I’ve seen the full story of Web3 airdrops—from the golden age of Uniswap and ENS, to now, which feels like a labyrinth full of traps. This transformation isn’t just about money, but about the list of human traits that have changed the industry.

Initially, airdrops were truly celebrations—early supporters and project teams shared benefits. But from 2023 onward, everything changed. Big capital, professional farming studios, and endless competition reshaped the entire landscape. "Interactive wealth" became a "cyber harvesting field," and retail investors? Just free testers and data providers.

HOP Protocol started the entire "witch hunting" era. They introduced a community reporting mechanism—if you report a suspicious address, you get rewards. Honestly, it’s like a game of betrayal. After this, all projects copied this formula, and on-chain interaction became an exhausting cat-and-mouse game.

Blast popularized the points system. Lock up your ETH, collect points, wait for token launch. But the rules kept changing—only big investors and NFT collectors really profited, while regular users locked their funds with no returns better than risk-free investments. The whole thing turned into a financial pyramid.

LayerZero? That was the breaking point for many. After 18 months of cross-chain interactions, they suddenly said you need to be an "active contributor" to get the full airdrop. If not, you’re automatically zeroed out. Many genuine users lost everything due to extremely harsh Sybil detection. The "presumption of guilt" approach completely destroyed trust.

zkSync collected millions in gas fees, then at airdrop time, the criteria became "how much money did you deposit" instead of actual usage. Use activity to attract users, then use the funding amount to filter. Clever but extremely unfair.

Infinex promised legitimacy—backed by Synthetix founder, with Patron NFTs, and a long points campaign. But during the public sale, the valuation was extremely high, with a mandatory one-year lock-up, and strange allocation logic. On the first day, it crashed. The team issued emergency patches multiple times due to backlash.

Linea turned airdrop hunting into full-time slavery. Two years of Galxe Odyssey tasks—answer questions, cross-chain, swap, mint NFTs without liquidity. And at the end, detailed KYC verification. Endless grinding for very little rewards.

Grass promised free tokens for bandwidth contribution. People ran devices 24/7, even bought overseas IPs. But after launch, the team kept most tokens for themselves. Users who worked for months couldn’t recover even by buying tokens because of electricity and proxy costs. Basically, free resource extraction.

Monad ended the L1 airdrop hype. Even with 230,000 addresses participating in the testnet, the community allocation was only 3.3%. Many genuine users were zeroed out due to harsh Sybil reviews, while KOLs and insiders received bulk allocations. Since then, no one has been excited about L1 projects.

Babylon forced Ethereum staking mechanics onto Bitcoin—but due to BTC chain limitations and network congestion, many retail investors paid extremely high mining fees but couldn’t stake. Returns after lock-up were even lower than swing trading. Simply copying Ethereum’s model onto Bitcoin failed spectacularly.

Backpack ran a "Volume = Points" campaign for two years. During TGE, suddenly strict KYC and "one device, one IP" enforcement appeared. Many accounts disappeared. One trader spammed $15 billion in volume, paid $300,000 in fees, but only received tokens worth $150,000—50% loss. The project profited from volume pumping while users lost.

EdgeX was supposed to be different in the Perp DEX space. But the reality? Old users who paid millions in fees received airdrops worth less than $1,000, while over 80 new addresses with no history received nearly $100 million in allocation. Chain detectives later found connections to black market market makers.

Genius was supposed to be the last hope. But at TGE, they announced that 70% of the airdrop would be auto-destroyed if claimed within 7 days, or locked for one year for the full amount. The community’s pressure was intense, so they introduced a refund option—users could destroy their airdrop quota within 48 hours to get a refund of fees.

The pattern is clear: projects use airdrop narratives to attract users and collect fees, then set different criteria to minimize actual distribution. The list of traits emerging in the crypto space is full of greed, deception, and broken promises.

Now that the airdrop bubble has burst, many realize that "free money" was just a mirage. The money spent on gas fees and opportunity costs became the projects’ income. This is the necessary cleansing the market needed.

Projects that grew through PUA tactics and black box mechanisms will face user exodus. Meanwhile, projects truly committed to community and real value creation will gain deeper trust amid the ruins of this era. For those who grinded through airdrops, it’s a painful lesson but an important reset for Web3.