Studio becomes scapegoat in Web3 chaos? In-depth analysis of the real "top-level interest chain" behind industry痼疾
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Studio becomes scapegoat in Web3 chaos? In-depth analysis of the real "top-level interest chain" behind industry痼疾
When the "scapegoat" is eliminated, everything remains unchanged, and a new "scapegoat" will quickly be pushed forward, while only the powerful elite at the top, who have profited immensely, raise their glasses in celebration in places you know nothing about.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Icefrog
Recently, public discourse around cracking down on farming operations seems to be heating up again. Some people attribute the poor performance of altcoins to farming groups, arguing that in order for the industry to turn things around, we must first eliminate these farming operations.
It's true that the industry faces many problems and chaotic phenomena. However, I don't believe all these issues are caused by farming operations—this deserves deeper discussion.
1. If We Ban Farming Operations, Will the Industry Improve?
To answer this question, we must first address a fundamental logic: farming operations are a product of industry development, not the other way around. Understanding this is crucial because it reveals that in any profit-driven market, many things that appear undesirable are actually the result of complex interest negotiations among multiple parties. Farming operations are no exception.
With this in mind, our analysis becomes straightforward.
Who are the biggest beneficiaries? Who sets the rules? If your reforms don't target the largest stakeholders or challenge the rule-makers, they are destined to fail.
Farming operations are neither the primary beneficiaries nor the rule-makers in this industry. If they truly held such power, why would they constantly be getting rugged and forced to fight for their rights?
Who controls the capital? Who determines token allocation rules? Who decides which tokens get listed on exchanges? Who designs airdrop rules? Who drives traffic? Before these core questions are answered, simply blaming farming operations is unconvincing.
Yet from the perspective of power and利益, when value chains break and capital feasts end, farming operations easily become scapegoats. After all, within the industry ecosystem, farming groups occupy a unique position—they are part of the traffic pipeline but lack real influence. They're frequently rugged, retail investors can't empathize with them, and projects/capital have love-hate relationships with them. Thus, targeting farming operations becomes a politically correct move.
Setting aside whether banning farming ops is even possible, let’s ask: would solving the problem really fix the industry? Would artificial booms disappear? Would the industry genuinely improve?
The simple truth is: artificial booms are symptoms, not root causes. The real issue is that many people treat surface-level phenomena as inherent evils while ignoring deep-seated structural and systemic flaws.
The core of the industry's chaos is fairness—or rather, the complete lack of fairness. In an industry without mechanisms to enforce fairness, you can ban farming operations, but you cannot ban human greed and the pursuit of profit.
Let’s go further: if projects, capital, and exchanges collectively decided to stop working with farming groups, and technically excluded them, then being phased out would be justified.
But in a free market without fairness oversight, you set the rules, and farming groups simply play along. So why are they deemed utterly evil? You want to crack down on farming ops—fine. But how come when you change the rules yourself, anger the market, and rug investors, you suddenly point at farming groups and say it's all their fault?
Does this script sound familiar? Classic films like *The Wolf of Wall Street*, *The Big Short*, and *The Godfather* depict similar dynamics in unequal power pyramids: the most visible players become easy targets, while those at the center of power and privilege walk away unscathed.
When the "scapegoat" is eliminated, everything remains unchanged. A new scapegoat will quickly emerge, while the powerful elite quietly celebrate their gains far beyond public view.
2. Is It Really Farming Operations' Fault That Retail Investors Get Dumped On? Who Is the Real Liquidity Black Hole?
When project teams and exchanges are feasting at a banquet, why blame farming ops and retail users who are merely scraping leftovers?
To be honest, this headline makes me—someone running a farming operation—feel embarrassed. Mainly because I can’t help retail investors exit their positions, and when I myself get rugged or rekt, I can only curse under my breath and endure it.
From an interest standpoint, no farming group inherently wants to dump tokens. After all, rugged risks, time costs, and operational losses are real dangers. If project teams were genuinely committed to long-term development and avoided inflating valuations recklessly, everyone would plan for the long term. Who would want to sell immediately upon launch?
Truly high-quality, undervalued projects naturally receive positive market feedback. Even if a project appears strong, no one will buy into it if its valuation is unjustifiably inflated.
In any investment market, farming groups seeking short-term profits—or any participant besides the project team doing the same—is normal. Using “long-term value” to morally condemn such behavior reflects a kind of “value purity fetishism.”
No market participant has moral authority to demand others hold the line—except the project team itself. Especially when projects and capital are actively dumping tokens themselves, they have no right to expect others to behave better. What’s most frustrating is how often “value” is used as a cover to scalp retail investors.
If selling tokens by farming ops is seen as the industry’s liquidity black hole, the real issues are obscured.
Some claim farming operations spread FUD that harms projects. I’d argue that a fundamentally solid project isn’t afraid of market FUD. Its user base doesn’t come from farming groups. The idea that farming ops pose an existential threat overestimates their power—or serves as a convenient excuse for low-quality projects. The market is the true fire that tests gold. What truly undermines strong projects isn’t keyboard warriors using bots, but Trojan horses hidden within the project team’s own armor.
We should acknowledge the existence of chaos, but firmly oppose and remain vigilant against weaving partial truths into systemic lies. Just as police may collude with gangs, attributing complex systemic disorder solely to a binary conflict between farming ops and the market risks turning the “farming threat narrative” into cover for actual market manipulators. After all, everything can just be blamed on farming ops.
3. Are Farming Operations Entirely Harmful With Zero Contribution? Who’s Really to Blame for Industry Chaos?
The current state of this industry is highly speculative—that’s a basic fact. But when discussing industry evolution, we should avoid moral judgments.
In reality, without large-scale airdrop farming groups investing money, driving traffic, attracting users to join communities, trying out projects, and continuously sharing farming insights, ordinary retail users might not even recoup their gas fees due to insufficient activity volume.
No farming group rejects long-term thinking in principle. But in an environment lacking constraints, the pursuit of profit is natural and not blameworthy. You can’t accuse farming ops of breaking rules when they lack the power to do so. More importantly, when the most powerful players—the rule-makers themselves—routinely break rules, why demand higher moral discipline from farming groups?
You can run insider trading schemes, but I’m not allowed to farm rewards? Furthermore, objectively speaking, whose actions harm fairness more: project teams running insider deals, or farming operations? Who is truly eroding market credibility?
This is like allowing casino dealers to rig roulette wheels while forbidding gamblers from counting cards.
True fairness should mean fair rules, not equal power. Real-world fairness doesn’t stem from everyone having the same background, education, or starting point, but from everyone operating under the same conditions and rules, using whatever means available to maximize their gains—something no one can reasonably object to. In a profit-seeking market, people don’t resent others being stronger; they resent playing by different rules while pretending it’s the same game.
Unfair and opaque rule-making is the market’s original sin. If project teams were truly committed to long-term development, if capital stopped fueling artificial valuations, and if exchanges genuinely embraced value-based listing policies, farming operations wouldn’t be a liability—they’d be an asset. At least until the industry reaches broader maturity, they provide initial traffic. And yes, some farming groups consistently offer valuable feedback that helps improve projects and enhance user experience.
For us farming operators, we don’t casually label projects as scams. In a market where wealth effects dominate everything, a project that lets people earn money is a good project.
If the market naturally evolves to a point where farming operations are no longer needed, there’s no need to resist it. It would mean we no longer have to grit our teeth through bear markets providing scarce liquidity. It would mean the market has matured, and we won’t need to keep blaming each other for its decline.
Finally, from the perspective of transformation: if reforms don’t target the industry’s biggest entrenched interests, perhaps farming ops can be banned—but human greed cannot be stopped. Or worse, such crackdowns may just become another cover for new forms of exploitation.
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