After three months of farming, only received $10: Should we cancel airdrops?

I still remember the scene when I received my first crypto airdrop, as if it happened just yesterday. It was 2020, and I was busy completing bounty tasks on Bitcointalk. One morning, I was woken up by a WhatsApp notification—it was a message from a friend.

"Have you used Uniswap?" he asked. I replied, "Yes," and then he said, "Then you should have 400 UNI tokens to claim, which are now worth over $1,000." I immediately went to Uniswap's Twitter page to find the claim link, claimed the tokens, and sold them right away.

It was that simple—"free money" falling from the sky. No need to fill out forms, no grinding levels on Discord, and none of those "must contribute to qualify" restrictions.

Looking back, that moment defined what airdrops were supposed to be: a surprise "subsidy" for users who love and are actively using the product, not the worthless junk activities we see today.

The Golden Age of Airdrops

Later, I also received the 1Inch airdrop. At the time, any wallet eligible for the UNI airdrop could also claim 1Inch. But what truly changed my perception of "airdrop mechanics" was the dYdX airdrop.

To participate, I had to bridge ETH to the dYdX protocol. Back then, most Layer2 solutions were still at the whitepaper stage, and cross-chain fees were sky-high. I did a few trades to generate some volume—not much—and then bridged my assets back out. Just a day's worth of operations, and I ended up with a five-figure (USD) airdrop. Thinking back, it still feels unbelievable.

The total value of the airdrops I received peaked at over $20,000. To be honest, I sold half of it along the way—after all, it was "free money," and cashing out is always the norm.

The dYdX airdrop gave me my first decent principal, which I immediately invested in the DeFi sector. During the "DeFi Summer," I did liquidity mining on Juldswap, earning about $250 a day. Honestly, I really miss those days.

The Decline of Airdrops

Of course, the good times couldn't last forever. After dYdX, I participated in airdrop campaigns for Scroll, Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync, with zkSync marking the beginning of my "bad airdrop experiences."

However, I will never forget the Scroll airdrop. Expectations were sky-high, and even though co-founder Sandy posted that famous "lower your expectations" tweet, it did nothing to dampen the community's enthusiasm.

People kept raising their expectations until disappointment finally hit. The Scroll airdrop allocation was absurdly low—almost a joke. The crypto community's mood instantly plummeted from excitement to despair. Honestly, that airdrop left a shadow over me, and I swore I'd never participate in Layer2 airdrop "mining" again.

If it were just Scroll, maybe I could accept it. But what really bothered me was realizing that such "low-quality airdrops" would become the norm in the future.

The Current Chaos of Airdrops

Fast forward to today, and the airdrop scene is simply a mess. The once "surprise airdrops" have long turned into an "industrialized Sybil attack-style airdrop farming" business.

You have to spend months, even years, interacting with various protocols: bridging, adding liquidity, burning gas fees, and building so-called "user loyalty." In the end, whether you get an airdrop is pure luck, and even if you do, the allocation is pitifully small. What's even more outrageous is the emergence of "airdrop claim windows open for only 48 hours"—I remember Sunrise was the first to do this.

Even if you finally make it to claim day, you'll find the allocation doesn't match the time and cost you invested, and it often comes with a ridiculously harsh vesting schedule. For example, the 0G Labs airdrop unlocks quarterly over 48 months—48 months, that's a full four years!

There are so many of these issues now that whenever I see those "airdrop alpha" tweets, my first reaction is: "Ha, another 'mosquito leg' airdrop."

The Game Between Projects and Users

The truth is: in recent years, users have become "utilitarian"—there's no need to sugarcoat it. Now, people use a product simply for the rewards; no one is going to spend hours clicking around or contributing to the community just for the so-called ecosystem culture.

And what about the project teams? They do want loyal users, but they want "impressive data" for VCs even more—like high user numbers and large community sizes. These stats are enough to boost their valuations when preparing fundraising PPTs. As a result, the relationship between users and project teams has become a game of "farming data" versus "preventing data farming."

The result: neither side is happy. Users feel played, and project teams face the challenge of user retention.

What Should Airdrops Be Like?

If I were to redesign airdrops, I might go back to the Uniswap model: no grand promises, no leaderboards, just a surprise subsidy for loyal users one day. This alone would reduce "industrialized airdrop farming" and lower users' unrealistic expectations.

Alternatively, one could learn from Sui's "presale-style airdrop" model—set a reasonable fully diluted valuation (FDV) and give early contributors and users the chance to buy tokens at a discount.

The closest to this model now are Cysic and Boundless. They use a "level system" to reward users with presale discounts based on their contributions to the ecosystem.

Or, just cancel airdrops altogether and focus on building truly usable products: create something with real product-market fit and a solid revenue model, instead of copy-pasting the same thing 200 times. Honestly, this approach is more in line with the long-term interests of the crypto community.

Conclusion

The current state of airdrops is downright terrible. It fails both the users who spend time "grinding" for airdrops and the projects trying to build real communities.

The end result: everyone feels used. Maybe canceling airdrops and focusing on building products that let everyone make money is the better choice?