What is crypto airdrop: free money?
This article will introduce the topic of crypto airdrops. This will be the first of a long and detailed column, so stay tuned!
The crypto sector often has these mouth-watering opportunities to get “free money.”
Let’s try to take stock of the situation and explain in detail what airdrops consist of and how to get hold of them
What is crypto airdrop and what do you have to do to get them?
Airdrops are marketing strategies which new crypto projects adopt to promote their business and get an initial flow of users.
Every year new ecosystems are born in the crypto landscape trying to gain visibility to increase traffic to their platforms.
However, it is very difficult to reach Note the following by the crypto-friendly public if precise strategies are not adopted to motivate users to use the products of these infrastructures.
The classic methods of attracting user traffic are through campaigns on fees, incentives to give LP tokens (pool farming) or promises a high return on investment (see the case of Olympus and Fairyland).
However, these practices often end up creating high inflation on new tokens or are unsustainable over time.
The Airdrop technique certainly is one of the most interesting and most rewarding practice when it comes to commitment to these projects.
These are strategies where it has been decided to GIVE AWAY tokens/coins that belong to new ecosystems early adopters in the crypto world who independently decide to test these innovative products.
Usually the release of an air droplet is announced either directly by the team by the newborn crypto projects or the users themselves see the possibility of future rewards based on the originally published road maps.
Airdrops do that NOT always represent opportunities to get “free money”: often to qualify for an airdrop it is necessary to perform some actions in the chain such as making exchanges, being a liquidity provider, buying NFTs and using various smart contracts.
Consequently, one advance cost assumed (usually about $100 is enough) which varies from time to time.
At other times to get an airdrop may be easier and in some cases it only takes “a few clicks”
However, usually the most profitable airdrops are the ones there you must be an active user within the particular ecosystem or platform, and therefore you have to spend time, with the hope of achieving “gift” tokens worth a few thousand dollars.
If done consistently and with a little research, the pursuit of airdrops can be extremely profitable as well as one of the best ways to accumulate cryptocurrencies if you do not have a good starting capital.
The most profitable crypto airdrop in history
Let’s see the most together profitable airdrops in cryptocurrency history.
In some cases, acquiring these airdrops can prove to be a “game changer” opportunity to dramatically increase the value of one’s wallet.
First, it is worth noting that the airdrops that will be mentioned below involved the use of a Decentralized custodial walletsuch as Ledger, Metamask and TrustWallet.
Forget about getting 4-digit airdrops if you operate with the classic wallets of centralized platforms like Binance or Coinbase, in fact it is really rare to get them through exchange.
That said, here are the airdrops that have historically made the most money for early adopters:
UNISWAP
On September 17, 2020, the UNI token was sent to all users who interacted with the well-known protocol when it was still in its infancy.
Uniswap today is known as the most important DEX of DeFi, along with Sushiswap and 1Inch.
300,000 addresses were found eligible for the airdrop, but only 73% claimed UNI tokens. Altogether approx 351 million dollars was given away.
On average, each address received approx $1170although many addresses redeemed a significantly higher amount, especially if they decided to hold the token for a few months.
Around 250 addresses have been given a huge surprise 250,000 UNIwhich to date corresponds to 1.58 million dollars. Pretty much to do a few protocol switches.
DYDX
A total of 64,306 users have experimented with the decentralized trading platform and achieved the DYDX token airdrop as of September 2021.
Of these, only 38,845 actually redeemed the token, which in total was worth as much as 834 million dollars.
On average, each user earned approx $13,000a truly staggering figure.
Received addresses that created volumes over 1 million dollars 9,529 tokens respectively, which corresponds to $265,500 if we consider the maximum price DYDX reached during that period.
The most profitable crypto airdrop in 2022-2023
Among the last airdrops that have given excellent returns for early adopters in the crypto world have been airdrops of Layer 2’s Optimism and Arbitrum.
These projects, now known to all industry enthusiasts, have managed to achieve remarkable success in terms of TVL and number of active addresses on the chains, precisely because of the airdrop strategy
OPTIMISM
248,699 addresses had the opportunity to redeem airdrop worth in total 300 million dollarsbut only 152,504 users made the claim.
On average, each address earned approx $1200.
The eligibility criteria in this case were slightly more complicated than in the Uniswap and dYdX projects. On-chain actions deemed necessary to achieve the Layer 2 airdrop include using the blockchain on multiple occasions, voting on Dao, multi-signature wallets such as Gnosis Safe, and donations to Gitcoin Grants.
ARBITRATION ROOM
One of the most discussed airdrops, as well as the most recent, has been carried out by the Arbitrum ecosystem.
The criteria to be eligible for the airdrop were similar to those imposed by Optimism.
By using the various dApps of the ecosystem on several occasions, by using bridges for Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Novaand liquidity provision were the actions that determined the actual qualification of users.
625,143 addresses were found to be eligible for a total present value of approx 2 billion dollars however, considering the current price of ARB, only 90% of wallets or 567,851 made the claim.
On average, each user earned approx $3200.
4,428 addresses have received quite a lot 10,250 ARB tokens which currently corresponds to approx $18,140
How to qualify for free crypto during airdrop
There is no one-size-fits-all method to qualify and get airdrop rewards.
The criteria that new project teams decide on changs from time to timeand it is necessary to monitor the crypto landscape in order to successfully achieve significant gains.
Sometimes it is crucial to have foresight about the future of a project and to carry out chain actions before the actual airdrop round is announced.
A little tip if you want anticipate the release of air droplets and see if a project has decided to build a DAO.
DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations) require the existence of a control tokenand if this has not yet been rolled out it means there is a possibility of a future airdrop.
In other cases, like for the Layer Zero project, if you look closely codes written by the project developersyou can see that a future token release is already planned.
If you don’t have the time to scout out the projects that will release future airdrops or don’t have the background knowledge to understand which actions in the chain are best to perform, there is no reason to worry.
From next week we will see which ones are the most promising projects which could give early adopters an airdrop and together we will analyze the most suitable strategies to position yourself and be qualified.
Stay on track traders!
