On January 21, 2026, Beijing time, Mad Lads officially announced the completion of the community snapshot and clearly stated that NFT holders would not receive the Backpack airdrop. This statement quickly became the focus of discussions within the Solana ecosystem and the broader NFT community. Prior to this, various associations surrounding the snapshot and potential tokens had led many participants to focus on the imaginative space of "perhaps there will be a next step," even though this expectation had never been confirmed by the official team. When the project team provided a clear boundary of "no Backpack airdrop," the narrative of long-term value construction collided head-on with the market's short-term mentality of "snapshot = airdrop announcement," fully exposing the tension between the route chosen by Mad Lads and the culture of crypto speculation.

The Discrepancy Between Snapshot Completion and Airdrop Absence

Mad Lads' official statement regarding the snapshot was extremely restrained, confirming only two things: first, that the community snapshot had been completed, and second, that NFT holders would not receive the Backpack airdrop, clearly delineating the incentive boundaries without extending to discuss any other rewards or token arrangements. In the current industry context, when a project announces the completion of a snapshot, it is often implicitly assumed to be a precursor to some sort of airdrop or token distribution. This "snapshot—expectation—token issuance" association has been solidified into market consensus through countless cases. Therefore, Mad Lads' proactive clarification of "no Backpack airdrop" after completing the snapshot appears particularly unusual and breaks the script that many had unconsciously adopted. At this time, the official team still has not confirmed any specific token issuance plans, nor provided a timeline or distribution method, deliberately leaving large gaps in information. It is precisely these gaps that compel the outside world to shift their focus from the simple question of "will there be an airdrop" to contemplating the true cycles and value propositions the project aims to convey, rather than following inertia to complete an unverified token issuance narrative.

The Irony of "NFTs might be dead" and Self-Rescue

Founder Armani Ferrante left a statement on social media: "NFTs might be dead, but Mad Lads are just getting started." This statement responds to market sentiment—amid liquidity contraction and price decline, the sluggishness of the NFT market has almost become a consensus, with the rhetoric of "NFTs are dead" frequently appearing on social networks. On the other hand, by saying "Mad Lads are just getting started," he distances the project from the mere JPG speculation track, implying that the team is more concerned with the overall narrative built around the brand, products, and ecosystem, rather than relying on a one-time token distribution for survival. From the project's positioning, Mad Lads has not confined itself to the narrow track of "image collectibles," but is attempting to use NFTs as carriers of identity, entry points, and relationship networks, layering infrastructure like Backpack to construct more complete use cases. This tone of "we are just getting started" resembles a long-term commitment: the team is willing to invest resources in ongoing product and ecosystem development rather than relying on a one-time airdrop for short-term returns. In this logic, the current absence of an airdrop seems more like a pre-set for a long-term route—value capture must be gradually conveyed to holders through a genuinely operational system, rather than being realized overnight through an airdrop, only to be subjected to selling pressure that writes the curve.

Emotional Games After the Airdrop Script Fails

In the broader crypto market, "snapshot—airdrop—selling pressure" has long been a familiar script: before the news breaks, funds position themselves in advance, gaming the cost of tokens around the snapshot time; after the snapshot is confirmed, the community focuses on the scale and rules of the airdrop, rehearsing how many tokens they can obtain on distribution day; when the actual token issuance occurs, short-term selling pressure is almost defaulted into the curve, and the secondary market experiences a collective psychological gap between high expectations and realization. Under this path dependency, Mad Lads' completion of the snapshot while directly denying the Backpack airdrop will naturally create an emotional gap for some short-term funds. Participants who built positions around the notion of "snapshot = precursor to profit distribution" must reassess their holding logic and position cycles, and this repricing process itself may trigger price fluctuations and emotional volatility. A deeper change lies in the fact that when the project team repeatedly emphasizes long-term construction rather than short-term returns, the mindset and gaming strategies of early holders are also forced to adjust: participants aiming to "grab the airdrop" are likely to exit once it is confirmed that there will be no airdrop, transferring their tokens to a group that aligns more with the long-term narrative; holders willing to accompany the project through a longer cycle will shift their focus from daily floor price fluctuations to product iterations, ecosystem progress, and external collaborations—slower variables. As time goes on, this filtering mechanism may change the entire community structure, allowing short-term speculation and long-term consensus to complete a handover at different points in time, though this process is bound to be anything but smooth.

The Contrast of $90,000 Bitcoin and 130x Meme

At the same time that Mad Lads announced the completion of the snapshot and clarified the absence of the Backpack airdrop, Bitcoin's price briefly rebounded to over $90,000 on January 21, reigniting a wave of emotional highs across the market. Against the backdrop of strengthening mainstream assets, certain meme coins on BSC also experienced extreme market conditions, with some projects seeing daily increases of over 130 times, and market caps briefly surging to about $8 million, only to quickly retreat (according to a single source). Behind these numbers is a collective mindset chasing extreme short-term gains in a high-volatility arena: Bitcoin provides the "positive trend" backdrop, while meme coins take on the role of amplifying leverage and accelerating realization. Odaily Planet Daily and BlockBeats have repeatedly reminded in their reports that while meme trading may bring astonishing gains, price pullbacks can be equally rapid and carry high risks. In this contrast, Mad Lads' temperament appears distinctly different: it is also situated in the high-volatility crypto world but attempts to extricate itself from the narrative of quick money, avoiding the short-term logic of "token issuance—price pump—selling off," and instead deliberately distances itself from pure speculative play by rejecting airdrops and emphasizing long-term construction. This path may not necessarily be more appealing to the market in the short term, but it seeks to carve out a different survival posture for the project amid extreme market conditions and emotional swings.

A Different Temporal Dimension of Wall Street's Bet on MicroStrategy

In stark contrast to the short-term games played by retail investors around airdrops and meme coins is the long-term signal given by traditional institutions during the same period. According to a single source, Vanguard Group's value index fund purchased approximately 1.025 million shares of MicroStrategy stock for about $202.5 million, a transaction seen as a typical case of indirectly betting on Bitcoin's long-term trend through the MSTR curve. For such institutions, rather than frequently trading in high-volatility tokens, it is more advantageous to share in long-term appreciation by holding equity in publicly traded companies that are highly correlated with Bitcoin. This mindset represents a distinctly different mode of participation: placing greater emphasis on time dimensions and certainty, rather than the excitement brought by short-term volatility. When we juxtapose this thread with retail investors' short-term attempts around airdrops and memes, we find that the long-term route Mad Lads is trying to construct is, to some extent, closer to the latter—it is also designing a value capture method for holders using "longer cycles and slower realizations," only the medium has shifted from stocks to NFTs and the applications built around them. Traditional institutions and on-chain players certainly operate under vastly different regulatory and asset structures, but the idea of "betting on long-term fundamentals rather than short-term news" provides an external reference for understanding Mad Lads' current choices.

Mad Lads Without Airdrops and the Footnote of Longer Cycles

Reassembling the above threads reveals that Mad Lads, by completing the snapshot while rejecting the Backpack airdrop, is sending a core signal of actively cutting off that familiar airdrop script and betting on a longer narrative cycle. It is unwilling to respond to short-term emotions with a one-time large-scale distribution, instead using "we are just getting started" as the subject of dialogue with the market. This choice is bound to bring controversy and gaps in the short term, but it also leaves greater imaginative space for subsequent ecosystem expansion and value transmission. For participants, the more realistic challenge is not to continue building unverified expectations around "whether there will be other tokens or incentives," but to learn to distinguish between short-term emotions and the project's long-term path, anchoring decisions on verifiable construction progress and product capabilities rather than price fluctuations driven by single events. In an environment where Bitcoin can return to $90,000 within days and meme coins can surge 130 times in a day only to quickly retract, if Mad Lads can truly adhere to a long-term construction route, its community structure and value capture methods will inevitably evolve: participants eager for quick returns will be filtered out by time, while holders who resonate with the long-term narrative will seek vehicles for returns in the continuously iterating products and ecosystems. This evolution will not happen overnight, but it is through repeated restraint against short-term temptations that the project may win itself a relatively independent growth curve amid a cycle of high volatility and high speculation.

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