Source: Unsplash

Airdrops - who doesn't like them? It's almost like receiving a free stack of cash out of the blue by some benevolent token issuer. I've been a recipient of many airdrops in the Ethereum ecosystem, including but not limited to the Popsicle.finance airdrop, UMA airdrop, and mostly recently the WTF airdrop. Over the course of a few years in crypto, my airdrops have at least amounted to a few thousand USD - all for being in the ecosystem. If you're wondering how airdrops usually work and how you may qualify for future airdrops, do read on.

Checking for Airdrops

Sometimes you don't even know that you've got airdrops that you can claim. Most of them do unfortunately have a claim-by date, so you do have to act quickly for some of these. One pretty useful site that I found recently is earni.fi. It checks your ETH/BSC address against their database of airdrops and tells you if you are eligible to claim anything. I'm not affiliated with them in any way, but they did alert me to my DappRadar airdrop which was worth about 200 - 300 USD, which was pretty neat because I wouldn't have found out otherwise.

Here, you can see some of the airdrops that I've qualified for that matched with earni.fi's airdrop database. As you can see, I've missed the MASK airdrop which had an average airdrop value of $953 (d'oh!).

While the basic version of earni.fi is free, they obscure certain airdrop names if you're not a premium member. I signed up for their premium service because I received an email from them that told me of a "premium airdrop" whose name was not revealed unless I was a premium member. I figured that the value of the airdrop would cover the price of a premium account, so I did it.

Honestly, I don't think the premium service is worth it; to find out what new airdrops you qualify for, you can simply search around on crypto-Twitter to see what people are saying. High-value airdrops often have tons of people talking about them especially when they've just dropped. Just look at the recent OpenDAO ($SOS), GasDAO ($GAS), and LooksRare ($LOOKS) drops, all which happened within the last month.

Qualifying for Future Airdrops

Source: Unsplash

Now that you know what airdrops you currently qualify for, here are my thoughts on qualifying for future ones. Teams that do airdrops do it mostly for promotion - they automatically get a big community around their token without having to do extra legwork. Of course, they don't just want a big community. They want community members that are active and are willing to stick around; if everyone simply dumped their tokens upon receipt, the team wouldn't be gaining much from doing the airdrop.

The key is definitely to engage with the ecosystem and participate in it. Popsicle.finance ($ICE) tokens were airdropped to people who participated in the BadgerDAO ecosystem. Uniswap/1inch tokens were airdropped to users of these exchanges. DappRadar ($RADAR) tokens were airdropped to active Ethereum dApp users.

In the last year or so, the huge number of airdrops have led many people to become "airdrop hunters", creating multiple accounts and bots that do minimal interaction with various Web3 systems to maximize the airdrops that they can receive. In retaliation, many teams have decided to do retrospective airdrops. This means that you won't know what the airdrop criteria are until the snapshot has been taken. It's hard to game the system this way since you won't know how they filter out bots and airdrop hunters.

Since most airdrop actions require interaction with the blockchain one way or another, you often end up having to spend money on gas fees, especially on Ethereum. I don't recommend trying to game the system since you'll almost never be able to predict when an airdrop is going to happen, or what the criteria will be. Instead, just participate in the ecosystem - voting on Snapshots, trying out staking, or fund the Open Web. Remember, airdrops actively try not to reward bots, airdrop hunters, but rather to reward people who are more likely to stay for the long term.

Unsure How to Participate?

Navigating the wild crypto seas can be confusing. There's little guidance for the uninitiated and things can get overwhelming quickly. One of the ways that earni.fi recommends participating in the ecosystem is to take a look at Rabbit Hole, a tool to get into the ecosystem.

Rabbit Hole tries to gamify this experience by giving you "Skills" to learn, such as Token Swapping on Layer 2 chains and lending on Compound. Although it's not an exhaustive list of things that you can do here on the blockchain, I feel that it gives a great starting point for people who are just getting started. Doing some of these may or may not qualify you for future airdrops, but they'll definitely give you a much better chance than not doing anything at all.

Many of my airdrops came from me deciding to vote on proposals on Snapshot, engaging with DeFi solutions, or simply just fudging my way around the ecosystem. If I hadn't tried playing around with these systems, I wouldn't have qualified for most of the airdrops.

A Little Caution Required with Airdrops

There's no free lunch in the world. Airdrop sites may contain malicious contract code which can cost you all of your wallet's funds. With rampant scams that take advantage of natural human greed going on, extra caution needs to be exercised whenever you get alerted to a new airdrop. Try to find people who have taken the lead in claiming and see if they have anything to say about it. With the number of people available on crypto Twitter, Telegram, and Discord, you should be able to find someone who can verify that whatever new airdrop you've qualified for is safe.

To be extra cautious, you can wait a few hours or days before you initiate the claim. Most airdrops have a claim window of a few weeks or months, and your alert radar should sound off if the claim window is way shorter. Shorter claim windows instill a sense of urgency which can cause a lapse in judgement. Always listen to your gut instinct first!

Conclusion

I hope you found this guide on airdrops helpful. I know people who don't believe in how much you can get from these airdrops, but I can assure you that they are absolutely real. Just know that the most valuable airdrops tend to be the most unexpected, and the only way you can prepare for them is just to participate in the ecosystem. Cheers!

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