So-called KICK project made quite a buzz last winter or so. They were airdropping an enormous amount of tokens requesting relatively little spamming activity from the airdrop's participants. I joined those 167375 happy crypto users by doing something simple like confirming my email address -- and saw how 888888 KICK tokens landed on my Metamask account. I was too lazy to get more tokens with liking, retwitting, facebooking, sharing links, and other spamming. Besides, there was no actual use of the token at that time. It wasn't listed at any exchange, couldn't be staked or whatever. 888888 KICKs were simply sitting on my account.

Later there were rumors in the internets that the project was probably a scam. I didn't bother then to check it myself -- "easy come, easy go", as they say.

Recently, after UNI airdrop (which I missed), I remembered my KICK tokens and went to see what had happened with them. I looked at Coingecko -- and to my surprise, the token actually had a price:

"WOW!!!!1", thought me. "The guys've made their way despite all negative attitude! And at last I'm lucky, I'm the One!!!1" My 888888 KICKs were valued at about 15 bucks!

I decided to sell my KICKs at KuCoin (I already have an account there) -- but my transfer transactions failed several times (however, gas fees were refunded). I went to their native KickEx exchange -- only to learn that it wants my KYC. Well, 15 bucks is not an amount worth KYC-ing, especially if there're alternatives -- The Great And Terrible Uniswap!

I headed to Uniswap and learned, that my KICKs are worth about the same 15 bucks (or 0.05 ETH), but I have to pay around 2 bucks to "unlock" the token. Well, I don't mind paying 2 bucks to receive 15 in return. I "unlocked" the token --- and TA-DAMMM! "Transaction error"... I tried several times, in vain.

Finally I understood that something was probably wrong with the token itself. And I sent an email to KICK's "support" asking them if their 888888 KICKS was a scam or not. It was not, indeed:

To unfreeze your FrozenDrop tokens you will need to trade on the KickEX exchange with your own funds. Whenever you make a trade on the KickEX you pay a fee. After that, you receive a cashback in KEX tokens. You will earn KEX every time you trade (1 KEX is for 2 USDT of fee paid). You will need KEX tokens to unfreeze FrozenDrop KickTokens. For $1 fee paid you can unfreeze $0.5 frozen tokens at the rate of the time of unlocking. The unlocking feature will be implemented on the KickEX later. But you can trade on the KickEX and get cashback in KEX tokens already now.

Well, a very sound business decision to improve overall turnover at a newly created exchange.

Holy shit... They'd better told me "Hey guy, you're too late to the party, your tokens're gone", or something similar.

But that is not even greed, it's something so miserable that I can't even find a proper English word for it in my thesaurus... I can imagine Mr. Buffet picking up empty aluminium cans from trash-bins and taking them to the recycling because he suddenly became overconcerned with ecological issues. But can you imagine Mr. Buffet picking up empty aluminium cans from trash-bins and selling them to the recycling to add a free penny to Berkshire Hathaway? How would you call that, you native English speakers?

Well, whatever, nevermind.

Of course, I will not go trading at KickEx, no way. I only wonder what is so special about it that makes its clients undergo its KYC and other shit.

KICK guys rewarded their 167375 happy spammers quite decently.

Well, guys, dyor it good before "unlocking" any shit at Uniswap...