Crypto Airdrops: What Are They & How Can You Get Them?
Deep dive into the background and history of crypto airdrops as well as how you can you qualify to receive future airdrops
Dear Sunday Investors:
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Sunday Investor! To our new members, the format of this weekly newsletter will be a deep-dive into one investment-topic. This week, we will be going into cryptocurrency airdrops. We will start by sharing more on what an airdrop is, history of the most valuable airdrops as well as what you can do to make sure you are involved in future airdrops in the crypto market.
Read, enjoy and share with any friends. Let’s build wealth together.
Weekly Market Recap
Markets continue to fall this month - CNBC The Nasdaq fell more than 4% on Friday, bringing its monthly losses to over 13%. The Dow and S&P 500 closed down 2.77% and 3.63%, on the day continuing their decline this last month.
Robinhood announces crypto wallet functionality - Robinhood. If you use Robinhood to invest in crypto, they released this week that you’ll be able to send your crypto to other wallets and receive supported crypto into Robinhood.
Popular L2 chain Optimism announces $OP token and airdrop for early users - The Defiant. The first L2 chain to drop a token finally happens; exciting news for L2 as a whole & will talk more on this later.
Crypto hacks continue to be an issue - Coin Telegraph. The group behind the the largest DeFi hack to hit crypto - $600M being drained from the Ronin Bridge was revealed by the CIA to be the infamous North Korean Lazarus group.
Bored Ape Yacht Club Instagram Hacked - The Guardian. The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) Instagram was hacked earlier this week, with the hacker posting a fake link to a similar website promising an airdrop. Once users connected their wallets, their Apes were sent to the hackers wallet rolling in over $10M in losses.
What is an Airdrop?
Crypto airdrops are a marketing strategy adopted by crypto startups to promote their project. This is done by rewarding users and launching a token for the project. The idea of the airdrop is to distribute tokens to current/new users to increase exposure of their project. An airdrop is given out for free, all users have to do is “claim” their tokens on a Metamask wallet or similar.
Crypto airdrops can yield substantial gains for early investors and users of projects. To see this in the past, lets see some of the most popular airdrops value’s to early users below.
Uniswap Airdrop for $UNI: This decentralized exchange airdropped its early users who made at least 1+ trade on their platform with $UNI tokens which was worth $1,200 at its release.
dYdX Airdrop for $dYdX: This decentralized exchange airdropped over $1B in rewards for its users with the smallest airdrop being $4,000 and the largest being over $100,000 depending on early users who made trades and whales who provided over $1M in volume to the platform.
ENS DAO Airdrop for $ENS: The popular protocol for any “.eth” domains airdropped users $17,000-$100,000+ based on the amount of .eth domains a user owned before a certain cutoff date which determined who was an “early user”.
Good Bridging Airdrop for $GB: If you were a user who used the Avalanche bridge to move over funds from Ethereum or another blockchain to Avalanche, you automatically qualified for this airdrop which was worth $3,000 at its launch.
Now, that we see how valuable it can be to partake in airdrops, let’s learn more on the different types of airdrops and how to “qualify” for potential future airdrops in the crypto ecosystem.
Different Types Of Airdrops
There are numerous ways to qualify for airdrops and in its simplest terms, the best way to start is by experimenting with different crypto protocols that interest you.
Early-User Airdrops: This is a very common form of crypto airdrop where a crypto startup like Uniswap, dYdX, or ENS DAO reward users who used their decentralized exchange to make trades or owned .eth domains before a certain cutoff date. These are used as a marketing tactic to increase exposure as well as reward early users in their protocol.
Holder Airdrops: This type of airdrop is when you own and are holding a certain token, and then based on how much you have you are airdropped another crypto. An example of this is if you hold ETH, you may randomly qualify for airdrops for crypto startups building on Ethereum.
Bounty Airdrops: This type of airdrop requires users to complete tasks such as sharing a post about the crypto project on twitter or joining a project’s Discord or Telegram group before claiming tokens/NFTs.
Upcoming Airdrops
Now that we know the different types of airdrops as well as how valuable it can be to be an early user, what can you do to be prepared for upcoming airdrops?
Optimism Airdrop: Just this week, Optimism $OP token rumors come true, as the Ethereum Layer-2 scaling solution announces new plans for its governance structure and token distribution. $OP will be distributed via multiple rounds of airdrops, beginning with a retroactive round for previous Optimism users. Take a look below on how you could have become eligible for this first round of airdrops Optimism plans to do. There are still opportunities for further $OP airdrops so continue to use Optimism to ensure you are qualified!
$OP Airdrop Eligibility:
The $OP token is releasing in the coming months, and it will be interesting to see how valuable this airdrop was for early users of this L2 chain.
Other Potential Ethereum L2 Airdrops:
1. Arbitrum
Description: Like Optimism, Arbitrum is an L2 crypto project that holds the most TVL out of any Ethereum L2. Since the Optimism $OP token release, it makes sense for Arbitrum to release a rival token.
Arbitrum Resources: Website | Docs | Twitter | Discord
How To Qualify?: Bridge funds from Ethereum over to Arbitrum and try out a DEX like Aave or 1inch which are both live on Arbitrum now.
2. zkSync
Description: zkSync is another L2 scaling solution on Ethereum which is powered by zk rollups technology.
zkSync Resources: Website | Docs | Twitter | Discord
Why zkSync: Matter Labs, the creators of zkSync has confirmed they will be releasing a token to incentivize early users… no release on when or the qualifications yet.
How To Qualify?: Open up a zkSync wallet and test out the L2 chain. Easy way to do this is by downloading the Argent App on your iPhone where you can:
Buy crypto from USD in your bank account or through ApplePay
Earn up to 13% on stablecoins with decentralized protocols like Aave, Yearn & Gro using zkSync technology.
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Will be keeping my eye out for new content to write about these next few weeks. Be sure to send in any questions directly to me or comment below on this post what you’d like me to write about or answer next!
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