Internet
grinding
What does grinding mean?
Borrowed from gaming, in Web3 it means farming on-chain activity — swaps, bridges, daily quests, Discord roles — for weeks or months in the hope a protocol drops free tokens to early users. Sometimes pays life-changing money (Uniswap, Arbitrum), sometimes pays nothing.
"I've been grinding LayerZero for six months — if there's no airdrop I'm logging off forever."
Origin
Gaming term ("grind") applied to NFT community participation.
Frequently asked questions
What does grinding mean in NFTs?
Grinding means putting in repetitive community effort — chatting, completing tasks, joining events — in a project's Discord to earn rewards like a whitelist or allowlist spot.
Where does the term grinding come from?
It's borrowed from gaming, where "grinding" means doing repetitive tasks to level up or earn rewards, applied here to NFT community participation.
What is a WL you grind for?
WL stands for whitelist (or allowlist), a guaranteed or discounted mint spot that projects award to active community members who put in the effort.
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