Airdrops always end in chaos.

We’ve all been conditioned to expect free money for doing low-value effort.

Projects know and feed into that greed, but it leads to a toxic situation whenever a checker is released:

‘Loyal’ community members sending death threats to the team because they didn’t get the allocation they expected.

This was the real situation that @icobeast referenced when he said that airdrop farmers are the “single worst possible foundation for a community”.

And not that airdrop farmers are bad.

So let’s end the airdrop farming debate once and for all:

Everything can be exploited, will be exploited.

This was the key takeaway I had from @alachacolate’s piece on Sybil farming.

Quoting from the article:

we were somewhat cognizant of the potential backlash of requiring face scans, but we vastly underestimated the lengths people would take to farm this reward

what we saw was that individuals were setting up wallets for themselves, their parents, siblings, children, friends, neighbors, and anyone else they knew so they could get unique face scans and collect the $25 deposit. we ended up shutting down the promotion within 12 hours because of the sheer magnitude of people that were manipulating the system to farm the reward

This goes beyond crypto and is apparent in my country too:

Whenever there’s a promotion that gives money or credits freely, we will look to exploit it for maximal gains.

We had this entire ‘saga’ from a fintech company where the incentives were exploited until it became unsustainable to continue running the campaign.

“Never underestimate the lengths people will go to for free money”.

If the time and effort cost is low, the campaign will be exploited.

It is human nature for us to extract anything we see as a quick win.

Some projects know full well about this, but they still choose to lean into this behaviour:

The mainstream crypto marketing playbook is boring.

Some projects know that no one would use their product, so they lean into hype marketing to attract users.

They think that the only way to attract users is with a token, and their campaign is basically:

• Hinting at a token

• Claiming that they’re ‘for the community’

• Rewarding low-value tasks like spamming Discord or completing testnet tasks

Some projects used vague terms to hype up their token so users (and their family of wallets) would flock over.

While others would beg us to farm them by actively shilling their token.

This made us conditioned to think that we will receive airdrops just by completing simple tasks (me included).

I was successful in 2024 by finding these campaigns to complete and earning decent airdrops.

Projects choose this easy way to inflate their metrics and get funding from VCs.

Their marketing campaigns all involve hinting at throwing free money at users, so they’re incentivised to use the product even if they hate it.

But then, these projects turn back on the users who inflated their metrics and labelled them as ineligible.

It doesn’t help that these projects gave derogatory names that fuelled the flame:

• E-beggars (Starknet)

• Onchain prostitutes (Hyperlane)

I understand where they come from, but they were basically digging their graves by triggering farmers more.

This space made us expect rewards for low-value tasks, but that is no longer possible.

The competition is getting harder because of Sybils that aim to exploit these ‘free money mechanics’.

Projects can choose to do either of these options:

1. Completely eliminate all low-value tasks from their eligibility criteria

2. Reward both Sybils and humans, which dilutes the entire pool

Projects are guilty of farming us to inflate their metrics, and there’s no denying that fact.

But that’s because of misaligned incentives, where they reward actions that give them short-term hype instead of long-term retention.

This is the same reason why InfoFi campaigns become so spammy:

Projects choose to reward vanity metrics on posts instead of those that are truly valuable (because it’s harder to identify these).

They reward those who are here solely for the rewards because it inflates their metrics, while those who genuinely contributed to the project get less, and they feel disheartened.

And these are the projects that are forgotten because they couldn’t identify the individuals who were most aligned with them.

If the product was that good, there would be a strong user base, regardless if there are incentives or not.

Some projects (not all) know that they add nothing of value to the world and rely on these incentives to stay relevant.

But they’re not the only ones at fault because another party has a part to play:

Let’s go back to the Scroll airdrop.

Just after Starknet announced its allocation to GitHub contributions,

KOLs started telling their followers to make contributions to Scroll’s GitHub.

While they didn’t explicitly tell them to farm, many just started spamming commits like correcting grammar or trivial edits.

KOLs know that they get the most engagement for shilling a $0 airdrop task.

There’s a wider pool of audience that is interested in free airdrops

Who wouldn’t want to earn money with just a few clicks of a button and no capital cost?

The standard “POTENTIAL = $10,000 COST = $0” threads fuel unrealistic expectations for a project’s airdrop.

When there’s absolutely no guarantee, but these accounts will lean into the hype for views.

Due to legal reasons, some projects can’t call out these threads and manage expectations, which makes matters worse.

KOLs are experts at triggering emotions, especially after the checker is out.

They know that many are unhappy with their allocations, and lean into emotions to get even more engagement.

First, they shill a project and hype it up to get maximum engagement.

Then, when a project doesn’t meet their expectations, they ‘speak up for the community’ to get even more engagement.

KOLs fuel the flames and tell their followers that they are right and deserve rewards for their interactions.

And for all we know, a KOL can literally photoshop a screenshot of their allocation, and we’ll never know.

Which is why onchain footprint is still the most important factor for trust, because it cannot be faked.

So we get the 2 key pillars that lead to this state:

Overhyping (projects + KOLs) and underdelivering (projects).

Both are at fault for the default mindset that many farmers have:

@icobeast received a lot of hate for calling out airdrop farmers when he’s an ‘airdrop farmer’ himself with Blast, Virtuals, and even Kaito.

There is no denying that we are all here to make money. But there are toxic and non-toxic ways to make money here.

Which is why there’s a key difference between an airdrop farmer and an airdrop hunter:

An airdrop farmer has an entitled mindset.

I mentioned the key characteristics of an airdrop farmer here.

Farmers are entitled because they:

• Expect an airdrop for their interactions (which are sometimes the bare minimum)

• Complain loudly on social media if they don’t qualify or get a low amount

CT has conditioned us to think that we deserve rewards.

We set an expectation on how much we’ll receive from an airdrop, because KOLs and projects hype up the campaign.

And when the reality doesn’t meet these expectations, the space becomes toxic.

The entire ‘community’ turns on you.

Quoting from @advaith’s experience with farmers after the Succinct airdrop, this was what the team experienced:

• Flooding Twitter and Discord with absurd and offensive things

• Wishing that his mother would die of cancer

• Attacking anyone affiliated with the team, or even those who received higher allocations than them

• Dropping hate comments, even months after the airdrop

Till this day, there are accounts that are still bitter with the ZKsync airdrop one year later.

This is the kind of behaviour that should not be condoned.

There is nothing wrong with wanting to make money from airdrops, because that’s everyone’s goal.

But how we react to not getting the allocation we expect is the key defining characteristic of an airdrop farmer:

Those who pretend to be ‘aligned’ with the project and bootlick the team in hopes of getting a higher allocation, but then turn on them immediately once things don’t go their way:

Airdrops and emotions are never a good mix.

It’s fine to be disappointed with airdrops, but hurling toxic comments at the team and sending death threats is uncalled for.

Especially when they don’t owe you anything.

I’ve received a lot of hate, but I still stand by this:

Projects have zero obligation to give you tokens, just because you interacted with them.

Just like everything in life, airdrops are never guaranteed.

Points mean nothing except a ‘promise’.

Nothing is final until the official announcement. And even then, the terms can change before TGE happens.

Of course, you’ll call me a hypocrite and that I’m gaslighting others by saying that you don’t deserve an airdrop.

But that is completely up to the project to decide how they want to allocate it, which is beyond our control.

Again, not saying that projects are completely not at fault because some continue to reward low-value tasks.

But it’s easy to be toxic online when things don’t go our way because there are no repercussions for saying anything.

Being overly emotional clouds judgment, and that’s why I’m doing my best to detach from the outcome.

I am not perfect at this either and will get frustrated at some allocations, but again, there is no need to mock or be toxic towards a project.

Yes, I am guilty of these actions before, but I’ve realised that there’s no point except for boosting my ego and farming engagement.

And the sooner you realise this, the better:

Many see airdrops as a job, where the more hours you put in, the more rewards you get.

That is true for some airdrops, but it’s not always the case:

The amount of time you put in is not proportional to the rewards you earn, especially if you’re doing low-value tasks.

Which is why some can barely interact with a project and still get the highest allocations.

Airdrops are a value transfer where you have to give value first to get the airdrop back.

Of course, everyone would claim that their contributions are valuable.

This is the typical post I see whenever a checker comes out:

‘I did X, Y, and Z, but I received nothing.’

A project that truly cares about their community would want to reward those who are aligned with them.

But there will always be those who fall through the cracks, and our aim is to not be that account that barely makes the cut.

So if your strategy involves spamming plenty of low-value tasks, then it needs a serious rethink.

The question you need to ask yourself:

How am I providing real value to the project with my contributions?

If my actions can be replicated by millions of Sybils, then is it really valuable?

That’s the reason why no other L2 can follow the Arbitrum playbook for their airdrop:

The barrier to entry for hitting maximum points for the highest allocation is low, so Sybils can do the exact same actions at scale.

Arbtitrum was able to use easier criteria for their airdrop because that was before multiple Sybil farms sprung up.

And that’s the reason why skin in the game is becoming an increasingly valued metric to reward airdrops:

Humans are risk on, Sybils are risk off.

The more risk you incur, the greater allocation you’ll receive (though it’s not always guaranteed).

Yes, airdrops have gotten harder because of Sybils.

But you can choose to either complain that the game is rigged, or see how you can add meaningful contributions to a project and get a higher allocation.

And that determines your success for airdrops (and life in general):

Just because everyone else is doing an airdrop, doesn’t mean you should.

I’m barely touching perp DEXes even though it’s the meta now, because it’s a huge time sink for me.

If it doesn’t make sense with your time and capital constraints, skip it.

If you can’t find a reason to use the project except for the airdrop, skip it.

If everyone is mindlessly hyping up a project, skip it.

If the project is begging you to farm them, skip it.

You choose what you interact with, not because some KOL told you to.

The moment you can blame yourself for the failures that you make, the more control you have.

@SahilBloom wrote an article on the Victim Mentality, which is extremely applicable to airdrops:

When we attribute our own misses, failures, and challenges to factors outside our control, we give up our power. Alternatively, when we embrace accountability—when we take ownership of our situation and the actions and beliefs that are within our control—we take back that power. Life definitely isn't fair. It's a troubling reality.

But instead of wasting energy on every obstacle in your way, focus on what you can control and how you can break through.

We have zero control over the outcome of our airdrop allocation.

But we have full control over how we allocate our time and money.

Complaining does nothing because we’re wasting energy worrying about factors that we can’t control.

But if we blame only ourselves for our failures, we take back control over our lives.

We have the power to decide what we want to interact with.

We can choose to use projects that we care about.

The ones we genuinely enjoy using and can even make a profit with, instead of actively grinding projects that we hate to get tokens that we want to dump immdediately.

I’m not telling you that farming airdrops is bad.

But I’m telling you that we need to adapt and evolve.

It’s impossible to do the same low-value actions that worked before and expect the same result today.

But the competition has gotten stiffer thanks to Sybils, and you’ll either get a low allocation or be filtered out completely.

And there’s no room for toxicity either, just because you didn’t get what you expected.

That was the main point that @icobeast was trying to drill down on with his post, and one that I fully agree with.

The amount of hate that he received just shows how toxic this space is.

It is fine to be disappointed, but it is not ok to be toxic when things don’t go your way.

I will receive a lot of hate for this post, but so be it.

You can say all you want about me having the ‘moral high ground’ and that I’m a hypocrite because I’m farming airdrops.

But once again, the entitled mindset is what makes the difference between an airdrop farmer and an airdrop hunter.

We are all here to make money, but there is no need to be emotional over outcomes that we can’t control.

We cannot control how projects overhype their projects, but we can control how we manage our expectations.

Yes, projects and KOLs (even me) are at fault, there is no denying that.

But ignore anything that is beyond your control, and channel the emotions and energy into the factors that you can control.

Now more than ever, judgment is the key skill for airdrops, and I shared more here: