Free money is out there in crypto, but it's increasingly more complicated to get your hands on.

Why it matters: Decentralization isn't just a buzzword. The strongest crypto projects really are the ones where the most people own some of the digital asset.

• Bitcoin has tens of millions of holders, for example.

The big picture: One way to get lots of tokens in lots of people's hands: Give them away. This approach is usually called an airdrop.

• But this presents a problem for those looking to make a long-term bet on a project (such as the founders). They want those free tokens to go to people who will hold them, at least for a little while.
• This helps support the price, which reflects on the strength of the project. And to plausibly say a project has decentralized power, it needs a significant portion of the many people holding its token to be participating in governance.

Friction point: There are always cynical traders who look for ways to game the system, get as many tokens as possible and then cash out ASAP.

The latest: Points have been the newest solution to sorting out token giveaways (it started with Blur, the NFT market for pros).

With points, teams don't make any firm commitment about how they will distribute an airdrop. Instead, they give users a sort of scoreboard for different activities to earn them (such as engaging with a social platform, supplying liquidity on a DeFi app or trading on a decentralized exchange).

• The advantage of points, for project teams, is leeway.
• When a manipulator fakes activity from what looks like multiple people, that's called a "Sybil attack." If teams realize that some activity that might have been yielding lots of points was full of phony users, they can lower the value of that kind of points.

Reality check: Not everyone is enthused about the approach.

EigenLayer distributed its EIGEN token using a points system.

• Ahead of it, users were investing serious brainpower in attempting to optimize points.
• When the project airdropped its first tranche of tokens, it exercised that discretion and got fury from users. This dampened enthusiasm when the main airdrop came last week.

What's next: Blast, the blockchain from the same team that made the highly successful Blur NFT marketplace, just announced an airdrop for June 26.

In short, points have become a guessing game, one that requires a lot of work.

The bottom line: The free money is getting expensive.

Go deeper

Question: What kind of investor could possibly be dissatisfied with 45% returns in five months?

Answer: A crypto investor.

A lesson for the ages: When bored on the blockchains, trade memecoins.

If there's one name the average person knows from the 2021 NFT boom, it's OpenSea, the original NFT marketplace.

The latest: OpenSea has fallen to third place in terms of volume, according to DappRadar, a web3 statistics site.

• Yes, but: OpenSea is still No. 1 in users, a fact that company CEO Devin Finzer emphasized when he talked about OpenSea's strategy.

Why it matters: OpenSea looked invincible when NFTs were the talk of everywhere, which just goes to show how quickly things move on blockchains.

Between the lines: Blur is the No. 1 marketplace by volume, by DappRadar's accounting, and Magic Eden has moved into the second spot.

• Magic Eden got its start on the Solana blockchain, but it has taken a multichain strategy. It now also lists assets on Polygon, Base and Bitcoin.
• In fact, Magic Eden is the biggest marketplace for the new Bitcoin protocol Runes (which are fungible tokens, not NFTs).

What we're watching: The NFT market is still doing more than $30 million per week in volume, so it's not dead, but the market is dominated by sophisticated traders these days.

• If OpenSea remains the default place to go for the small-time trader or hobbyist, it will be interesting to see if trends reverse the next time there's a craze for digital items.

⌚️ The SEC's controversial accounting rule for crypto assets (SAB 121) looks likely to get voted down today in the Senate. (Blockworks)

🚔 The DOJ showed increasing blockchain sophistication in the bust of two brothers behind an MEV exploit. (Axios)

⛲️ $300+ million in spot bitcoin ETF inflows. (Decrypt)

🙋‍♂️ Alexey Pertsev, Tornado Cash developer, has appealed his money-laundering conviction. (CoinDesk)

SocialFi is back and folks are talking about it "speedrunning" the history of social media on Web 2.0.

• But well-adjusted adults probably don't know what speedrunning is.

Zoom in: Speedrunning is a genre of YouTube video and video game play competition.

• Speedrunners master a video game to complete it with unbelievable speed. The point is to play some known territory perfectly, not one millisecond wasted.
• For example, according to Speedrun.com, the record for playing 1985's Super Mario Bros. is 4 minutes, 54 seconds and 631 milliseconds (second place is slower by much less than a second).

Context: Social media blockchainified (also known as SocialFi) is having its umpteenth moment now with Friend.Tech version 2.0 and Fantasy Top.

• As discussed on the Chopping Block podcast, new technologies tend to look for business models by speedrunning what worked in prior worlds.
• First CDs were sold on the internet, then they sold MP3s and now they are streaming.
• Blockchainers are making knock-offs of social media and throwing in DeFi wrinkles as they look for business models.

💭 Our thought bubble: It could all be for nothing.

• Social media might have already taken its final — awful — form, and blockchains may ultimately be for something else entirely (preferably with less statusmaxxing).