Comment by throwawaycities

> Gamers have a word, grinding, to describe repetitive tasks undertaken to gain some desired in-game goal, but are not fun in themselves.

Before gamers used “grinding” it was in normal use for hard work. More commonly used as “on the grind.” Looking up the origin it’s “back to the grind” referring to returning to work from break, but also specific to the ancient job of a grinding grain at a mill.

All things being equal, the thing about “crypto,” as the article labels it, is that playing games or being a early adopter of technology was not historically a paid or rewarded activity.

Maybe web3 is exploiting attention spans the same way as web2, but no matter how web2 spins it, token airdrops to web3 users are often 10’s of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands, and even millions in some instances.

Where business has historically been about maximizing shareholder value by exploiting labor, web3 is proving to maximize user value by directly rewarding users. In many cases it is life changing money for young, regular folks who would never have had a shot at that type of financial freedom, in fact likely would have gone in to debt trying to pursue their education for a better financial future.