Recently, a bunch of people have been rushing to interact with airdrops, and I have just one thing to say: Don’t see yourself as "free labor." Many projects claim to be decentralized, but behind the scenes, they reroute transactions, increase slippage, and the combined fees and spreads directly drain your funds, making you doubt everything. Honestly, I’d rather do less than turn my wallet into a high-frequency trading bot just for a few points of rewards.

My current approach is pretty simple: I only interact with protocols I already know how to use, and I first calculate the single-transaction cost (including slippage and retries). If it exceeds my mental threshold, I just skip it; I don’t chase that atmosphere of “if you don’t do it today, you won’t qualify tomorrow.” Plus, with recent issues around MEV and fair ordering—miners and validators making good money while retail investors get squeezed like a sandwich—why pretend you’re “participating in building”? I don’t need to be understood, but I also won’t blindly throw money to follow the trend. Anyway, if I can earn, I earn; if not, I just save myself the mental fatigue.