Last updated on July 21st, 2023 at 09:02 pm
What are Crypto Airdrops?
Cryptocurrency airdrops are one of the best risk-free ways to receive free money in the form of crypto tokens. New start-up platforms or blockchain projects will sometimes provide an announced or surprise airdrop to raise engagement and promote their product.
This is one of the many positive things about crypto, you can get rewarded greatly just for being a part of it!
There are a lot of websites trying to be crypto airdrop aggregators that list upcoming airdrops. The problem with this is, these airdrops are often small and nearly worthless. You might get a low value NFT or two. However, the best and biggest airdrops are often unannounced and most people will always miss out.
Crypto airdrops can provide the following functions:
- Reward loyal users and early adopters.
- To raise engagement of the platform, the airdrop is a marketing strategy.
- Provide a governance token for the platform.
Notable Past Crypto Airdrops
Uniswap ($UNI)
Uniswap is a popular DeFi DEX that launched on November 2, 2018.
The UNI token airdrop was held on September 1, 2020. Over 250k addresses that had previously interacted with the platform were airdropped tokens based on their usage. The distribution was quite skewed, 93.8% of people received less than 412 UNI, whilst over 250 addresses received 250k UNI.
UNI hit an ATH of $44.97 on May 3, 2021. Meaning even those little 412 UNI tokens that the majority of people received became worth around $18,500 around eight months later! Not bad for free money. The current price of UNI is $5.89.
Ethereum Name Service ($ENS)
The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) is a distributed, open, and extensible naming system based on the Ethereum blockchain. It launched on May 4, 2017. I wrote an article on how to mint an ENS domain that you can view here.
Four years after launch, ENS annouced they were launching a DAO and the ENS token to govern key components of the ENS protocol. A snapshot of the system was taken on October 31, 2021. Then on November 8, 2021, users could claim their ENS tokens provided they had owned an ENS domain before the snapshot.
The airdrop formula was roughly the following:
0.27 * (# days the account owned at least one ENS name) + 0.062 * (# days until the expiration of the last name on the account)
The total is then multiplied by 2 if the account also has a Primary ENS Name set. 1
https://ens.mirror.xyz/-eaqMv7XPikvXhvjbjzzPNLS4wzcQ8vdOgi9eNXeUuY/
Blur ($BLUR)
Blur is a relatively new NFT DEX that is competing with the likes of OpenSea and LooksRare. Blur claims to be the fastest NFT marketplace. So far, Blur has completed three airdrops for its users.
Airdrop 1
Airdrop 1, the first Blur token airdrop, was dropped on 19 October 2022. In order to qualify for Airdrop 1, all users had to do was trade NFTs on the Blur platform six months prior. Those who had not yet traded on the platform had 14 days to list an NFT in order to still qualify.
Airdrop 2
Airdrop 2 was eligible for all traders who actively listed an NFT on the Blur platform throughout the month of November 2022. The criteria for maximising your airdrop were posted in a blog post (2022) and included the following criteria just to name a few:
- The more you list, the more you earn
- Listing blue chips helps
- Listing more active collections helps 2
Airdrop 3
Airdrop 3 was the final round of Blur airdrops and ended on 14 February 2023. This one was for traders who placed bids on Blur. It was the largest Blur airdrop (around 1-2x the size of Airdrop 2).
The top claimant received a staggering amount of over 3.2 million BLUR tokens, considering the token is currently trading at $0.69, it gives you an idea of how much you can receive from a crypto airdrop!
How to Find Crypto Airdrops?
As this article has shown, it pays to be an early adopter in the cryptocurrency space and trying new products. We believe the best way to maximise your chances of receiving the best crypto airdrops is to find new growing projects that are innovating in some way. These could be DEXs, NFT marketplaces, layer 1 or layer 2 blockchains, or more. Often new DEXS or marketplaces have provided the biggest airdrops in recent years.
What I suggest:
- Find popular new projects and platforms using resources such as the ones below. DEXs such as Uniswap, OpenSea, LooksRare, and Blur have performed big airdrops in the past. Keep an eye out, especially for platforms that are innovating or claim to be unique in comparison to their competitors. As these innovative platforms will often take some market share and provide incentives to switch over to their platform (possibly through an airdrop). Particularly look for projects with the following characteristics:
- Strong financial backing
- Strong active community/hype
- Good tokenomics
- Clear roadmap/vision
- Be active on the platform. Contribute and try using all of the platform’s different features. This will maximise your chances if it decides to do an airdrop.
- Do this for as many promising crypto products and services as you can.
Resources:
DefiLlama contains an index of different tokenless protocols that have never yet done an airdrop. It can be a good resource to find a new project. You can then DYOR by checking the project’s website, social media, as well as Googling to see if there are any rumours on an upcoming airdrop.
CoinMarketCap has a ‘Top Cryptocurrency Decentralized Exchanges’ page. What you can do is filter these by the launch date. This way you can find new DEXs, see if they are gaining popularity by their volume, visit their website, and try using their platform if they seem promising.
CoinGecko has a similar aggregator page to CoinMarketCap on their platform that you can also use. It is sometimes good to check both CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko as often a project will appear on one of them but not the other.
CryptoSlate is another aggregator that contains a list of DEXs that you can also check for any projects not listed on CoinMarketCap or CoinGecko.
Twitter and Reddit are good social media platforms for crypto. Following each of the projects that you find on these social media platforms is a good idea as sometimes announcements of future airdrops are posted.
Final Thoughts
It takes a bit of luck to be rewarded with a good crypto airdrop. However, you can maximise your chances by finding new products that stand out in the sea of mediocre and copy-cat ones. Then using them to their full potential.
None of the past noticeable airdrops mentioned here were pre-announced, besides the second and third Blur airdrops. The reason for not pre-announcing is it creates a surprise factor, a wave of social momentum occurs and this makes the token more valuable. The FOMO then kicks in for those who missed out, having to purchase the token at market price.
The cryptocurrency market is a very rewarding place. It can sometimes pay big to be early and support the projects that are moving the industry forward.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Which airdrops are best?
This is a very subjective question. However, over the recent years, DEXs and NFT marketplaces have distributed the highest value airdrops to their users.
What was the First Crypto Airdrop?
The first crypto airdrop was AuroraCoin (AUR) on March 25, 2014.
AuroraCoin was designed to be Iceland’s national cryptocurrency but ultimately fell short. 31.8 AUR tokens were distributed to every Icelandic citizen who registered with the project.
References
- brantly.eth. (2021). $ENS Token Allocation. [ONLINE]. Retrieved 19 February, 2023, from: https://ens.mirror.xyz/-eaqMv7XPikvXhvjbjzzPNLS4wzcQ8vdOgi9eNXeUuY
- Pacman. (2022). Blur Airdrop 2. [ONLINE]. Retrieved 19 February, 2023, from: https://mirror.xyz/blurdao.eth/XgvGOFLwdxpdRIF2BRsQqngvcBw5WMuDOcwUK3KR1AE
