“This is the last one”, he says to himself as he rolls a cigarette, preparing to go out and light it.

As his gaze scrolls up and down X, clicking on profiles, scanning followers and likes, sniffing out scams and phishing accounts, spotting another opportunity to engage his MetaMask, in the slight hopes of earning one last airdrop.

“This shit is fucking ruining me”, he exclaims while opening MetaMask, entering his password and confirming a transaction to ape into another protocol.

The previous one was indeed a costly endeavour. He was sure he got it, farming five-digit numbers. His strategy was simple, uncomplicated: just pour as much as he had into the protocol that would yield the most. But he miscalculated one thing: the sybils.

“Fucking sybils!” he thinks aloud. “I’m an honest person, just using one account, but those fucking sybils! They got me last time.” Indeed, the sybils were ruthless. They farmed the protocol’s airdrop thousands of times, claiming every single drop that was meant for real users. Using sophisticated scripts, they botted the hell out of the protocol.

“You’re a fucking scam!” Shouted the angry X crowd to the protocol, which didn’t seemed to care. You couldn’t tell if it was real users spreading the hate, or other sybils who got excluded from the airdrop and became spiteful, swearing to ruin the protocol by releasing an army of angry bots on social media.

“I don’t even need this airdrop, why am I doing this?” he asks himself franticly, but there are no answers. None that could point out the obvious flaws, the feelings of abandonment from his childhood, losing his father, and the relentless search for meaning in the depths of the crypto ocean.

The promises of finding solutions for the world’s problems, the decentralisation, the sovereignty, the trustless societies that could flourish – all seemed real, all seemed within reach of this technology. The blockchain trilemma always seemed a couple of years away from being solved. One Ethereum killer would rise up and live up to these promises. And every individual, no matter where they lived in the world, would have irrevocable access to this network of digital value and smart contracts.

But 35 ICOs, 21 IDOs and 15 airdrops later, it seems that the problem remains unsolved. None of these “bring value to the ordinary people” attempts have created more equality. On the contrary, they seem to have worsened the gap, transferring value from the credulous to the sophisticated and ruthless.

“They did it to themselves”, a delusional voice sounds in his head, attempting to calm the disassociating thoughts. Yet, he may have a point, the greediness could be at fault here. Because without the greed, there would be no hype. Without the hype, bad actors wouldn’t find ways to abuse it. But who can be blamed but ourselves? It’s human nature… As we convince ourselves that we are better than that, that we are sacrificing the purity of our souls for the greater good, we turn blind to the obvious. We let the chaos seep in. And when the chaos does seep in, the greater good is 404 - not found.

“It’s just an airdrop. It’s just a token. It’s just farming.” And so it continues, airdrop after airdrop, token after token, protocol after protocol. The endless hamster wheel of fortune has yet to strike our protagonist, who instead of building, fighting for a cause, living his life, he’s just stuck in the loop, farming the next airdrop and the next one after that.