I was never a big fan of airdrops and didn't want to waste my time on them. Because of that I never really got into the requirements to join one. This weekend I had some free time so I thought this would be a good thing to check out and see how things work in the "airdrop community". To be completely honest, I would call them by their real name - shill fests.
It may seem too harsh but that is what they are. People genuinely get paid in crypto that isn't even launched yet to shill all over the internet. Here are some of the requirements I found very interesting.
The follow and retweet requirement is just stupid. I know you are trying to spread the word but forcing someone to share content that could be misleading or yet another pyramid scheme in the making is unethical in my opinion. To someone who looks at social media channels of coins such as this one, it would look like it is a very popular project but, in reality, the post is liked and shared by people who see airdrops as another stream of income and probably use fake profiles.
Another very interesting request is to subscribe to their subreddit. Some even required that you leave a "positive and constructive comment" on a certain post about a coin. If that isn't shilling what is? How can someone leave a positive comment if the project isn't even in the ICO phase? Judging crypto projects by a whitepaper alone should be a thing of the past. If you don't have a working product or at least a demo you can piss off. The end result of such a requirement is this:
You have a community of 8k people and only 45 active users. Seems legit, doesn't it?
Reddit is actually the only place where you can see if someone "bought" their subscribers.
There are so many arguments against these shill fests. Not only are they creating a false image that could be presented to gullible investors as "promising projects with a lot of supporters" but they could also lead them to lose their hard-earned money. Not to mention that they aren't actually rewarding people with any monetary value. Users are rewarded with crypto that will be premined and won't cost them a dime. The market may decide that you did all that shilling for a few cents.
Just to make things clear, I have nothing against the coins shown in the images above. I am just using them as an example of these shill fests.
I honestly believe that potential investors will be willing to invest in a project that has at least a working demo. Show them what your project is about rather than boasting about your follower and retweet count generated by fake accounts and "fake money". As smart money starts coming into the crypto space I hope things like fake likes and subscribers will die out but right now it looks like we are at the very bottom of this steep and high mountain.
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I agree with your observations, but I am unsure how the Airdrop exactly plays into this. I know this is their method of choice right now, but I have seen many alternatives with ICO bonus schemes, or basically any incentive you can imagine that involves this sort of forced marketing.
In the end, someone is going to have to put down money for these coins, if all you have is an army of redditors waiting for free shitcoins, your project is not going to take off anyway.
The airdrop has its uses, just like the ICO imo. As long as the market reacts to hype instead of fundamentals or real technical promise, we will see these types of schemes.
Agreed. I think that the market stopped reacting to hype but, as I said we still have a long way to go before crypto becomes mature enough and these things become history.
This post has received a 3.23 % upvote from @boomerang.
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