Our experts analyzed what is happening with airdrops in 2024, why it got worse and what to expect in the future
In 2024, Airdrop tokens were distributed to their users: platforms zkSync, Layerzero, Blast, Wormhole, Layer3 and dozens of other projects. However, only a few Airdrops made the community happy. Let's analyze why today the releases of new coins are met with negativity and what will help to earn more on the giveaways than others.
Airdrops have become the "gold chip" of 2024. Every month several projects release tokens at once and distribute a part of their issue to early users. Many startups announce future allocations in advance, although such a practice could not have been imagined before.
There is a reason for such generosity in 2024, and there are at least two reasons for it. First, this year is shaping up very positively for the cryptocurrency market. The halving of bitcoin and the emergence of cryptocurrency ETFs on the US stock market have had a positive impact on the price of bitcoin itself and many other coins. And a "hot market" is the best time to issue tokens: they are valued higher than in a falling market or during crypto winter.
Secondly, projects realized that it is possible to attract users and capital by announcing the future giveaway of tokens in advance. One of the first to follow this path were the developers of Blast, a second-tier network. The startup launched in late 2023, immediately announcing the upcoming airdrop.
In March 2024, Blast launched the main network, and in June it issued a token and distributed 17% of its issue to users. Within six months, the network managed to raise $2.3 billion, which was a good result. However, after the first airdrop, the value of user funds in the network (total value locked, TVL) of the project decreased to $1.3 billion.
Other projects began to adopt Blast's experience. Among them are similar second-tier networks Linea and Scroll, which also introduced a points system, thus hinting loudly at a future airdrop. However, how long this practice will last and how profitable it will be is a big question.
Best airdrops
The first successful airdrop was held by the decentralized exchange Uniswap in the already distant 2020. The project did not announce plans to release the coin in advance. And so the sudden giveaway turned out to be a surprise for everyone, and a very pleasant one. The developers of the platform poured UNI tokens almost to all its users.
Allocation received even those who have not made a single transaction on the platform, but simply gave it permission to write off assets. Thus, ordinary users received at least $500-1000 in the project's cryptocurrency, if assessed at the rate at the time of its launch.
Not only Uniswap users were extremely satisfied with this action, but also the market perceived it positively. Immediately after the distribution, the token was added to the listings of all leading exchanges, including Binance. And its price did not fall, as it happens now, but on the contrary - began to grow and within a few hours rose from $3 to $8-9. Within a year, UNI had risen in price to $43. Thanks to such growth, the profit of users who did not sell coins at once could amount to tens of thousands of dollars.
However, even then there were insiders. Immediately after the airdrop, the community found hundreds of wallets that collected the received airdrop at one address. This tends to indicate that all these wallets belonged to the same person. Still, this did not hinder the growth of the project, and now Uniswap remains the unchanged leader of its segment on the Ethereum network with a capitalization of $7.8 billion.
The next airdrop, which is still considered to be one of the best, was conducted by the developers of the second-level network Arbitrum. In early 2023, the project, without announcing in advance, released an ARB token and distribute to users depending on their activity. The size of allocation depended on how often and how long the user worked on the network, as well as how much he contributed there.
In addition, Arbitrum made a good enough cleanup of sibyls - users who created a lot of wallets and scooped up activity on them for the sake of getting an airdrop. As a result, ordinary users got a solid allocation, the minimum size of airdrop at the time of token issuance could be $1-3 thousand.
Separately, it is worth noting that one of the advantages of Arbitrum drop is now clearly visible - clear criteria for distribution. On the token branding site there were all the conditions that had to be met to get rewards of different sizes. And each user understood what criteria he passed and how many coins he was due for it.
Of course, there were negative moments in the ARB distribution. In particular, users expressed dissatisfaction with the hovering stigma site and suspicious manipulations on the token listing on exchanges. Nevertheless, in 2023, Arbitrum set the bar high for Airdrop conduct. Overall, the community remained happy with the giveaway and still continues to use the subnet. And Arbitrum is at the top of the Tier 2 network segment in terms of TVL and activity, even though the airdrop is behind us.
After the Arbitrum airdrop, the industry began to change.
First of all, a new caste of users has finally established itself on the market. Traders and investors have been joined by hunters - users who focus entirely on hunting for airdrops.
Hunting itself has fully reached the industrial level. An ordinary user is able to control several dozens of wallets, or even a hundred. However, huge farms consisting of thousands of wallets and controlled, probably, not by hands, but by a script, have been found in the network many times.
Secondly, the fight against sybils has become much stricter. Over the years, the number of applicants for drops has grown tremendously, so projects began to come up with more and more complicated conditions for getting the giveaway. At the same time, companies have appeared that develop solutions for finding sybils and sell them to large projects before the airdrop.
As a result, it became much more difficult to get airdrop, including ordinary users, and the size of allocation per each user began to decrease. But it only got worse from there.
Projects began to introduce restrictions on the distribution of tokens. For example, in 2024, the organizers of airdrop began to block access to the site of receiving airdrop for users from many countries, including Russia. Large startups zkSync and EigenLayer and some others have taken such measures.
It also became popular to add vesting for tokens. Now almost every giveaway is accompanied by temporary blocking of a part of tokens allocated to users. Usually it only affects large recipients, as it was with Blast, Mode and Ethena, but some projects introduce such restrictions for all users, as Zerolend did.
Also, the token allocation system has become less transparent. Projects began to introduce hidden criteria, which made it difficult for users to understand why they did not receive a giveaway or received but noticeably less than other users with a similar history of activity on the wallet. The zkSync developers distinguished themselves in this, adding a number of criteria that appear only in internal documents, and then - vaguely.
All this became the ground for the formation of negativity on the fact of Airdrop. It is difficult to find such handouts among the latest ones that met the expectations of the community. And this undoubtedly affected the price of assets. If we consider the tokens that were distributed to communities in 2024, almost all of them are in a downtrend since the airdrop. These include Ethena, DYM, Wormhole, zkSync, Blast, and others. This is despite the fact that the market as a whole is rising.
Main reasons for changing the rules for conducting Airdrop events
At the heart of all these changes is the fundamental problem with any airdrop - its distribution. The developers, on the one hand, need to give out a solid airdrop to a large number of users. And to keep the community satisfied and not drown the project in negativity. But on the other hand, if the project distributes tokens to everyone and a lot - it will put a lot of pressure on the price of the asset. And the lower it will be - the lower the potential profit of the project's investors.
This problem becomes more and more significant as the number of hunters grows. And there is only one solution to it now. It is the volume of invested assets and the duration of their storage in the project. The Blast network was the first to openly offer such a solution. Its developers made it clear from the very beginning: the size of the future airdrop will largely depend on the amount of invested assets and the duration of their storage within the network. This helped the project to attract huge capital in a short period of time and maintain its inflow by the time of the airdrop.
Later, other projects took similar measures, although they had not planned to do so earlier. For example, in April, Linea developers launched an obviously ill-prepared Surge program, copying the principles of Blast. Under this campaign, users receive LXP points for contributing assets to platforms working on this network.
In May, a similar program was launched by Scroll developers. The project also allows users to earn points for storing assets on the network or contributing them to platforms.
In general, the distribution of airdrops, based mainly on the volume of invested assets, has become a trend. Almost all projects conducting giveaways in 2024 have introduced a linear system of points accrual. Its principle is simple: the more assets a user invests, the more tokens he will receive.
It is not for nothing that the volume of contribution becomes the main criterion. At the moment, this is the most effective method of combating sybils. Users in pursuit of airdrops create a lot of wallets with small balances in order to catch at least a minimum giveaway on them. Previously it was possible to make a profit of $1-2 thousand per each wallet when depositing $100-200 per wallet.
Thanks to the new system, which is oriented on the deposit volume, such strategies stop working. A user can keep $10 thousand on one wallet or distribute them in small amounts between 20 wallets - it does not matter to the project, the total airdrop will still turn out to be about the same. But it takes much more effort to keep a farm of wallets alive than to control a single one.
However, one important detail is clearly visible here - such a system rewards "whales" and impoverishes ordinary users who do not have solid capital.
But projects cannot afford to miss out on regular users. Because it is ordinary users who, as a rule, make the greatest contribution to the project's activity.
Therefore, projects are increasingly introducing a second, parallel system for awarding points, where the frequency and number of transactions are encouraged, rather than their volume. In this case, the list of transactions required to receive points is announced in advance.
The Linea project was the first to take this path. Back in 2023, the network developers launched internal tokens LXP. This is an analog of points that are given for completing pre-prepared quests. As a rule, the tasks consist in minte cheap NFT or playing on onchain platforms.
This year, developers Blast added a similar mechanics to their airdrop program. There, users can earn "gold", which is mostly given for active work on various financial and gaming platforms.
More recently, an analog of such a system was added by the developers of Scroll. On July 14, they launched the Canvas program. Within its framework, each user has its own "pulse", which displays activity in the project network. Users can also receive badges - they are given for performing certain operations on platforms within Scroll.
It is likely that both mechanics will be fixed in the airdrop industry for a long time, as they allow to reach a large share of the audience. For investors with large capital, the points system based on volume becomes an analog of a deposit: a "whale" can deposit assets into a new project, have a 3-5-10% annual return and in addition receive an airdrop in the form of a solid bonus. And for ordinary users, a points system based on activity allows them to earn through active participation in the life of the project.
Let's summarize
We can safely say that airdrops are with us for a long time. Projects will continue to announce future giveaways in advance, it is a strong tool to attract users and capital. Startups will also have to go to such measures in order not to lose to competitors. However, this sphere will be changing, and here are a number of trends to expect in the coming year.
Due to the widespread practice of announcing airdrop in advance, the number of users hunting for future tokens will continue to grow. And this, in turn, will lead to a smooth decrease in the potential profit from giveaways, which is already observed now.
The growing number of hunters makes it inevitable to introduce more and more stringent criteria for obtaining an airdrop. At the same time, it is likely that more and more users will be blacklisted by sybils undeservedly.
Recent airdrops, including Layer3 and zkSync, have shown that projects can deprive a user of allocation without explanation. This is likely done to cut down on the number of recipients of the token and therefore reduce the potential pressure on its price. Given that the number of drop hunters will only continue to grow, such dirty practices are also likely to be increasingly common.
The terms of participation in future airdrops will become more transparent. Projects are increasingly moving to a model in which approximate or even clear criteria that must be met in order to receive a giveaway are announced in advance. With such a model, it is easier for startups to attract users, because the latter are clearer about what is required of them. And since attracting users and their capital is the main goal of any project, participation in airdrops will become more accessible.
Seasonality and vesting await us. Already now projects divide airdrops into multiple seasons for years in advance to retain users, and this practice will only grow. The most frustrating part about it is locking down part of the allocation. Projects will increasingly freeze a portion of allocated tokens with the threat of withdrawing them if the user stops supporting the project.
A dual points system based primarily on volume will become prevalent in the market. Right now it is the best way to both attract both large and ordinary users and to fight sybils.
We are also in store for the development of both insider activity and methods to combat it. The 2024 giveaways demonstrated that even large projects - the titans of the crypto market - are not bent on pharming their own airdrops by leveraging inside information. However, the cryptocommunity has also shown that they are keeping an eye on it. Well-known onchain analysts found a lot of evidence of insider trading, which caused a lot of damage to the reputation of projects.
The ability to select the most promising airdrops will become extremely valuable. The fact that many projects announce future giveaways in advance greatly disperses the focus of the hunters. Previously, you could easily select a few segment leaders and invest your time and capital in them. Now it is extremely important to select the best startups to avoid the risk of spending six months or a year on farming airdrop, which will bring pennies against the success of other projects.
We're in for an increase in fraud and hacker attacks. The euphoria around airdrops has already lured many inexperienced users into this sphere and will continue to do so. And who are extremely vulnerable to fraudulent schemes, especially phishing. To the same extent, the number of platforms that attract millions of user funds by announcing future airdrops with dubious security standards is also growing. And this is a tidbit for hackers.
To summarize, I would like to both calm and cheer up future hunters. From the text, at first it might seem that the market has formed mainly negative trends. Especially if we take into account the reduction of potential profits and the tightening of selection criteria. But this is not really the case.
This tightening makes airdrop farming less profitable for ordinary users and, on the contrary, more profitable for experienced hunters. That is, those who can find promising projects earlier than others and make complex routes that allow them to farm several airdrops at a time.
This means that with the same simplicity as before, you can't make money on giveaways. Now you have to invest more effort and time to keep your income at the same levels.
Nevertheless, the ability to farm several projects at a time, as well as the openness of information about future drops allows you to use the capital much more efficiently. Knowing the timing and approximate criteria of distribution, as well as market conditions, you can make a competent strategy, which will bring in the aggregate times more profits. The main thing is to select the most promising applicants, avoid silly losses on commissions and remember the risks: even the strongest projects are not immune to hacking and scams.
