worldview and opinions.

Here’s how it evolved:

• Sharing everything I learn along the way

• Becoming a Sybil-proof airdrop hunter (onchain + social)

• Building a strong onchain and social reputation (after reading Vitalik’s post)

• Building a magnetic onchain and social reputation

This came about by consistently writing every week, and each new iteration improved on the previous one as I gained clarity of thought.

So do things, reflect, and iterate as much as you can.

Your time is precious, so focus on doing low-volume but high-impact tasks that move you closer towards freedom.

These 3 skills form a recursive feedback loop to build your Magnetic Reputation:

1. Sensemaking is your filter to find your truth in the sea of low-value noise, to be skeptical of everything unless it’s proven to be real and curate inputs to find signals that align with your values

2. Signal Creation involves skin in the game by actually doing the thing and gaining clarity on whether it worked or failed (DDRR), creating an ultimate source of truth for you

3. Judgment is honed through reflection and directs your actions towards high-time ROI actions, while guiding future sensemaking to ignore more noise

Judgment becomes the ultimate magnet that attracts others to follow you, including high-signal accounts.

Your judgment, especially when paired with positive results, shows that you’re not just another NPC on the timeline, but are a real human with real thoughts that are shaped by all of your past experiences.

Work on refining these 3 skills, and you’ll build a Magnetic Reputation in no time (more on how I can help you with that later).

The ultimate goal is to passively get airdrops and access to other opportunities while focusing on high-leverage tasks that build up your compounding reputation.

A brief summary of the entire roadmap:

• The compounding effect starts with building a strong onchain and social footprint (the core inputs)

• Both are involved in Signal Creation, which ties along with Sensemaking and Judgment to form the Magnetic Skill Stack

• All 3 skills build an authentic and Magnetic Reputation that starts to naturally attract rewards and achieve time freedom

It’s time to stop selling your time and attention to projects with the flashiest marketing and empty promises that ultimately underdeliver.

While everyone is busy grinding airdrops by using projects that they hate and optimising for short-term rewards:

We focus on low-volume but high-impact tasks that do not take up significant time.

We don’t want to spend the whole day ‘in the trenches’ while forgoing other aspects of our lives (like health and social).

Airdrops are just a tool for freedom, and we need to use them in the most optimal way that gives us back control of our lives.

So stop asking what airdrops you should farm right now.

Instead, find products that you truly enjoy and can continue using without the incentives, and become an Airdrop Magnetist that builds a high-signal reputation (which all starts by saying what you did).

If you want to stop feeling replaceable as 'just another account on CT' and build a Magnetic Reputation that attracts rewards passively:

Download the Unfair Advantage Playbook to get a 21-minute system to build your 'Category-of-One' brand that commands respect from reputable accounts (even with a low follower count).

Airdrops were not meant to enslave you into another job with no guaranteed returns.

Every morning, you dread the same grind:

You wake up, find what new ‘alpha’ is shilled by the KOLs you follow, complete the task, and wait for the next one.

Over time, you have a list of never-ending tasks that waste away your life and burn you out.

Too many airdrops have turned into a mindless grind, where you do activities that you hate just to earn points that could mean something, or even nothing (when the project runs endless point programs).

Some would barely help you break even with the fees you've burned.

You’re trapped in this endless hamster wheel where you’re sold the promise of life-changing gains by KOLs, and the only reason why you’re not getting them is that you’re not ‘grinding hard enough’.

But, what if there’s another way to earn airdrops without even trying that hard?

What if, you could let airdrops come to you naturally while spending as little time ‘in the trenches’?

Most airdrop guides will teach you the latest hack to get maximum points for a project, or how to spam an airdrop with multiple wallets to hit the highest allocation.

I realised that these guides no longer work. There is no edge once it’s shared on CT, because the ‘alpha’ is overdiluted (everything can be replicated at scale).

Instead, I designed my entire model of Airdrop Magnetism to encompass all the lessons from every win and failure I’ve encountered since 2023.

So I’m taking a completely different approach by sharing the principles I’m using to achieve the true goal that we really want (it’s not to be rich or famous):

Money was never the end goal, freedom is.

Money is just a tool to achieve freedom, not a PnL dollar amount that you can flex to the world to build clout.

Why are you trying to please people

Freedom gives you the ability to do whatever you want on your own terms:

• The freedom to design a life that you enjoy

• The freedom to have full control of your time

• The freedom to not worry about money

• The freedom to choose what projects to use (instead of grinding ones we hate)

• The freedom to write whatever we want (without being a slave to the yapper leaderboard)

• The freedom to skip major airdrops if they don’t align with our time or capital constraints (because other opportunities will come)

In particular, time freedom is what we want to achieve.

Time is irreplaceable. Once we spend it, it’s gone forever.

There were too many airdrops where I grinded daily check-ins or simple social tasks in hopes of getting a good return.

I justified that each task only takes ~5-10 minutes to complete. A full checklist that I religiously completed, day in, day out.

lt felt productive, but it never paid off.

These actions are too easily replicated by bots, which overdilute the allocation we receive.

Instead, all these low-value tasks did was increase my cognitive load and distract me from higher-leverage work.

Those that could actually move the needle while I was grasping at scraps that projects throw at us.

So I knew something had to change.

I saw Ali Abdaal’s take on a lifestyle business, and that’s something that resonated deeply with me.

So why can’t we apply the same logic and become a lifestyle airdrop hunter?

We create a routine that serves our lives through:

• Do things we truly enjoy onchain

• Sharing what we did, our results and reflections on social

This is the art of Airdrop Magnetism:

Building a high-signal onchain and social reputation that attracts rewards passively while you reclaim time from grinding mindlessly

Airdrop Magnetism lets you achieve [time freedom](https://x.com/fipcrypto/status/2008163876588904570](https://x.com/fipcrypto/status/2008163876588904570) by building a high-leverage asset that gives you outsized returns:

One that continues working for you, even when you’re asleep.

And here’s how I aim to achieve this:

Imagine instead of you having to slog hard every day just to get a chance of being eligible for the next airdrop, these rewards come to you naturally.

You don’t need to actively chase them. And yet, you keep qualifying for airdrops because projects seem to like throwing tokens at you.

This combination has helped me get rewards (airdrops or access) even when I was not actively chasing them:

• @sanctumso’s Earnestness Allocation

https://x.com/fipcrypto/status/1813247180653883513

• @MeteoraAG’s LP Army Contributors allocation

Both of these were through creating guides based on my experiences of using the platform and answering the top questions that most users would have.

• Access to @megaeth’s presale

I didn’t Yap or talk about MegaETH, but I likely qualified through various signals and criteria that the team used.

That’s what happens when you build a Magnetic Reputation:

You prove to projects that you’re a high-value individual and attract airdrops because of these 2 pillars:

• What you did onchain (proof of work)

• What you say on social media (proof of signal and taste)

Together, both form an authentic reputation that cannot be easily faked by bots, creating an unreplicable footprint that can only be built by you.

Amidst all the fake Sybils trying to pass the ‘human’ filter, your profile stands out and instantly gets included for rewards because of the meaningful contributions you’ve made to the project or the entire ecosystem.

Many would just have one strong pillar:

• A large audience base while barely touching onchain

• Being a DeFi power user who remains anonymous

But I see the value of owning both pillars because it increases our luck surface area through ‘doing X telling’, and attracts the best opportunities to us.

We first have to do cool things, while writing becomes the visibility amplifier, so more people know what cool things we’ve done (compared to just the ones we tell through word of mouth).

And if you’re already doing things onchain, documenting what you did is a natural extension by treating social media as your public journal.

The more you say what you did onchain, the more your footprint compounds to attract more rewards back to you.

To build a magnetic reputation that gives us time freedom, we need to own these 3 skills:

I used to think that just ‘saying what you did onchain’ is a sufficient concept for reputation.

But I’ve soon realised that in this chaotic world, there are more skills required if we are to truly achieve time freedom:

The trust recession is real. We’re living in a world of lies where truth is becoming harder to find.

• Anyone can make any claim without repercussions when they’re called out

• Anyone can fake a video or screenshot to make something believable

• Anyone can create fake drama for clicks, all in the name of attention

Those who shout the loudest are seen as credible voices, just because their message appears everywhere.

But that doesn’t mean that what they say is true.

Your worldview is shaped by others imposing their truths on you. It started with what your parents taught you, all the way to the type of content you consume.

Sensemaking is the skill of finding meaning in the wealth of information from the world and extract signals that align with your truth

Too many of us have outsourced our thinking to either AI or the KOLs that they follow (which will force their truth on you).

We don’t want to think, and that becomes dangerous when we choose to follow others instead of forming our own thoughts.

Instead of passively consuming information and bookmarking content that you’ll never read again, it’s time to become more intentional in finding your truth through these 2 pillars:

• Choosing what you consume

Twitter is an amazing place because it helps you connect with like-minded individuals based on your values.

But it can also distort your perception of the truth, if your worldview is easily swayed by the loudest voices on the timeline.

Too many KOLs have zero personality because they will flip to any new opinion or narrative, just because it’s popular (and they’ll continue getting eyeballs).

If we are convinced by them, then we will continue being lost and led astray.

CT is (finally) fighting back against these KOLs:

• Too many KOLs larp on the timeline, without any onchain proof to back up their claims

• Others are notorious for shilling anything for a paycheck, with some doing undisclosed shills

Along with time, your attention is a scarce resource that you have to protect at all costs.

We have limited time, so what you give your attention to will shape your worldview.

Choose your truth, before the platform chooses your truth for you

We have the power to decide what content we consume to shape what we believe is true.

So wherever possible, avoid noise and dopamine like the plague. Be intentional with the content you consume by curating your feed.

Otherwise, the algo will serve you quick dopamine hits that have zero value.

• Choosing what actions you do

Truth can be found by reading, but it’s even more powerful when you find signals through your actions.

So find your truth by trying things out and making mistakes to see what works for you.

Here’s how this played out for me:

When I started airdrops in 2023, Ardizor was (embarrassingly) my source of truth. I thought that he was credible because of the thousands of views he gets for his airdrop guides.

I followed every thread he posted religiously until I started questioning what’s so special about his guides.

Looking deeper, most were teaching you to perform low-value actions that can be easily replicated by Sybils.

At the same time, many airdrop accounts were telling us to farm multiple wallets and space out the same actions to avoid getting filtered out as a Sybil.

I tried it out and was horribly burnt out because of this nonsensical grind. And once LayerZero started the mass Sybil witch hunt, I knew that multiple wallets were not the answer, which grew my conviction in onchain footprint.

I started focusing on building out my onchain footprint, which led to some wins like Optimism S5 that was unexpected.

But InfoFi then exploded, which led to the rise of yapping for rewards, even without touching the project.

Many called me a ‘fool’ for not choosing to yap,

but I saw no way that this would be sustainable for projects, until it eventually died.

I’m sticking to my truth of how reputation plays a key role in future airdrops or access, instead of pivoting to whatever that’s popular now (like perp DEX farming).

Sometimes you’ll look like a fool for not winning in the short-term, but choose to build the long-term convictions that give you outsized returns.

We build a magnetic reputation by attracting those who resonate with our worldview.

And just like an AI model (garbage in, garbage out), the outputs we produce are determined by our inputs (what we do and consume).

So we first need to become a synthesiser of (our) truth:

• One who filters the noise and stands on their convictions, instead of getting swayed by others’ opinions just because they sound ‘convincing’ or shout loudly

• One who displays critical thinking and does what they believe is right, even when others mock them for it

• One who both consumes and takes action intentionally to find signal

Moving forward, my content will share more about finding your truths in this sea of noise, including curating your feed or finding KOLs that you should mute.

Probably the easiest portion to understand because it’s the main one that I’ve been harping on:

Signal is created when you earn insights through the actions you perform, which cannot be replicated easily by others (or even AI).

The results you get from your actions shape your opinions, and your beliefs get updated based on the real outcomes you have.

Signal creation is meant to first serve yourself, while it naturally gives value to others who are on the same discovery journey as you.

You make sense of the world and cut through the noise by doing first, and then documenting and reflecting on what you did.

Signal is the clarity gained by doing the action in the real world, observing the result, and reflecting on what changed your understanding.

Everything else is just noise, because it’s based on what you consume or what others have done, without you adding anything meaningful (because you didn’t do the action in the first place).

This is what many KOLs like to generate, because all they do is share what’s popular without their own opinions or insight.

Once you gain clarity for yourself, you become a beacon of signal for others who agree with your worldview, and that’s how we build a reputation that others want to follow.

Instead of someone sharing the same hollow takes that AI can generate at scale.

The 2 pillars of signal creation involve authority and growth:

• Authority

No one will trust you when you’re just building out your account. So you give them a reason to believe what you’re saying with the DDRR framework:

1. Do the action

2. Document

3. Result

4. Reflect

You document what you did, and share the result (success or even a failure) from your actions.

In this trust recession, having an onchain proof of what you did becomes the ultimate source of truth, since it cannot be faked.

Regardless of it being a massive win or failure, there will be a key lesson that you can take away from that experience.

A failure is still signal on what to avoid in the future, yet so many are too afraid of sharing more about how they failed.

While you document for yourself, your reflections are valuable to others who are 2 steps behind you.

Both the documentation and the result make your reflections more believable because you have proof that you’ve actually done the action (instead of the larpers that are everywhere).

• Growth

After you have given others a reason to trust you, we can now share our authentic ideas online.

No one would care about our ideas if we started sharing them right from the start, so we need to build our authority first.

Writing out our ideas (just like what I’m doing here) helps us to gain clarity and share our worldview that is based on:

1. All of our experiences

2. The content and truths that we synthesised from our consumption

The more we write (and the more signal we create), the more we refine our taste (the final human moat).

Taste decides what ideas we choose to present to the world based on the patterns we observe from our actions.

Taste is what makes us stand out from everyone else, because we share opinions that are true to us (instead of writing what’s trending).

50% of the world will hate it because it doesn’t align with their truths. But instead, we focus on the other 50% who will resonate deeply with what we share.

And that’s how we build out a cult-like audience that follows us because they like us, and not just for the topic we share about.

Building out growth and authority helps us become a beacon among the sea of noise. We have clarity on what we want, and how we can achieve it.

We create signal by saying what we did:

• We build an authentic onchain history proving that we’re a DeFi power user, and not just another extractive Sybil farmer

• We share our results, reflections, and opinions on social media to give value to others at scale, even strangers whom we’ve never met before

And that’s how we achieve these 2 outcomes:

• Sybil-proof: Our wallets will never be labelled as a Sybil because they are risk-on, and would qualify for multiple retroactive airdrops

• Algo-proof: We form a strong connection with our audience such that they will actively search for our content instead of waiting for the algo to serve it to them

Signal Creators do not optimise for views that get them the highest views or followers. Instead, they focus on building out a library of content that they’re truly proud of, where each article is interconnected so it keeps the reader hooked once they enter into your ecosystem.

There’s no need to check our post’s stats or yaps, because we don’t write for the algo.

No performances are required where we have to shout the loudest or make outrageous claims to get noticed. We write what we truly believe in, and others with the same worldview will naturally find us.

Giving consistent value (and helping others solve problems) leads to trust, and trust builds up your reputation.

You create enough goodwill by giving freely, and others start to talk positively about you, especially when you’re not in the room.

And this becomes a powerful indicator of your humanness and uniqueness when others are willing to vouch for you (such as letting you enter exclusive reputation networks like [ ]).

The longer you can delay your ask, the greater the value you’ll receive. This can be in the form of money, information, or access.

Many platforms are shifting towards reputation-gated rewards distributions and access, including:

• @legiondotcc’s reputation-gated access launchpad

• @fluentxyz Connect and Prints that provide incentives or rewards for being highly reputable

• Protecting our reputation is just as important

As we’re building out both our onchain and social reputation, we have to protect it at all costs.

Imagine wasting all of our time on becoming someone reputable, only for one mistake to throw our onchain and social accounts to a hacker who reaps the rewards of our hard work.

That’s why signal protection is just as important as creation:

We need to implement good OPSEC with our onchain wallet and social accounts.

In particular, seed phrases have the greatest risk since exposing it to hackers means they will be forever in control of your wallet.

As compared to social accounts, which can still be recovered by a centralised authority if it gets hacked.

The Trust Wallet hack showed how vulnerable any hot wallet can be, with any supply chain attacks or developer errors exposing your seed phrase, even when it’s not your fault.

This is why I still prefer using a hardware wallet, even though it’s more troublesome to use.

Signal creation is the art of doing, but what you choose to do plays its role too:

Naval shared how judgment is the most important skill to own, and I agree fully with it.

We’re truly living in a world of permissionless leverage. You can literally build or do anything, as all the information and tools are available at your fingertips (there are simply no more excuses).

So the only limiting factor right now is time. We all only have 24 hours in a day, and we choose how we spend them with judgment:

• What airdrop should I interact with, or skip?

• What paid promotion deal should I take for my account that won’t harm my reputation?

• What vibe coding project should I build?

Judgment is the ability to predict the long-term consequences of your actions and choose the path of maximum leverage under your current constraints

Everyone has different time and capital constraints, and it’s up to us to find high-impact actions that give us maximum returns (instead of grinding everywhere).

And the only way to improve your judgment is through skin in the game (a term that’s so hated by airdrop farmers).

You can’t find what’s best for you by just consuming.

You have to actually do and experience it first-hand to learn what works for you (and what doesn’t).

• The more you take action, the more you reflect, and the more you iterate, the more you hone judgment.

• The more you are accountable for your actions (instead of blaming other factors), the more you hone judgment.

• The more failures you face, the more indicators you have of what doesn’t work to hone judgment.

Those with the best judgment are not overly emotional.

They are calm and analytical, not letting emotions cloud their judgment, but focus on iterating fast to see what works.

How I built out this entire philosophy of Airdrop Magnetism was through writing out my thoughts every week.

If you noticed, my Twitter bio has been changing frequently over the past year as I tried to find the best way to communicate my worldview and opinions.

Here’s how it evolved:

• Sharing everything I learn along the way

• Becoming a Sybil-proof airdrop hunter (onchain + social)

• Building a strong onchain and social reputation (after reading Vitalik’s post)

• Building a magnetic onchain and social reputation

This came about by consistently writing every week, and each new iteration improved on the previous one as I gained clarity of thought.

So do things, reflect, and iterate as much as you can.

Your time is precious, so focus on doing low-volume but high-impact tasks that move you closer towards freedom.

These 3 skills form a recursive feedback loop to build your Magnetic Reputation:

1. Sensemaking is your filter to find your truth in the sea of low-value noise, to be skeptical of everything unless it’s proven to be real and curate inputs to find signals that align with your values

2. Signal Creation involves skin in the game by actually doing the thing and gaining clarity on whether it worked or failed (DDRR), creating an ultimate source of truth for you

3. Judgment is honed through reflection and directs your actions towards high-time ROI actions, while guiding future sensemaking to ignore more noise

Judgment becomes the ultimate magnet that attracts others to follow you, including high-signal accounts.

Your judgment, especially when paired with positive results, shows that you’re not just another NPC on the timeline, but are a real human with real thoughts that are shaped by all of your past experiences.

Work on refining these 3 skills, and you’ll build a Magnetic Reputation in no time (more on how I can help you with that later).

The ultimate goal is to passively get airdrops and access to other opportunities while focusing on high-leverage tasks that build up your compounding reputation.

A brief summary of the entire roadmap:

• The compounding effect starts with building a strong onchain and social footprint (the core inputs)

• Both are involved in Signal Creation, which ties along with Sensemaking and Judgment to form the Magnetic Skill Stack

• All 3 skills build an authentic and Magnetic Reputation that starts to naturally attract rewards and achieve time freedom

It’s time to stop selling your time and attention to projects with the flashiest marketing and empty promises that ultimately underdeliver.

While everyone is busy grinding airdrops by using projects that they hate and optimising for short-term rewards:

We focus on low-volume but high-impact tasks that do not take up significant time.

We don’t want to spend the whole day ‘in the trenches’ while forgoing other aspects of our lives (like health and social).

Airdrops are just a tool for freedom, and we need to use them in the most optimal way that gives us back control of our lives.

So stop asking what airdrops you should farm right now.

Instead, find products that you truly enjoy and can continue using without the incentives, and become an Airdrop Magnetist that builds a high-signal reputation (which all starts by saying what you did).

If you want to stop feeling replaceable as 'just another account on CT' and build a Magnetic Reputation that attracts rewards passively:

Download the Unfair Advantage Playbook to get a 21-minute system to build your 'Category-of-One' brand that commands respect from reputable accounts (even with a low follower count).