Written by: OxTochi
Translated by: Chopper, Foresight News
I still remember the first time I received a crypto airdrop, as if it happened just yesterday. It was 2020, and I was busy completing bounty tasks on Bitcointalk. One morning, I was woken up by a WhatsApp notification—it was a message from a friend.
“Have you used Uniswap?” he asked. I replied, “Yes,” and then he said, “Then you should be able to claim 400 UNI tokens, now worth over $1,000.” I immediately went to Uniswap’s Twitter page to find the claim link, and after claiming, I sold them right away.
It was that simple—“free money” falling from the sky. No forms to fill out, no grinding levels in Discord, and none of those “must contribute to qualify” requirements.
Looking back, that moment defined what airdrops were supposed to be: a pleasant “bonus” for users who genuinely like and use the product, not the worthless junk activities we see today.
The Golden Age of Airdrops
Later, I received the 1Inch airdrop. At that time, any wallet eligible for UNI could also claim 1Inch. But what truly changed my perception of “airdrop mechanics” was the dYdX airdrop.
To participate, I had to bridge ETH to the dYdX protocol. Back then, most Layer2s were still just whitepapers, and bridging fees were sky-high. I did a few trades to generate some volume—not much—and then bridged my assets back out. That one day of activity ended up netting me a five-figure (USD) airdrop. Even now, it feels unbelievable.
The total value of all the airdrops I received peaked at over $20,000. Honestly, I sold half of it along the way—after all, it was “free money,” and cashing out is the norm.
The dYdX airdrop gave me my first decent principal, which I immediately invested in DeFi. During the “DeFi Summer,” I did liquidity mining on Juldswap, earning about $250 a day. Honestly, I really miss those days.
The Decline of Airdrops
Of course, those good times couldn’t last forever. After dYdX, I participated in airdrops for Scroll, Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync, with zkSync marking the start of my “bad airdrop experiences.”
However, I’ll never forget the Scroll airdrop. Expectations were sky-high, and even though co-founder Sandy posted the famous “lower your expectations” tweet, it didn’t dampen anyone’s enthusiasm.
People kept raising their expectations, until disappointment finally hit. The Scroll airdrop allocation was absurdly low—a complete joke. The crypto community’s mood instantly shifted from excitement to despair. Honestly, this airdrop left a shadow over me, and I swore I’d never participate in Layer2 airdrop “mining” again.
If it were just Scroll, maybe I could accept it. But what really bothered me was realizing that such “low-quality airdrops” would become the norm in the future.
The Current Chaos of Airdrops
Fast forward to today, and the airdrop scene is a complete mess. The once “surprise airdrops” have long since turned into an “industrialized, Sybil attack-style airdrop farming” business.
You have to spend months, even years, interacting with various protocols: bridging, adding liquidity, burning gas fees, and building so-called “user loyalty.” In the end, whether you get an airdrop is pure luck, and even if you do, the allocation is pitiful. Even more outrageous, there are now “airdrop claim windows open for only 48 hours”—I remember Sunrise was the first to do this.
Even if you finally make it to claim day, you’ll find the allocation doesn’t match the time and cost you invested, and it often comes with a ridiculously harsh vesting schedule. For example, 0G Labs’ airdrop unlocks quarterly over 48 months—48 months, a full four years!
There are so many of these issues now that whenever I see those “airdrop alpha” tweets, my first reaction is: “Ha, another ‘mosquito leg’ airdrop.”
The Game Between Projects and Users
The truth is: in recent years, users have become purely “utilitarian”—there’s no need to sugarcoat it. People use a product just to get rewards; no one is going to spend hours clicking around or contributing to the community for some so-called ecosystem culture.
And what about the project teams? Sure, they want loyal users, but what they want even more are “impressive metrics” to show VCs: high user numbers, large community size. These numbers are enough to boost their valuations when preparing fundraising PPTs. So, it’s become a game of “farming metrics” versus “anti-farming metrics” between users and projects.
The result: neither side is happy. Users feel played, and projects face user retention problems.
What Should Airdrops Be Like?
If I were to redesign airdrops, I’d probably go back to the Uniswap model: no hype, no leaderboards, just a surprise bonus for loyal users one day. This alone would reduce “industrialized airdrop farming” and lower users’ unrealistic expectations.
Or, take inspiration from Sui’s “pre-sale airdrop” model: set a reasonable fully diluted valuation (FDV), and give early contributors and users the chance to buy tokens at a discount.
The closest to this model now are Cysic and Boundless. They use a “tier system” to reward users with pre-sale discounts based on their contributions across various ecosystem activities.
Or, just cancel airdrops altogether and focus on building truly usable products: create something with real product-market fit and establish a solid revenue model, instead of copy-pasting the same thing 200 times. Honestly, this approach is more in line with the long-term interests of the crypto community.
Conclusion
The current state of airdrops is simply terrible. It fails both the users who grind for airdrops and the projects trying to build real communities.
The end result: everyone feels used. Maybe canceling airdrops and focusing on building products that allow everyone to make money is the better choice?
