The only way it affected steemians is the referral abuse. Let's not forget, reputation system is managed by Steemit INC, not byteball, so if its exploitable, its too bad for 'Steemit'.
I love that they chose steem community for the airdrop. You may have gained minimum $80 too through this airdrop. Sure it may be nothing but it's free money, so it matters.
Where the spammers came from? Most probably from this thread, and the invitee of this pattern of abuse is also a steemian here. I'm well aware that once a method is posted on thebot.net, it will be raped to death. Same happened here. Part of the credit goes to this steemian "supermeatboy" for inviting people to abuse the airdrop.
Here's the thread link: https://thebot.net/threads/how-to-rape-the-gbyte-steemit-airdrop.407564/
Edit: Seems like you are not aware that they modified their airdrop rules already. Accounts created after 12th July can't claim the airdrop anymore, but can still refer others and earn. Also, the rewards of 30-40 and 40-50 are halved. Much better than before I guess, but they are yet to do something for referral exploits (mass transfer of tiny payments to hijack referral rewards).
Agreed with you and @princewahaj and even @themarkymark
There were issues with the airdrop but perhaps the benefits were still pretty good. This allows us and future companies see how an airdrop should perhaps be handled. This is a great test for us. This is how we learn and we can tell future airdrops in the first minute of them posting (or hopefully before they post) what they should consider for the airdrop.
So perhaps we should cool our reaction and maybe change the FUD title to say something like.
"How the Byteball airdrop messed up and how we can learn for the next STEEM airdrop"
I've seen that post, but it wasn't hard to figure out how to abuse it.
Exactly, I see it as a exploit from steemit's side and not from byteball (except for referral abuse).
It is, but education, before the airdrop started, could have prevented that.
Agreed with that. I think they might not even have an idea of how rep system can be abused so easily. I mean, just look at the invitee on https://steemit.com/@ supermeatboy (don't want to mention him), his rep points are 61. Wow!
On the other hand, we have some good members with great potentials and yet they are below 60 or even 50.
Also, are you aware that they already modified their airdrop rules? No more accounts created after 12th july and reward of 30-40 rep groups are halved.
But would education have been able to prevent the blockchain explorer bots harvesting new addresses to loot the referral rewards. It happened to me and my friend:
https://steemit.com/byteball/@em3/byteball-referral-theft-at-blockchain-level
nice
72SGYZDMP555NBPQASK4VL244JUNNWDA