Whether you’re new or a seasoned DeFi user, chances are you have heard the term airdrops every now and then.
That’s because airdrops are a popular marketing strategy for DeFi protocols and crypto companies for several reasons:
It allows protocols to reward their community members for their activity and engagement in their respective platforms, thus further incentivizing users to stay in the protocol.
It helps projects drive awareness and new traffic to the brand and a product/service —especially if they’re releasing their native token.
As DeFi evolved through the years, so did the way protocols planned their airdrop campaigns. Crypto projects are constantly developing sophisticated airdrop strategies and better ways of delivering rewards, like gifting non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that grant users unique merchandise or access to exclusive content.
The following guide covers some of the hottest crypto airdrops for 2024 — potential, confirmed, and even recently distributed airdrops. You’ll soon notice that qualifying for them boils down to actively engaging with the protocols’ respective features, interacting with their testnets, creating new wallets, and referring friends to the protocol, among other activities.
Note that any airdrop or token launch, unless confirmed by the respective protocol, is speculative and not guaranteed.
Jupiter
Jupiter is a leading liquidity aggregator on the Solana blockchain, with over 1.2 million users actively swapping and trading assets on its platform. It handles between 60% and 70% of all the DEX volume on Solana.
Jupiter remained tokenless until the founding team unveiled their plan to launch the protocol’s native token, JUP, on January 31, accompanied by an official airdrop.
The airdrop itself was successful, and JUP is now one of the top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap.
How did it work?
Around 40% of the 10 billion JUP tokens are reserved for the community through airdrops.
The tokens will distributed through four airdrop rounds, with the first happened January 31. Other dates will be disclosed.
Half of the tokens will go to the community; 20% is vested for the Jupiter team.
Token distribution is based on users’ past engagement with the platform, considering activities like trading volume on the site.
The JUP token is designed to govern a future Jupiter DAO.
Revenue sharing for the JUP token will only occur after Jupiter witnesses a tenfold increase in its user base, which is estimated to take two years.
This means you can still qualify for the future rounds airdrop. Here’s how:
Visit the Jupiter website and connect your Solana wallet.
Choose one of the many activities in Jupiter, such as Swaps.
You can also check out their Perpetual trading section or leverage their bridge feature to perform cross-chain operations.
Since Jupiter is native to Solana, if you want to check out other top Solana protocols that are yet to launch a token, check out our video