Reason of this failure was that airdrop allowed exchanges and big BTC holders like ICONOMI or ICO projects to participate. Exchanges were not allowed, but actually they created non-exchange-looking BTC addresses for this purpose.
You're wrong there: exchanges were allowed to join the airdrop. What wasn't allowed, is an exchange user claiming airdrop from an address owned by the exchange.
It does feel bad though to see the dumpers profit more than the holders, but that can still change in the future. Byteball is working on real life applications. That's a risk, but if it works, it will pay off.