The best tokens do something novel for their distribution.
Something that is happening for the first time, or is bucking the trend in a significant way.
CryptoPunks were free to claim.
Bored Apes were a flat-priced mint at $200 when the world was obsessed with Hashmasks style bonding curves.
Fartcoin was an AI agent's idea.
etc.
The problem is, once a new model is proved out, it gets beaten to absolute fucking death by a thousand copycats.
After the Bored Ape mint, we saw thousands of adjective-animals mint out at flat prices.
After Fartcoin and Goat we had a whole lot of AI agent slop.
On and on it goes.
What was previously a democratized way of doing a launch is now anticipated and farmed.
Cause the hardest thing in crypto is unironically a 'fair launch.'
What's the lesson?
In this meta, where cycles are moving faster than ever, you can take the cheap way out and do what everybody else is doing in order to ensure you get the initial eyeballs.
But then you might just bleed out - since you just did what is, by definition, the least scarce thing for your distribution.
Now if you do something new and novel, it will be an uphill battle at first.
You'll have to pound your fucking chest to get the same eyeballs.
People throwing FUD will have their scripts already written for them.
But if you make it through the valley, you win.
And you get to watch everybody desperately flail and copy your shit.