Yes, you read the title right, and no it is no joke or something to just scoff off. While airdrops are a quick and easy way to market a new coin, get the word out about a recently developed blockchain, or just bring in the masses to show off that you have a following. The problem is that following is generally a money hungry pack of hyenas ready to tear you financially apart.
While quick cash is great and no one I know would turn it down, the problem lies in how you participate in a airdrop. Some cryptocurrencies have used google forms to get around this, but that just leads to cheat sheets being passed around so no one really has to think.
Starting to discect this problem we need to look at the root of the problem, and that is clear to see there are far to many ICO blockhains forking off the top major coins. This is causing quick cash grabs from developers to swindle people out of their money in hopes their project will become the next bitcoin. However since bitconnect we have noticed that many of these fulfill their initial promises then fold and fade into obscurity. At least many of us can rest easy many of the airdrop coins that are just throwing their coins out that are not anywhere near the size of bitconnect.
Did they even read the project, the tweets, or any other aspect of the project? Probley not, and you would be lucky if they glanced it over at all. In the few airdrops I have looked into I have learned more by forced videos being played when visiting their sites explaining what the project is. While is splits into another few issues for me, I will focus on that another time.
Another big issue is the ERC20 wallet, and how your Etherium wallet can accept all these tokens, and then as soon as they hit an exchange they are dumped in a blink of the eye. While I understand this is basically the promise of many of these coins since they tie an artificial value on the coin when being distributed and then force you follow all their social media accounts.
This is actually a cleaver and great way for many of these smaller coin devs to get into the ad revenue game from twitter, youtube, and others by having this sudden influx of followers. These followers avoid the "we bought them" clauses yet that is not really the cause. None of the people, except a few might actually care about the projects and focus on what is actually going on.
Now since I am no business expert I am keeping the details brief and short, since I could not tell you some of the more in depth issues with, but my biggest concern is coin owners noticing that when they do airdrops no one actually cares or reads what their project it. Its just follow this link, click follow, drop your ERC20 wallet here, then wait.
Yes, that basically boils down how every airdrop is working, and there might be some variants out there, but very few strive away from that model.
The idea of using a wallet that is different from a ERC20 wallet is turning many people away from great projects, as its not easy to keep track of, and they need to manage a wider array of wallets and possibly exchanges. While I find this frustrating I have found many great projects that use airdrops, but I generally keep clear of any investment into them, unless they can show they are more than just giving out free money.
So what does this short rant really even lead to? The popping of the expanding crypto world as we currently know it. While that is a topic for another post the core idea is that the blockchain is expanding, ideas are being expressed, possibilities expanded upon, and politics are effecting every turn.
We are going to see these smaller coins start to drop off here soon, that are only trying to fix one major issue and have short and incomplete roadmaps that do not allow for expansion or growth. We can use real world examples of this today looking at companies that once played major roles such as the telecom industry moving from home phones, to cellphones. The cryptoworld is going to have to adapt a much faster pace than we are comfortable with currently, but in due time it will be second nature.
The growth of the industry is only just starting, and much like the dot com bust things will only get better after the burst. We just have to hold on until then and ride the wave and see where it takes us.