Airdrop Evolution: From Rewards to Strategic Tools in Crypto
1. The Evolution of Airdrop Campaigns in the Crypto Market
The crypto market is still relatively young and continues to evolve. New projects face fierce competition in attracting users. To meet this demand, many projects have adopted airdrop (free token distribution) as a way to thank early users. However, over time, airdrops have evolved from being simply a token of appreciation to serving other purposes, such as marketing, competition between projects (vampire attack), and incentivizing long-term user retention.
2. The Development of Airdrop Campaigns
Initially, airdrop campaigns were quite simple, requiring participants to perform actions like following social media accounts, sharing posts, or holding a specific cryptocurrency such as LTC or BCH. However, these campaigns often failed to target the right audience, leading to tokens being widely distributed with limited effectiveness. A typical example of this is Aptos, which conducted an airdrop with simple requirements like email registration or minting a testnet NFT. This led to easy exploitation and made it difficult to maintain long-term engagement.
3. Changes in Airdrop Criteria
Since Uniswap conducted its first airdrop, token distribution methods have changed significantly. Users who interacted with the platform received rewards, with Uniswap offering up to 400 UNI tokens (~1200 USD). However, as the rewards increased, users began exploiting the system by spamming multiple wallets to receive more tokens. As a result, projects began to implement stricter criteria to ensure tokens were only distributed to genuine users.
4. Stricter Airdrop Criteria
Dydx is one of the notable examples, requiring users to perform specific transactions, such as bridging assets or executing high-volume trades, to receive rewards. Another example is Ref Finance, which required users to swap at least seven times and provide liquidity to at least three pools. Optimism implemented two airdrop campaigns with highly detailed criteria, distributing tokens only to users who met specific requirements, especially for governance purposes.
5. Sybil Attack Issues in Airdrop Campaigns
The issue of sybil attacks (fraudulent wallet addresses) has become a significant threat to airdrop campaigns. Projects like Arbitrum recognized the need to filter out sybil wallets and have adopted methods such as transaction history checks, wallet balances, and frequency of interactions to identify valid addresses. For instance, Arbitrum used 17 different criteria to classify users, implementing anti-sybil measures such as restricting wallets with transactions made within 48 hours or having a balance of less than 0.005 ETH. Recent airdrop campaigns, including Space ID, have faced similar issues, with one wallet registering 10,000 domain names across 10,000 different wallets and receiving a large number of tokens.
6. Future Trends in Airdrop Campaigns
Projects are increasingly focusing on accurately filtering real users during airdrop campaigns. Arbitrum is one of the first projects to adopt anti-sybil methods, setting a new trend for token distribution. Gitcoin is also leading the way in user verification through the Gitcoin Passport, which helps combat fraud in airdrop campaigns. zkSync, a blockchain network that gained significant attention after Arbitrum’s airdrop, is also collaborating with Gitcoin to ensure tokens are only distributed to genuine participants, preventing unnecessary token dumping.
In the future, projects will tighten airdrop eligibility criteria by collaborating with third-party providers and utilizing advanced technology to ensure tokens are fairly distributed, minimizing fraud and wasted resources. Airdrops will no longer just be a marketing tool but will become an integral part of a project’s sustainable development strategy in the crypto space.