On Christmas Day, prolific DeFi users found a surprise in their stocking thanks to a unicorn that looks a bit like Kurt Russell: decentralized exchange platform 1inch launched its governance and utility token 1INCH, which peaked at nearly $ 2.80 per token shortly after release.

Coming back to the release of the Uniswap token over the summer – an event many compared to a ‘DeFi stimulus check’ – The token was distributed via an “airdrop” to wallets that had used the platform for transactions or provided liquidity in the past. The average user received about 1,600 tokens, and one lucky trader even cashed in over $ 20 million.

However, at least one trader emerged from the giveaways a little worse: Twitter user @timoharings, whose plan to earn $ 1.8 million in tokens just fell short of the distribution parameters.

In a viral tweet, Harings shared how he created 500 Metamask wallets and made a single trade on each to make them eligible for the drop. However, none of the wallets received one because the necessary transaction amount thresholds were not exceeded:

So my ~ 500 metamask wallets, all of which traded at 1 inch in preparation after the Uni airdrop, ended up not getting an airdrop because it was $ 17 per trade, $ 3 below the threshold. In total, it would have made a profit of $ 1.8 million

But I won today with family in Catan which is nice

– Тимо (@timoharings) December 26, 2020

Harings, a 23-year-old from Germany who has been trading full-time since 2018, told Cointelegraph in an interview that the planning process was difficult. He flipped the text of 1inch articles to come up with his strategy and eventually decided to seed each of the 500 wallets with crypto worth $ 30 to place a trade.

“As a non-programmer, I was looking for easy ways to write the script, but ended up doing it manually. I thought I was running out of time because the snapshot could have been “any day” in October when I started, “said Harings. computers, since MetaMask couldn’t handle more than 100 wallets for some reason. “

In the end, Harings spent $ 8,000 in gas on transactions, expecting a minimum of $ 250,000. Had his wallet qualified, he would have received a whopping $ 1.8 million.