I remember the first time I saw someone tapping their screen, it was the middle of the night and I didn't have the energy to start asking questions. Days later though I found out it was some telegram mini-app game that people were playing because they were promised the in-game currency would be converted to crypto. I found it absurd at the time and didn't believe it, so I ignored it. But along the line, news of an imminent launch spread, and I started to do some research. Peer pressure from some of my friends got me swayed and due to our competitive nature, we participated in its latter stage but still got respectable scores. The token launched at a good price and we all got a reasonable amount of the token. It was free money, gotten from just tapping screens.
Word of this airdrop spread around like wildfire, this was something different, the first of its kind, and this brought a new meta. Everyone started looking for the next free money, the next project that would pay them for simply tapping their screens and performing some tasks. Some developers and projects saw the opportunity to gain popularity quickly, and so it began.
For someone who has benefitted from two projects that were born from this meta, I dislike it a lot. Why? Because it preys on the time and attention of people for rewards that may not be worth it in the end. The first project to do this (Notcoin), paid a decent amount for people's attention, but after that, the projects that have come after have been far from worth it, except the second one that paid recently (DOGS), and this one wasn't even like all the other copycat tapping projects, it rewarded old users of telegram and those who did a few social tasks.
Since Notcoin thousands of projects have launched using the tap to earn narrative to gather new users. Only one has actually given a reasonable amount since then. Most of these projects rob people of their attention, use them to gather popularity, traffic, ad payments, and investors, and then they share peanuts to the people who they used as workhorses. They organize endless campaigns upon campaigns, launching YouTube channels, and partnerships with games. There are even some who don't end up giving anything (PIXELVERSE for example). Then there are some projects that outrightly scam people by making them pay what may seem like a small amount to gain an edge or to "prove they're human", but when you have millions of users those small amounts end up becoming significant amounts of money.
Since the majority of their userbase are people who have no idea what crypto is all about they fall for these projects, devoting countless hours of their time trying to earn points on a game that would probably yield nothing when they could spend the time doing otherwise more productive tasks. They end up filling the pockets of this project and then the projects spray some dust around.
Now, even with how much I dislike the meta I've still managed to make money from it, and hope to make more from it because they're still some projects that will reward users for their time. How? You may ask, it is simply by doing my own research along with a stroke of luck. I know, I know, do your own research is vague. Stick with me I'll tell you what I do. There are countless projects new ones launching every single day, there's no way I can do everything, and the majority of them won't pay, or will give you peanuts. The goal is to find the ones that have a good probability of doing well so you don't end up wasting precious time.
The first thing I do the moment I see a new one is go through their Twitter page. Twitter is the face of the majority of web3 projects at the moment, so you have to go through it. The follower count doesn't matter too much, but the people following them matter. If there's an affiliation with any big projects, this is a good sign and you can place them higher on the list of priorities. By big projects I mean notable web3 projects that already have products and are doing well. Since I'm talking Ton, maybe TON's official account, or Notcoin, or Stonfi, or Getgems, or even notable exchanges and so on. This is the approach I use for almost all projects when I want to scout for possible airdrops. I even memorized names of notable VC investors like Panthera, Animoca Labs, Binance Labs and so on, who invest in major projects in other blockchains, but let me stick to telegram.
So after that, I also scroll down to their early tweets to have an idea of when the project started because there are a lot of projects that don't have a direction and just follow the latest hype to try to farm the community. Once that is all done, I just look at the time to potential rewards ratio. If I feel I can do it I do it, and If I can't I let it be. There are a couple more factors, like the founders, what the project is doing, hype and so on, but those are subjective.
A lot of my friends often ask me why I'm not doing this and that, and I tell them I just can't. So far the method seems to be working, I haven't missed out on anything significant, and if I do, I won't regret it because I made my choice. I'd rather do two and get a decent reward in those two than do two hundred and get four. it means I'd have wasted precious time and attention. Time is money and these projects know that so try to portion your time and attention to serve you and not just them.
I've come across almost hundreds of projects of recent but I'm currently only doing two actively (One just runs in the background, and the other only takes about five minutes a day to select options). Then I have another four that I do whenever I remember. I won't mention them in this post cause I don't want to be a Shiller, if you ask I'd tell though.
So yeah, that's it, pick wisely, don't get farmed. The majority of these projects are simply looking to farm their users. Weed them out.
THANKS FOR READING
Cover image generated by me using Nightcafe