Coincidentally, since @akachacolate is in Korea right now, he reached out after reading this post and suggested we meet up to talk. So we did. It turns out there were a few misunderstandings. First, Nate seemed to believe that hosting an event was important in order to generate attention in the Korean market. Up until now, @EclipseFND hadn’t really been on the radar in Korea, so the idea was to attract attention by hosting something locally. In addition, the dinner event was meant to differentiate Eclipse from other protocols and explain how it’s doing things differently — and ideally, to convert Korean attendees into onchain users. But from what I heard, that message didn’t land as well as they had hoped. To be honest, even though I saw multiple KOLs posting about the event, the spotlight was completely on the food, and not on what Eclipse was actually trying to say or do. Even if some KOLs tried to communicate the message, it likely got drowned out by all the hype around the fancy meal. The signal was lost in the noise — the medium overshadowed the message. Also, to be fair, many scammy projects in the past have used “good food” and fancy dinners to promote themselves in Korea, so when Eclipse came in and hosted a similar style of event, it naturally made me skeptical as well. That said, I do think it would be unfair to single them out. Other protocols have spent anywhere from $500K to $1 million on extravagant events in Korea too — so criticizing Eclipse for hosting a dinner feels a bit hypocritical in that broader context. However, I still believe their airdrop strategy is a valid point of criticism. Realistically, those who bridged $ETH into Eclipse and tried DeFi apps are much more likely to become long-term users. But the airdrop seemed to disproportionately reward people who simply clicked the Turbo tab — which raises questions about how well the airdrop was actually designed. Of course, no project gets everything right from the beginning. But perhaps it would’ve been better to clearly define the airdrop criteria up front. Imagine someone who bridged ETH, used DeFi protocols, and still got nothing — while someone else who just showed up for a fancy dinner got rewarded. It’s not hard to see why that would feel unfair. Ultimately, I hope projects approach the Korean market with a bit more thoughtfulness. As important as this market is, the way teams are showing up here is starting to become a bit extreme. Less food, more product. Less flash, more authenticity. Those are the kinds of projects I want to see getting more attention. In that regard, I think @AbstractChain set a great example — rather than hosting a flashy event, they focused on onboarding real partners like @officialmodhaus & @triplescosmos, and that made all the difference.