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Sigh... I know this is going to come across as old man cranky... but I am sort of cranky about how the current state of "community" engagement is going in the crypto universe.

So, if you haven't noticed... airdrop season appears to have kicked off, with Initial Exchange Offerings (IEOs) and Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), crowdsales, launchpads/pools, and airdrops flying around left right and centre. Now, I'm not adverse to having a nice unexpected little present dropping into a wallet or two... but I sort of do miss the old days in many ways.

There used to be a time when airdrop hunting and gaming on-chain metrics to get as much of a token drop as possible was not a thing. These days, it appears that there is a cottage industry of influencers telling people what to do to maximise their chances for a maximal airdrop... gone are the days of just trying out weird new things and getting a weird little surprise in your wallet.

Of course, in the past, there was much less noise... fewer chains, fewer protocols... and so, you would likely just stumble across things like Uniswap just by wandering around and trying to do stuff on-chain. These days, there are lots of protocols, lots of chains... and every one of them are competing for your time and attention. And these days, my time and attention are devoted to other things... I've sort of lost that naive enthusiasm and idealism, and partly moved to trying to grow a small music ensemble instead.

... and part of that waning of interest is the morphing of airdrops into claimdrops... so, not only do you need to be wandering around approving all sorts of transactions from not-yet trusted sites... but you also need to be on the ball and making sure that you claim you past interaction... the sorts of things that you might have briefly looked at from a burner wallet half a year ago.

So, you will likely have forgotten about the protocol, and what wallet you might have used to poke around in it! And if you haven't been keeping up with the little annoucement somewhere in the deluge of crypto news and noise... then you might just forfeit your airdrop anyway!

Today... I was poking around to see if I had the Dymension (DYM) tokens airdropped to me... it was all over crypto-twitter. So, I quickly popped onto my usual Keplr wallets... to find, ZERO. Poop... did I forget to claim them? I was travelling at the time, but I did write about it... and if I wrote about it, I probably claimed it!

That has also been a bit of a gripe as well... the time gated claim period... about 21 days for Dymension, that causes a bit of a rush to do it... and we all know that the rush in crypto means that you are prone to making mistakes like hopping onto a bad website and approving a terrible scam transaction!

Anyway, I couldn't believe that I had forgotten to do it... had I been flagged as a botter? Nope, I shouldn't be... and if so, there was something seriously wrong with their protocols!

In the end, I did find it in an unexpected place... I have to make sure that future claimdrops... I write down what to expect and where... I can't really remember anything from a month ago, when I did the claim... and there have been several large claimdrops since then as well. So, lesson to self... write things down!

... and I really hope that there starts to be a new model for airdropping... I hate these "community engagement" drives and the time-gated claim period... followed many months later by a main-net launch. Sigh... I'm an old cranky man...

I can also be found cross-posting at:
Hive
Steem
Publish0x

Handy Crypto Tools

Ledger Nano S/X: Keep your crypto safe and offline with the leading hardware wallet provider. Not your keys, not your crypto!
Coinbase Wallet: Multi chain wallet with lots of opportunities to Learn and Earn!
Binance: My first choice of centralised exchange, featuring a wide variety of crypto and savings products.
WooX: The centralised version of WooFi. Stake WOO for fee-free trades and free withdrawals! This link also gives you back 25% of the commission.
GMX.io: Decentralised perpetual futures trading on Arbitrum!
Coinbase: If you need a regulated and safe environment to trade, this is the first exchange for most newcomers!
Crypto.com: Mixed feelings, but they have the BEST looking VISA debit card in existence! Seriously, it is beautiful!
CoinList: Access to early investor and crowdsale of vetted and reserached projects.
Cointracking: Automated or manual tracking of crypto for accounting and taxation reports.
KuCoin: I still use this exchange to take part in the Spotlight and Burning Drop launches.
MEXC: Accepts HIVE, and trades in most poopcoins! Join the casino!
ByBit: Leverage and spot trading, next Binance?
OkX: Again, another Binance contender?