I just realized that crypto airdrops have changed completely from how they used to be. Back in the Uniswap and ENS era, it was truly a “honeymoon” between the community and the project team—supporting each other, sharing benefits, and everyone was happy. But now? From 2023 to 2026, the influx of big capital and competition from professional studios have drastically changed the landscape. Interactions that should have earned rewards have instead become a cyber-harvesting field. Retail investors? Now they’re just treated as free testers, cheap liquidity providers, and data-producing machines.

I want to talk about 12 of the most brutal projects that have ever existed. This isn’t just about failed airdrops—this is about how community trust gets systematically worn down to nothing.

Starting with HOP Protocol, which introduced the terrifying “Sybil hunting” era. They created a community reporting mechanism where the reporter could get a share of the reported address. Clever? Yes. Brutal? Extremely. The project team basically told users to kill each other while they sat behind the scenes, exploiting human greed. Even worse, the reporting list was directly uploaded to GitHub so other industries could recycle it. After HOP, fighting Sybils became a “political truth” for all blockchain projects. But how they did it? By damaging the community ecosystem from within.

Then there’s Blast. This is a project that arrived with Paradigm’s backing, but it brought along an absolutely insane points system. Users have to lock ETH or stablecoins to get points, but the rules always change. Big players and top NFT collectors profit heavily, while ordinary users who lock funds for months? Their results even fall behind risk-free interest. Blast basically turned airdrops into a Ponzi scheme. Since then, the “points layer” has become an industry standard, and trust was immediately destroyed the moment the rules kept shifting.

LayerZero is the critical point where trust truly collapsed. Users had gone all-in to pay gas fees for cross-chain interactions for 18 months, and then suddenly, right before TGE, they launched the strictest sybil check in history. They even asked users to “voluntarily surrender” to maintain part of a quota; otherwise, they’d be completely removed. Many active users and legitimate small studios were wiped out immediately. This is an extreme presumption of guilt—taking all those high fees from users, but treating them like thieves. LayerZero instantly destroyed the multi-chain narrative and made everyone fear anti-farming checks.

zkSync, one of the four L2 “kings,” managed to endure the community’s hunger for years. After absorbing gas fees totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, they released a very dark airdrop rule. They drastically reduced the weight of transaction volume and activity, switching to “deposit funds at specific times” as the main threshold. Long-term users who supported the project’s growth? They got nothing. New accounts with sudden deposits? They got big shares. This exploited activity to trick gas fees, and then pushed users out based on their funds. After zkSync, the entire market lost hope in L2 airdrops.

Infinex is a case study of how legitimacy can be weaponized. Supported by Kain Warwick from Synthetix, they became a symbol of trust. Using Patron NFT and monthslong point campaigns, they pushed users to invest a lot of money and effort. But during the January 2026 public sale? The community encountered an extremely high FDV valuation, a crazy one-year lockup, and chaotic distribution. The first day of the public sale failed completely, and the team was forced to “fix” the rules again and again while the community was furious. This was a reverse public sale under extremely high expectations—long-term investments immediately turned into sunk costs locked in.

Linea? This is what makes me the most angry. They exploited PUA to an horrifying degree with Galxe Odyssey over a full two years. Users had to keep answering questions, doing cross-chain actions, swapping, minting trash NFTs with no liquidity, and enduring complicated KYC. It was an endless war of exhaustion—always tasks, always collecting points, always PUA—but token launches kept getting delayed. Linea turned “complete tasks to get an airdrop” into a full-time job with extremely low hourly pay and extraordinary psychological stress. Many users burned out and left the ecosystem right away.

Grass, a DePIN star, pushed users to run devices 24/7 to donate bandwidth. Many people even bought clean IP addresses from overseas using their own money. But at token launch? Most of the allocation was kept by the team or distributed to VCs. Retail users who worked hard for months? They couldn’t even cover electricity costs or proxy fees after selling the tokens. This is exploiting empty hands—using a Web3 mask to exploit users’ physical resources.

Monad, the long-awaited high-performance L1, launched an airdrop in October 2025 with 230,000 eligible addresses, but the overall community distribution was only 3.3%. Many legitimate testnet users were purged or received extremely small allocations. KOLs and early insiders? Large quotas. High expectations paired with low distribution, plus strict reviews—drawing many users in with technical narratives, then sending all tokens to KOLs.

Babylon tried to force Ethereum staking into Bitcoin. During mainnet activity, because BTC capacity is limited and congestion is extreme, many retail users paid super high mining fees but still failed to stake, suffering real losses. Those lucky enough to stake, after a six-month lock, received rewards far lower than speculative trading. This was an extremely expensive “test”—forcing FOMO on blockchains that don’t support smart contracts, ultimately harming retail through high gas fees.

Backpack, which gathered $37 million, ran a two-year campaign with the slogan “trading volume = points.” Right before TGE, they suddenly implemented strict KYC and a “one device, one IP” policy. Many accounts were deleted. Even those who survived suffered heavy losses: one major investor spent $300,000 in transaction fees to trigger $15 billion in volume, only to receive $150,000 worth of tokens. A net loss of 50%. This was a simple, crude “volume rollback”—sure, checking volume manipulation was necessary, but the post-launch review clearly exploited the promise of an airdrop to generate fees. BP tokens crashed 68% in the first week.

EdgeX is a setback for Perp DEX. After the L2 failed, Perp DEX—one that needed real transaction fees—was treated by retail as its last hope. But at TGE? Old users spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees to get less than a thousand dollars in airdrops. Meanwhile, more than 80 new addresses with no prior interaction controlled nearly $1 billion. Blockchain detectives proved that liquidity providers were tied to criminal networks. Official accounts immediately shut off comments and disappeared. This is open-secret accumulation—retail is turned into data cows, and the projects no longer pretend.

Genius was considered the last hope. But after the community flooded volume, TGE brought a surprise: within seven days, claiming the airdrop automatically burned 70% of the tokens, leaving a maximum of 30%. Or you could lock for one year and get everything. Under public opinion pressure, the launch team introduced a “refund” option—in the 48 hours after TGE, users could burn 100% of their quota and receive a refund of transaction fees from Genius. Users invested real money for the premium legitimacy, but at the last second they were given an ultimatum: “Take the spare change or stay in the project for another year.”

Now I see a clear pattern. From the witch-hunt list of HOP, to Blast stacking points, to LayerZero’s self-inflicted slaughter—these twelve projects together write a blood-soaked history of absurd crypto retail suffering. But the harsher truth is this: it’s not just planned harvesting, but shared karma about speculation and greed.

All this time, the crypto community only cared about “whether tokens will be released, and how airdrop distribution works,” without paying attention to whether the product has real PMF or can generate sustainable revenue. The project teams exploited this greed perfectly—you chase the airdrop, and they chase your capital and your transaction fees. The airdrop bubble has burst, and many people have suffered “reverse rugs” until they’re completely destroyed.

It’s tough, but this kind of cleansing is necessary. The market is finally forced back to reason. The traffic pulled in by airdrop hopes is just an illusion. Products with real PMF deserve time and money. This is the end of the airdrop era—and at the same time, the true rise of web3.

Projects built on manipulation and secrecy will be abandoned by users. Meanwhile, projects that truly want to build together with the community and return to core values will earn trust that’s more precious in the rubble. For users who are still active on exchange and in the blockchain ecosystem, this is a painful lesson and also a step toward enlightenment. Lost trust takes a long time to rebuild, and it starts with real transparency—not with an airdrop that promises everything.