Recently, the airdrop rules of a major exchange's Alpha project have sparked quite a bit of discussion. On the surface, it appears to be a anti-bot mechanism, but at its core, it changes the entire participation logic.

The rules themselves are not complicated: deduct 30 points in the first minute of the rush purchase, then decrease by 1 point every minute, down to a minimum of 10 points, stabilizing after about twenty minutes. It sounds simple and brutal, but in fact, it's very clever—it shifts the competitive dimension from pure speed to judgment.

You can see the clue from $THQ's performance. The project was sold out within 40 seconds of launch, and then the price was halved immediately after opening. This is no coincidence. Participants who rushed in during the first minute received the harshest deductions and had the highest costs; the real winners were those who dared to enter at the 5th or 10th minute—they exchanged lower costs for roughly the same opportunity.

The result is quite realistic: ordinary people who can't compete with speed actually have a chance; blindly following bots and retail investors become the chives. Well-designed rules teach the market how to behave on its own.