The Last Talk About Backpack, and Let Me Share My Airdrop Farming Principles

Author: Princess Christine (@0xsexybanana)

There are actually two methodologies for “撸毛” (profit hunting):

The first, I believe, is the old-school approach: casting a wide net and focusing on execution. Essentially a labor-intensive studio logic—if the cost per transaction is low enough, just jump on any project. This mode has a very high tolerance for errors; as long as you hit an epic big profit, it can cover all the sunk costs from failed attempts.

The second, my approach: similar to Xu Xin from JRT Capital’s “sniper strategy”—heavy investment in research and deep involvement. By logical filtering, eliminate industrial trash early on from the target range. (That’s also why I say the projects I favor for profit hunting might not always succeed, and those I don’t favor are unlikely to succeed. My project research checklist can exclude most pitfalls.)

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So what is this checklist? Four dimensions:

1. Team (People): Smart enough, strong execution, kind-hearted. All three are essential.

How to judge: Use the founder’s tweets to determine if they are truly clever or just fronting with slogans. Meet offline to see if they are humble and nice. Many founders’ Twitter is hollow, just shouting slogans without industry insight.

For most profit hunters, it’s hard to contact project teams. Even if you’re a KOL and meet them offline, they wear social masks, making judgment difficult.

2. Product (Location):

Three sub-dimensions here: 1) Product-market fit (PMF). 2) Team’s delivery capability. 3) Responsible attitude towards their product.

How to judge? They never release poor-quality versions; they pursue quality. For example, OKX always delivers products—early or mature—that are free of basic errors.

3. Narrative (Location): Operating in a relatively new, unproven track with high valuation premiums.

How to judge? Assess whether this narrative has hype potential in Web3 and whether it’s a capital hot spot in Web2—these hype logics are often aligned.

That’s why I heavily invested in Openmind last year: AI + robotics is a trillion-dollar darling in Web2, and in Web3 it’s far from proven. (Though later it faced an epic backlash, zero airdrops, but that’s another black swan dimension, so I’ll leave it at that.)

4. Timing and Cost (Weather): Is market sentiment extremely FOMO or very pessimistic? Is participation cost low or high?

How to judge FOMO? When Twitter is full of profit hunters urging you to buy, everyone is optimistic about the next big opportunity, and your participation cost is high, you’ll hesitate.

If you hesitate, it’s best not to participate.

In today’s crypto world, when everyone is involved in an opportunity, it’s no longer a big profit chance. The profit pool of this 1.5-level market can’t support such a large volume. Even with a good project, if everyone profits, big profits shrink, small profits disappear, and no profits turn into big losses.

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So why am I not focusing on profit hunting Backpack based on this checklist?

1. Narrative logic: Pseudo-demand and compliance shackles

I’ve said on Twitter before, I don’t believe in the narrative of “compliant centralized exchanges.” Why did Hyperliquid rise? A large part of its growth comes from users’ tax avoidance and anti-censorship needs. Under increasingly strict compliance frameworks, facing giants like Binance and OKX, where’s Backpack’s moat? Where do its incremental users come from? If users don’t go to Gate or MEXC, what’s Backpack’s unique selling point? I still don’t understand.

2. Product: Lack of reverence for product delivery

I rarely see exchanges with a tech base as shaky as Backpack’s. Countless outages, rollbacks, and large-scale user compensations within half a year. Every new feature launch feels rushed and perfunctory. A responsible team should deliver complete, smooth features—even the simplest—rather than a rough, half-baked product.

Compare Hyperliquid: even in its early stage with only 2,000 followers, you rarely see visible bugs (the only flaw then was poor liquidity, jokingly called Hyperliquidated).

Early 2024, a friend pushed me to buy BP. I remember clearly: Backpack was so basic it only had BTC and SOL trading pairs. Instead of refining the product and expanding tokens, they started using “trading volume boosts for SOL token airdrops” to attract users. This typical “growth ahead of product” approach exposed a severe lack of operational experience and strategic planning—just a makeshift team.

These small observations made me very disappointed with Backpack, and I’ve refused to participate in its airdrops or farming.

3. Timing and Cost: Very high

Starting in 2025, zero-fee perpetuals became popular. Meanwhile, Backpack launched Season 3. Compared to the lighter version with zero fees, I never understood why the 0.5 USDT cost to farm in Backpack was attractive. Even though all my profit-hunting friends are doing Season 3, I chose to stay on the sidelines.

Later, with Binance’s strength and its exclusive support for meme coins on BSC (like Binance’s Chinese ticker “币安人生” exploding), I observed some distancing between Sol Foundation and Binance, and the Foundation seemed to have a crisis sense. I speculated that the Sol ecosystem might support its own CEX to counter Binance’s dominance. So I OTC’d 100,000 at 0.3 USDT—a small bet on whether Sol would heavily copy BP. But it seems it didn’t.

4. Team

I lack close-up knowledge of the Backpack team, so I won’t comment much.

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My attitude towards Backpack has always been fairly objective. Running an exchange is different from meme shouting; it requires excellent technical infrastructure and operational ability, which Backpack clearly lacks. They can’t deliver good products, nor do they have the operational capacity to optimize features (like the previously hyped prediction markets). Even worse, they are pushing hard into compliance, which before growth is a self-imposed shackles.

So I currently see Backpack as a meme coin disguised as a VC token. As a platform token, I think a 200 million FDV isn’t expensive; I’m holding. Of course, this is secondary speculation, no longer related to profit hunting.