In this issue:

• The 2025 Airdrop Meta Playbook (by Flower83)

• This Week in Neo Tokyo: $BYTES Would Survive a Clemente Endorsement (by PhoenixxDown)

There was once a time, in our ancient past, in the year of 2023, and early 2024, where we (the farmers), would go out into the world and sow our seeds in hopes some of the crops would grow.

We would fund 50+ wallets from CEX’s and then try out every new interoperability protocol, every new wallet, every DEX, every dapp, every L2 chain. Sometimes the people, after farming for 2 years, would get tired of waiting and ask (or sometimes attack) the founders on Twitter and demand their tokens. The founders would then decide to either reward the community (usually between 5 and 20% during TGE) or, go the other way, and decide that they don't owe us anything and just dip.

Sometimes, if they felt particularly naughty, they would have a public meltdown and instead of giving their users tokens, they would write a lengthy Twitter thread in which they proclaim that they are gay and how enjoyable anal sex can be. (true story btw)

But now it's 2025. And we don't do that anymore.

The entire airdrop farming landscape has shifted. Drastically.

Now, it's in a way, more effortless (if you don't mind connecting your telegram, twitter, email, discord, phone number, location, weight and shoe size everywhere.)

The shift didn't happen overnight. Dare I say, some of us maybe even saw it coming. Honestly, if you were tuned into the farming landscape you could see this new direction, new way of doing things, coming a while ago because sybils ruined the game so this is kind of a natural reversion to cosmic balance and the founders mantra of “every user should only get rewarded once.”

So the teams launching new projects in web3 made it incredibly hard for sybils to trick them. They decided that blockchain data isn't enough (or important anymore) and that eligible users should connect all their socials to their website - short of KYC’ing.

This, of course, comes a bit at the expense of some web3 values such as “decentralization,” "permissionlessness" and "semi-anonymity," and, of course, we are using web2 services to achieve this, but at least we got rid of all the sybils, right? Well, unless those who are persistent enough to buy 20+ discord and twitter accounts and still get around it. But anyway.

Now, the founders shifted to distributing their rewards to NFT communities that are associated with their project or who they think they would make good customers. This is how you get these kind of eligibility checks:

And honestly…

Life is great now! You no longer have to spend 2-5 hours per day switching wallets and clicking buttons on these so-called “new and tokenless protocols” in hopes that they might announce an airdrop for which you might qualify.

Sometimes you got absolutely nothing for your efforts and actually even lost money on fees. Sometimes they gave you 4, some even 5 figures for it. All that is in the past now. The people even got tired of creating new cross-chain bridges, DEX’s and L2’s. Hey, I am not complaining, there were too many anyway, and I understand why memecoins and AI agents have more appeal.

Yes, the airdrop farming meta has shifted. Now you just have to keep track with 10+ discords twice per day to see if any of the NFT communities you are a part of are eligible for the airdrop, then you have to connect your alphabot, win raffles, download their wallets or apps and then they always reward you - there is no guessing.

It’s simple, (sometimes) fast, easy, and free. Takes a few clicks and doesn't cost you a thing. And wow, sometimes you even qualify for protocols you never even knew existed. The trade-off is that you only get between $4 and $50 bucks for it.

See you next week, my frens. Inshallah - one day we will make it. 🧡

“Wen marketing?” Yes, yes, the power of NT is the marketing itself, but it’s still a fair question, even if overused in this space to the point where it cements my belief that becoming a founder is one of the most egregious acts of mental torture a person can inflict.

Marketing ramp-up will likely start when the market pulls its own weight, you’d think, along with other factors like crypto gaming becoming popular again. In the meantime, a slight nudge toward “now marketing” might be on the cards as Firestorm has dropped a blitz of powerful posts this week.

You can check them out below — share them around, this is what we’re about:

For those wise enough to already hold a Citizen, you can see some of the works in progress happening behind the scenes. These updates are for Citizen eyes ONLY! Public announcements will come if and when the projects are ready. Exciting set of updates!

Read through them here.

Lastly, I stumbled upon this post by Pablo Olivera, he who had such a profound impact on our early riddle days with his artwork. His new piece, Return to Neo Tokyo, is reminiscent of that era. On the bike, there’s a sticker that reads “CITIZEN,” which gives me plenty of room to spread misinformation about a potential fresh collab. I’ll leave it at that, and if I’m right, I can claim victory KOL-style. And if I’m wrong, I will delete this entire issue, KOL-style.

This Weeks Neo Tokyo Content

Market Monday #139

NT x Unfungible Space - Today at 12:00 EST

Short Scoops

Until next next week, citizens.

All content from Neo Tokyo News is for entertainment purposes only, is not financial advice, and does not reflect the opinions of Neo Tokyo.

That’s it for our 114th edition of the Neo Tokyo Newsletter. Be sure to subscribe and share with your friends so you don’t miss out on future content.

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