Meet my first Mad Lad
As mentioned in my post yesterday I bought this Mad Lad purely for the Backpack token airdrop. That was it. Nothing more.
I was already in the Backpack Discord when somewhere during the week I noticed people saying the Mad Lads snapshot had already been taken. I was confused. There was nothing about it on any of the official Backpack channels.
So I joined the @MadLads Discord to ask about it. And honestly, at first glance it felt pretty culty. Yawning emojis everywhere. "Expect nothing, appreciate everything." "Don't buy for the airdrop, you'll be disappointed."
One person eventually pointed me to a Mad Lads post on X. First, a message saying there would be no airdrop at all and that Mad Lads was only about the art. Then, about an hour later, a rick roll saying the snapshot had been taken. So was the snapshot real? Or was everything Mad Lads did just one big joke? I genuinely had no idea what was going on. But I found it fascinating.
Airdrops are about money. For some people it's pocket change, for others it can be life changing. I didn't think it was something to joke about.
But over the following weeks, I started to understand why this is part of the Mad Lads culture.
Mad Lads, at its core, is nothing more than a group of people who genuinely believed in the vision of a fair, regulated exchange. They bought an NFT on @solana to support @Backpack, during a time when the future of Solana, Backpack and crypto as a whole was completely uncertain. A group of believers, that's it.
The movement gained serious traction. NFTs that were once minted for around $150 grew to be worth tens of thousands of dollars, with total airdrop value now approaching $50.000 worth. The vast majority of OG Mad Lads are still holding. Money is not what drives them. It's the group, the shared ambition, the belief. That's what holds them together. Exceptions aside, of course. And obviously the rewards don't leave anyone indifferent. They're mad, not stupid.
But how do you assign value to art on a blockchain? I believe, paradoxically, the value lies in the fact that they have a reputation for not caring about value. You're a group of 10,000, mostly wealthy individuals, with strong conviction, diamond hands, and who happen to be pioneers in the crypto space.
In a short time I've learned that I've become part of a group of influential people who go above and beyond to help each other. A group that I think every crypto project would want backing them.
Mad Lads stands behind Backpack. And so do I.
I believe in a crypto future where on one side we have fully autonomous, decentralized exchanges, and on the other side fully regulated centralized exchanges. There's a place for both, but nothing in between.
More on that tomorrow.
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