Author: Princess Christine (@0xsexybanana)
There are actually two methodologies for airdrop farming:
The first, I believe, is the Old Dong school: cast a wide net, compete on execution. It's essentially a labor-intensive studio logic, where as long as the cost per account is kept low enough, you go and蹭 (participate in/get involved with) every project. The fault tolerance of this model is extremely high; as long as you hit one epic-level big airdrop, it can cover all the sunk costs of being "反撸" (counter-farmed/denied the airdrop).
The second is my school. Similar to Today Capital's Xu Xin's "Sniper Approach" – heavily invest in research, participate deeply. Use logical screening to exclude industrial garbage from the firing range in advance. (This is also why I say that the projects I'm bullish on might not necessarily succeed, but the ones I'm not bullish on will definitely not succeed. My project research checklist can filter out most of the minefields.)
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So what is this checklist? 4 dimensions:
1, Team (People Harmony): Smart enough, good enough execution, good enough heart. None can be missing.
How to judge: Use the founder's tweets to judge if this person is a big brain or just a frontman brought in to只会cx (only know how to shill) and shout slogans. Understand if they are sufficiently humble and nice through offline meetings. Many founders' tweets are so hollow they only know how to shout slogans, lacking insight into their own industry.
For most airdrop farmers, it's relatively difficult to接触 (contact/interact with) project teams. Even if you're a KOL and have had offline contact with the project team, it's hard to judge when the project teams put on their social masks.
2, Product (Geographical Advantage):
Here there are another 3 dimensions. 1) The product itself has PMF (Product-Market Fit). 2) The team's product delivery is到位 (up to standard/executed well). 3) The team has a responsible attitude towards their product.
How to judge? They never release shoddy product versions at any time; they have product pursuit. Look at OKX for example; whether they are delivering an early-stage or a mature product, they never hand over a product full of低级错误 (low-level mistakes) to users.
3, Narrative (Geographical Advantage): Being on a relatively new, un-falsified track, and enjoying an extremely high valuation premium.
How to judge? You need to evaluate whether this narrative has炒作空间 (hype potential) in Web3 and whether it is a capital风口 (hot trend) in Web2 – the hype logic of these two is often synchronized.
This is also why I heavily bet on Openmind last year: the AI + robotics track was a trillion-dollar darling in Web2 and was far from being falsified in Web3. (Although it later encountered an epic反撸 (counter-farm/airdrop denial), resulting in a zero airdrop, but that belongs to a black swan event of another dimension, let's not discuss it here.)
4, Time and Cost (Heavenly Timing):
Is market sentiment extremely FOMO or extremely pessimistic? Is the participation cost low or high?
How to judge FOMO? When your Twitter feed is full of airdrop influencers calling you to farm, and everyone is bullish on the next xxx-level opportunity, and your participation cost is high, you will feel hesitant.
If you feel hesitant, it's best not to participate.
In the current crypto circle, when an opportunity is participated in by everyone, it won't be a big airdrop opportunity. The profit pool of this 1.5-level market simply cannot bear such a large volume. Even if it's a good project, if everyone farms it, a big airdrop becomes a small one, a small one becomes nothing, and nothing becomes a big loss.
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So now, based on this checklist, why didn't I focus on farming Backpack?
1. Narrative Logic: Pseudo-demand and Regulatory Shackles
I've said on Twitter long ago that I'm not bullish on the narrative of "compliant centralized exchanges." Why did Hyperliquid rise? A large part of the增量 (increment/growth) came precisely from users' tax avoidance and anti-censorship needs. Under an increasingly harsh compliance framework, facing mature giants like Binance and OKX, where is Backpack's moat? Where will its incremental users come from? What is the Unique Selling Point that makes users not use Gate, MEXC, but have to use Backpack? I still haven't figured it out.
2) Product: Lack of Reverence for Product Delivery
I rarely see any exchange's technical foundation as拉垮 (shoddy/poor) as Backpack's. Countless outages, rollbacks, and multiple large-scale user compensations within half a year. The launch of every new feature reeks of carelessness and敷衍 (perfunctory effort). A team responsible for its users should deliver even the simplest feature completely and smoothly, not serve up a粗糙 (crudely) made半成品 (half-finished product).
In contrast, look at Hyperliquid; even in its extremely early days with only 2000 followers, you could hardly see any肉眼可见的 (visible to the naked eye) Bugs (the only drawback at the time was poor liquidity, and it was jokingly called Hyperliquidated).
Early in '24, a friend硬拉着 (dragged me hard) to farm BP. I remember clearly that Backpack was so简陋 (rudimentary/simple) it only had BTC and SOL trading pairs. But instead of polishing the product and enriching the coin variety, they started疯狂拉人头 (frantically pulling in people) with the gimmick of "farm trading volume for SOL ecosystem token airdrops." This typical "growth running ahead of the product" approach暴露 (exposed) the management's extreme lack of operational experience and systematic strategy, purely a草台班 (makeshift operation/amateur hour).
These small observations made me very下头 (turn off/turned off) by backpack, and I一直拒绝参与 (consistently refused to participate in) its airdrop farming.
3) Time and Cost: Extremely High.
Starting in '25, some zero-fee perpetual exchanges began to流行 (become popular). And at this time, backpack started its season 3. Compared to zero-fee platforms like lighter, I never understood why刷分成本 (farming cost) at 0.5u的 (of) backpack was attractive. So even though all my airdrop farming friends were doing season 3, I chose to避其锋芒 (avoid its锋芒 (sharp edge/peak intensity)).
Until later, with BN's强势 (strong momentum) and exclusive support for meme coins on BSC (i.e., when Chinese tickers like "币安人生" (Binance Life) started to爆火 (explode in popularity)), I observed some distance emerging between the Solana Foundation and Binance, and the foundation似乎 (seemed) to have some sense of crisis. I speculated that the Solana ecosystem might nurture its own CEX to counter Binance's dominance. So I OTC'd 100k points at 0.3 (price). This OTC action was a small bet on whether the Solana ecosystem would vigorously replicate/support BP. But it seems now, they didn't扶 (support/nurture it).
4) Team
I lack close observation and understanding of the bp team, so I won't comment much.
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My attitude towards backpack has always been relatively objective. Running an exchange is different from shilling memes; an exchange requires an excellent technical foundation and operational capabilities, which Backpack clearly lacks. They cannot deliver a good product, nor do they have the product operation capabilities to operate features到位 (effectively) (like the previously highly-touted prediction market). Even worse, they vigorously developed compliance, putting growth shackles on themselves before they even grew up.
So I currently regard backpack as a meme coin disguised as a VC coin. As a platform coin, I think a 200M FDV isn't expensive either, currently holding). Of course, this is secondary market speculation logic, and has nothing to do with airdrop farming anymore.
