Author: Biteye

Once, airdrops in the cryptocurrency sphere were an exhilarating "get-rich-quick myth." During the era of Uniswap, ENS, and Arbitrum, early users and project teams achieved mutual success, with evangelists and builders sharing the dividends, forming a brief yet real "golden honeymoon."

However, shifting the clock to 2023-2026 reveals a complete distortion of the airdrop landscape due to massive capital influx, extreme competition among professional studios, and the unlimited appetite of project teams.

"Communication brings blessings" has devolved into a "cyber harvesting ground," and harvesting rewards turned into a systemic backward collection act.

Retail investors are redefined: as free testers, low-cost liquidity providers, and an endless stream of data producers.

In an environment marked by long-term opacity in rules and fluctuating expectations, the end result is often not rewards, but rather zeroing out, dilution, or even outright elimination.

This article reviews twelve iconic "reverse harvesting" projects in airdrop history, retracing how trust gradually wore thin.

1. Hop Protocol (HOP): The Dawn of the "Witch" Era

The reverse harvesting process: The cross-chain bridge star HOP pioneered the chilling "community reporting witch (Sybil)" mechanism. The rules are extremely deceptive: reporters can claim a share from the reported address. It almost feels like Shang Yang, who practiced collective punishment thousands of years ago, has traveled to Web3.

Reverse harvesting characteristics: Mutual harm among the masses. The project team outsourced the dirty work of on-chain address correlation checks to users, inciting community infighting through human greed and even uploaded the reporting list directly to GitHub for industry-wide "reuse."

Far-reaching impact: After HOP, the witch-hunting became "politically correct" for all token issuance projects. On-chain interactions transitioned from "experiencing decentralized products" to a cat-and-mouse game of extreme internal consumption. While the effort to combat witches is necessary, completely offloading the responsibility of scrutiny onto the community and even encouraging mutual harm severely damaged community ecology.

2. Blast: The Evil "Points System" Originator

The reverse harvesting process: Wearing the halo of Paradigm, Blast abandoned traditional interaction models, requiring users to lock ETH or stablecoins to earn "points." The rules changed repeatedly, with large holders and top NFT players reaping hefty profits while regular users, after locking up funds for months, found their token earnings unable to outpace the interest of risk-free investments during the same period.

Reverse harvesting characteristics: Financial schemes and blind box gambling. Users were corralled in endless FOMO, becoming free ATMs for the project's total value locked (TVL) data.

Far-reaching impact: Since Blast, the "points nesting doll" has become the industry standard. The original intent of the points system was to encourage long-term user participation, but frequent rule changes and severe imbalance in returns ultimately resulted in users losing faith in the project. Web3 harvesters were reduced to Web2 workers, and the decentralized spirit that Web3 prided itself on was completely extinguished by capital's calculations.

3. LayerZero (ZRO): The Critical Point of Trust Collapse

The reverse harvesting process: After 18 months of cross-chain interactions that burned users' significant gas fees, the project team launched the harshest witch scrutiny in history just before token issuance, even requiring users to "voluntarily confess" to earn retained shares; otherwise, they would be zeroed out. Many genuinely active users and small studios faced total elimination.

Reverse harvesting characteristics: Extremely arrogant "presumption of guilt." The project team exploited the exorbitant transaction fees contributed by users but turned around to treat users like thieves, preventing and humiliating them.

Far-reaching impact: LayerZero personally destroyed the grand narrative of "multi-chain interaction." Witch volume checks need scrutiny, but the violent execution of "presumption of guilt + confession mechanism" further accelerated trust collapse. From then on, the stench of disgrace lingered, and "reverse harvesting" became the sword of Damocles hanging over all harvesters. Retail investors finally understood: in the face of absolute interpretative power, your efforts are worthless.

4. zkSync (ZK): The Complete End of the L2 Airdrop Era

The reverse harvesting process: As one of the former four L2 kings, zkSync kept the community's appetite whetted for years. After accumulating over one hundred million dollars in gas fees, its airdrop rules staged a shocking black box: greatly reducing the weight of transaction count and activity, instead making "fund retention at specific times" the core threshold. This led to a vast number of long-term interactive users, who accompanied the project’s growth, receiving nothing while internal whales and newly funded accounts devoured substantial shares.

Reverse harvesting characteristics: Using "activity" to deceive gas fees and then using "fund volume" to kick people out.

Far-reaching impact: zkSync's unsightly show left the entire market utterly despondent regarding L2 airdrops. Controlling witches and volume bots is necessary, but the black-box rules distressed true early contributors. Subsequent new L2s faced the embarrassing situation of being "ignored," and no longer would retail investors be willing to serve as free on-chain laborers.

5. Infinex: The Collapse of the Public Sale Mechanism

The reverse harvesting process: As a cross-chain DeFi aggregation platform backed by Synthetix founder Kain Warwick, Infinex was once seen as a representative of "legitimacy" by the community. It lured users to invest significant funds and energy through Patron NFTs and months of points activities. However, when the public sale began in January 2026, the community faced an extremely high fully diluted valuation, an outrageous "mandatory one-year lock-up," and a chaotic distribution logic. On the first day of the public sale, participation collapsed, and the project team was forced to urgently "patch" the rules amidst a storm of curses.

Reverse harvesting characteristics: "Public sale reversal" under high expectations. This operation, which initially utilized NFTs as bait and then altered the public sale mechanism, turned long-standing supporters' input into locked-in sunk costs.

Far-reaching impact: The Infinex incident exposed the risks of the "NFT + points for public sale" model, receiving endless comments from the community directed at the project team.

6. Linea: The Term "Slave" Originates from Linea

The reverse harvesting process: The art of PUA (Pick-Up Artist) reached a shocking level: launching over two years, with an absurd number of Galxe Odyssey tasks. Users had to answer questions, cross chains, swap, mint illiquid junk NFTs, much like slaves, and finally were forced to comply with extremely cumbersome KYC processes.

Reverse harvesting characteristics: An indefinite-fatigue war. Constantly doing tasks, forever accumulating LXP points, perpetually undergoing PUA, with mainnet token issuance always looming just out of reach.

Far-reaching impact: Linea transformed "task completion for airdrops" into a highly low-paid, mentally draining full-time job. Many users were exhausted and exited the circle, marking the complete failure of OAT (On-chain Achievement Tokens) narratives.

7. Grass: The Free Generator of DePIN

The reverse harvesting process: As a star in the DePIN track, it encouraged users to share idle bandwidth. Countless individuals left their computers on around the clock and even spent money to buy overseas clean IPs to boost their scores. When tokens were issued, the project team retained or allocated most shares to VCs, while retail investors who diligently mined tokens for months found that their earnings barely covered electricity and proxy IP costs.

Reverse harvesting characteristics: Swindling without scruples. Dressed in the guise of Web3 construction, it brazenly sucked physical resources from Web2 users.

Far-reaching impact: Grass's reverse harvesting made the market clearly realize that many so-called DePIN projects were essentially "leeching software," leading to a significant drop in retail participation in similar subsequent projects.

8. Monad: The Terminator of L1 Airdrops

The reverse harvesting process: As a highly anticipated high-performance L1 project, Monad attracted prolonged testing network interactions from the community. With the launch of the MON airdrop in October 2025, although 230,000 addresses were allowed to claim, the overall distribution ratio in the community was only about 3.3%, with numerous genuine testnet users zeroed out or receiving meager shares due to stringent witch scrutiny, while KOLs and some early associates received substantial allocations.

Reverse harvesting characteristics: Extremely low distributions and strict scrutiny following high expectations. The project lured many testing network users with technical narratives, only to distribute tokens to KOLs.

Far-reaching impact: The Monad incident further lowered the community's expectations for new L1 project airdrops. Although it was initially announced that testnets wouldn't count, many true early contributors felt betrayed when they received nothing at the TGE. As such, enthusiasm for participating in similar high-performance L1 projects significantly declined, accelerating the shift in the L1 track from "blooming with flowers" to "cautious observation."

9. Babylon: The Incompatibility and Imitation in the Bitcoin Ecosystem

The reverse harvesting process: Attempting to awkwardly transplant Ethereum's staking mechanisms onto the Bitcoin network. During mainnet activities, due to BTC chain capacity limitations and extreme network congestion, many retail investors paid exorbitant miner fees yet still faced staking failures, resulting in real monetary losses. For those who successfully staked, after six months of locking up, they found that airdrop returns fell short of earnings from merely trading or investing in financial products on exchanges.

Reverse harvesting characteristics: Extremely high trial-and-error costs. Fostering FOMO emotions on the BTC chain, which does not support smart contracts, ultimately hurt retail investors with soaring gas fees.

Far-reaching impact: It doused the overheated BTC L2 trajectory with a cold reality check. It provided a bloody lesson proving that simply copying Ethereum's PUA model does not work in the Bitcoin ecosystem, severely draining the trust and patience of longtime Bitcoin players towards emerging ecologies.

10. Backpack: The Backlash of Crazy Volume and the Trust Crisis of "National Projects"

The reverse harvesting process: Raising 37 million dollars, Backpack launched a "transaction volume = points" event, PUAing the community for two years. Just before the TGE, a sudden crackdown on strict KYC and "one device, one IP" black box witch hunting led to numerous accounts being zeroed out. The survivors faced grim realities: a major user spent 150 billion dollars on transaction fees, losing 50% (only receiving 15 million dollars in tokens), directly converting users' investments into project profits.

Reverse harvesting characteristics: Blunt and straightforward "reverse siphoning." While volume brushing requires rigorous scrutiny, the tokens were issued only for collecting transaction fees under the guise of an airdrop. Moreover, the token BP plummeted 68% in its first week, stealthily draining users amidst endless volume brushing.

Far-reaching impact: The image of Chinese entrepreneurs was thoroughly shattered. The Chinese region became a disaster zone, establishing a deeply embedded stereotype of "Chinese projects = reverse harvesting," leading to an unprecedented trust crisis during the cold start of subsequent Web3 projects led by Chinese individuals.

11. edgeX: The Decline of Perpetual DEX

The reverse harvesting process: After the L2 explosion, Perpetual DEX, which required real monetary transaction fees, was once seen as the last refuge for airdrops by retail investors. Although Lighter had made a good start, by the time edgeX's TGE arrived, existing users had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees for airdrops worth less than a thousand dollars, while over 80 new unverified "whale" accounts scooped up nearly 100 million dollars in shares. Subsequently, on-chain detectives confirmed their connections with market maker gray operations, and official accounts disappeared without a trace, leaving chaos behind.

Reverse harvesting characteristics: Open theft from whales, with retail investors treated as data milking cows, and the project team didn't even pretend otherwise.

Far-reaching impact: The farce of EdgeX caused the narrative of brushing volume in Perpetual DEX to fully collapse, with top institutional endorsements becoming synonymous with high-level harvesting. Retail investors fell into despair, and smart money accelerated its return to CEX or L1 natives.

12. Genius: The Last Straw for Harvesters

The reverse harvesting process: Genius was seen as the last hope, yet after the community crazily brushed trading volumes, the TGE delivered a reversed hefty package: claiming airdrops within 7 days would automatically destroy 70% of the tokens, allowing users to take at most 30%; otherwise, they must lock for a year to receive the full amount. Under intense public pressure, the project team urgently introduced a "refund" option - within 48 hours post-TGE, users could choose to destroy 100% of their airdrop quota to recover the fees collected by Genius.

Reverse harvesting characteristics: Users invested real money driven by trust premiums, but at the last minute were told, "Either take a fraction and leave, or spend another year with the project team."

Far-reaching impact: Genius's tricky maneuvers utterly debunked the "top platform narrative." It was called "the last straw for harvesters" by the community.

Conclusion: A Decisive Cut to the Root

From HOP's witch-hunting list, to Blast's points nesting dolls, to LayerZero's confession slaughter… these twelve projects co-authored an absurd and cruel blood-and-tears history of retail investors in the cryptocurrency sphere.

But the truth may be harsher: this is not just a long-planned harvesting, but a collective endeavor driven by speculation and greed.

For a long time, the harvesting community only cared about "whether tokens would be issued, how airdrops would be distributed," neglecting whether products had genuine product-market fit (PMF) or could generate sustainable revenue.

The project teams accurately seized this greed - you desire airdrops, they desire your principal and transaction fees.

Now, with the burst of the airdrop bubble, countless individuals have been brutally "reverse harvested." While this is certainly tragic, it could also be seen as a courageous cleansing.

The market has finally been forced to return to common sense: flow attracted by airdrop expectations is ultimately an illusion, and only products with genuine PMF are worth investing time and money in.

This marks the end of airdrops and the rebirth of Web3. Projects that started with PUA and black boxes will ultimately be voted out by users, while those truly willing to co-build with the community and return to the essence of value will instead earn more precious trust amidst the ruins.

For harvesters, this represents a painful lesson but also a moment of awakening.

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