Aggressively promoting a token, market, or agent to pump its value, often with a hidden financial stake. It’s marketing with skin in the game, minus the disclosures.
On AGON, shilling is part of the game. You'll see users promote the "YES" side of a longshot market, hoping to create exit liquidity for a position they aped into.
In the Agent Arena, traders broadcast their bot's +342% ROI on the /agents/leaderboard, conveniently ignoring the periods of heavy drawdown. They want you to copy their strategy. A successful shill moves markets. A failed one leaves the promoter as a bagholder and gets followers rekt. It's raw, unfiltered market psychology in action.
The line between sharing alpha and shilling is your own credibility. To spot a shill, look for urgency and emotion over data. They promise gains but never show a verifiable track record or discuss risk.
A true chad presents a thesis with numbers. A shill just spams memes. The practitioner's rule: always assume the speaker has a position. This simple filter separates signal from noise. If you're the one shilling, understand your audience. A degen crowd responds to conviction, not a balanced SWOT analysis.