Original title: "It's already 202X, can this airdrop still be used?"

Original author: Biteye Junior Sister, Biteye

Note: The following content is adapted from the speech of Biteye colleagues at the airdrop strategy sharing meeting. All airdrop benefits are shared from personal real experiences.

Airdrop, a word that most cryptocurrency users have seen, may be the easiest way to make money, or it may be the fastest way to ruin your body.

The debate over the pros and cons of airdrops has lasted for two or three years, from "equal treatment" to "minimum living security", to "checking witches" and "points"......

Whether you like this model or not, it has deeply affected many projects in the blockchain industry.

On September 17, 2020, UNISWAP conducted an airdrop with a minimum of 400 tokens, which was worth up to $16,000, and the only requirement for claiming was that the protocol had been used.

For users, a successful airdrop will be called "Mr. X", and vice versa "Mr. X who was reversed";

For projects, a successful airdrop can gain the community's worship: "The founder deserves to be in the temple!", while a bad airdrop may have the last eight digits of the ID number dug out by the angry community.

IceFrog has gained a lot of wealth from airdrop projects such as ARB and BLUR, and is called Frog General by fans

No matter what your opinion is on airdrops, after each airdrop, there is a question that is repeatedly raised:

It's 202x, can airdrops still be made?

What causes people to ask questions repeatedly is nothing more than the decreasing airdrop shares, the increasingly strict witch rules, and the coin prices that plummeted after listing.

For this reason, the following article will take 15 minutes to review the main airdrop projects in 2024 with you on the basis of answering the question "Can airdrops still be made?" (The following content is excerpted from the speech of the senior brother at the Biteye airdrop strategy sharing meeting)

In order to make it easier for everyone to understand, I will focus on "hot events and tracks", supplemented by time nodes".

In 2024, there are three major hot events and tracks:

On January 10, Bitcoin ETF was approved, Inscription was listed on the three major exchanges, and founder Casey bet that if the market value of the newly launched Rune is less than 1 billion US dollars, he will "commit seppuku live";

On March 13, Ethereum Cancun upgraded, L2 transaction fees were reduced by 90%, and various re-pledged assets followed Blast to launch pledged points;

On March 18, the price of Solana exceeded US$210, and it has risen 20 times since the FTX crash at the end of 2022, becoming a paradise for MEME coins and driving the DePIN track.

01 Bitcoin Track

Let's start with Bitcoin. The main airdrop projects in the Bitcoin track in 2024 are: Babylon Pioneer NFT, Pizza Airdrop and OKX Wallet Drops.

1.1 Babylon Pioneer NFT

Babylon's NFT is definitely the fastest "Airdrop" in 2024! At that time, they hinted that there would be rewards when they cooperated with okxweb3, and it was very simple to get NFT. Just deposit the sbtc used for testing into the test pool and then bind the EVM wallet (to receive NFT).

Difficulties

1. First of all, it is very difficult to get water on the test network. Most players have not received it and have been stuck at the stage of getting water; 2. Should we prevent witches? I got some water at first, but it was only enough for 10 accounts. Then I found a water dealer in the off-site group and bought 100u of sbtc (I forgot the exact amount). I remember it was enough for about 200 accounts;

After thinking it over again and again, I finally did not consider measures to prevent witches, because first of all, the btc ecosystem rarely checks witches, and secondly, when the faucet is not enough, it is normal to share some test coins.

Since only the first 10w users will receive rewards, the entire event time is relatively tight, about two days. The main workload is to distribute testnet tokens. I completed about 200 accounts and got about 200 NFTs.

Evaluation of income

The ROI of this event is off the charts. About 100 NFTs were sold at an average price of 160U in the OTC and OKX markets, making a profit of 15,000U. The rest were not sold. At present, one NFT has dropped below 30U. I feel that I should sell all of them while the fomo stage is in progress.

1.2 OKX Drops

https://www.okx.com/zh-hans/web3/marketplace/launchpad

Okxweb3's BD will connect with relatively high-quality project parties every week to seek whitelist benefits for the community. The value of some whitelists is quite high.

Tinfun NFT whitelist, Bitsmiley smiley whitelist, INK whitelist, these are all single numbers with more than $1,000 in revenue, and there is absolutely no cost to participate.

However, as the number of participants increases, okxweb3 has also taken measures to reduce the winning rate of "losers".

They stratified the addresses of EVM. Wallets with rich DEFI and NFT behaviors are premium accounts, and the probability of winning is much higher than that of ordinary accounts, while the winning rate of "robot" accounts is lower than that of ordinary accounts.

Therefore, the best strategy is for users with premium account resources to participate in every issue and get free money stably. (It is still uncertain whether the wallet stratification lottery will be used in BTC wallets and Sol wallets)

I saw the Bitsmiley event at that time. Because the BTC ecosystem was hot at that time, and the cost of participation was very low, I decided to participate.

Benefit evaluation

1. Bitsmiley used BTC wallets to draw prizes at that time, and the capital verification was about 10 US dollars of BTC. I divided 100 wallets, and I remember that the comprehensive winning probability was more than 1/20, and I won 6 whitelists;

2. A single NFT can be sold for $2,000 at its peak, with a total profit of nearly 1wu. (This deployment of the OKX lottery gave me a big surprise in the BTC ecosystem, see below).

1.3 Pizza

Pizza is a meme coin officially issued by Unisat, with good material selection and very high popularity.

Unitsat announced that wallets that have interacted (transferred) records with the unisat wallet within three months of the snapshot time can receive a minimum living allowance. In addition, using unisat services, having points, unisat og, etc. will receive higher rewards.

I mentioned earlier that I participated in OKX drops and got 100 wallets. In May, I wanted to participate in Solv's BTC staking, so I planned to collect the BTC from those 100 wallets for staking. By chance, almost every wallet had a transfer record, so I ran into the unisat airdrop standard.

Income evaluation

The minimum guarantee number is 100pizza per wallet. After all the airdrops are distributed, the value of the single number reaches $600 and the highest point reaches $800. The income is about 80 wallets*550=4wu.

In general, the airdrops of the BTC ecosystem often come after the BTC price breaks through a new high, that is, a period of time after "liquidity overflows".

It has the characteristics of high threshold (BTC on-chain gas, interaction difficulty), high return (order number income), low requirements (no large-scale witch investigation).

However, the value of airdrops is reflected in expectations, that is, selling midway often can get the maximum benefit, and if you "stick to" the end, the feast often becomes a leftover feast.

02ETH ecology

Then there is the ETH ecology. The main airdrop projects in 2024 are: Friendtech, Stark, Zksync, and Layerzero.

2.1 Friendtech

FT is a phenomenal socialfi at the end of 23. I started to participate a month later, so I didn't hold a big V account, but chose matrix farm.

However, the process was not smooth. Due to changes in team rules, it was necessary to transfer positions (and buying and selling requires a 10% head interest).

Finally, more than 5 eth were invested, and the matrix can leverage three times. The matrix finally had a portfolio value of less than 20 eth, and the entire wear and tear was within 1 eth.

Income evaluation

The airdrop started in May 24, and I finally got 15,000 points. I sold 2,500 points at a price of 4u on whales market pro, and the remaining points were sold out between 1-2u at the opening, with a final income of about 3wu.

As for the cost, less than one eth was worn out, but the remaining eth rose from 1800u to a high of 3500u. I think the cost of mining ft is actually negative.

2.2 Stark

Stark airdrop is the third project to issue coins among the four kings of L2. The reputation of the airdrop is different from the praise of the first two. Stark airdrop can be said to have mixed reviews.

The more controversial point of Stark is the one-size-fits-all balance on the chain, that is, a wallet with less than 0.005ETH will be vetoed.

But other standards, such as being active for at least 3 months and trading $100, are easier to achieve.

Stark's standards caused a group of users who deposited ETH into the on-chain Defi project to be "backstabbed" and lost all their money.

In addition, there is the witch review of trustgo, which witched a group of wallets with similar on-chain activities. However, since the witch library of trustgo is not public and the witch standards are not public, the relatively centralized anti-witch has also been opposed by players.

But for those players who meet the requirements, Starknet is definitely an airdrop of Eat Well, worthy of the title of the Four Heavenly Kings.

The minimum number of low-income numbers is 500 coins, and the profit of selling them in time at the opening is about 1,100 dollars. The number of short positions of slightly more boutique numbers is between 1,000 coins and 3,600 coins, and the single number profit can reach 2,000u-8,000u. In total, more than 1 million addresses received the airdrop, which is also a large scale.

The top reward is 10,000 coins per number and 20,000 dollars per number. This condition is difficult and few people can achieve it.

Evaluation of income

I invested about 50 accounts in Stark (I lost some accounts because of insufficient monthly activity and balance). Each account has between 650-3,600 coins, a total of 50,000 coins, and a profit of about 10wu at the opening.

In short, Stark airdrop is definitely a victory for the low-income account with multiple accounts, because the low-income standard is very easy.

0.005ETH balance + 3 months of monthly activity + 100u amount, a cost of less than 5 dollars can get a return of 1000u.

Although the rewards for top-quality accounts are more than 10 times that of low-income accounts, the difficulty and cost are too high, and the cost-effectiveness is insufficient.

It should be noted that the Stark airdrop also rewards the ECMP plan, which is the contributor plan. In addition, the inhumane balance is cut off, which also leads some users to suspect that there is a "rat warehouse".

But unfortunately, the Stark ecosystem has no way to maintain TVL and user activity after the coin issuance. After that, the airdrops of the ecosystem such as Zklend and Ekubo are good Defi projects, but the coin price and airdrop income are very poor.

2.3 Zksync

However, in the second half of the year, the airdrops of Zksync and L0 completely shattered the expectations of the airdrop track.

Zksync innovatively introduced a scoring method of time-weighted TVL amount multiplied by a bonus multiplier, making the amount deposited in the zksync protocol the most important indicator for measuring airdrops, which is contrary to the monthly activity, transaction amount, tx number, etc. in the previous user perception.

In addition, zk also rewarded some holders of niche zk native tokens and some holders of NFT collections, making the entire airdrop standard full of "rat warehouse" doubts.

But personally, I think that the zksync standard is a reward for real Defi players. Many real players have received airdrops greater than 50,000. This zk airdrop is undoubtedly a reward for boutique accounts.

Evaluation of income

I only have tens of thousands of zk in my main account, and the other accounts have only a few thousand, and half of the accounts did not receive the airdrop because of insufficient funds, so I only received 80,000 zk in total.

Because the opening price was not ideal, I did not sell it and have been stuck until now. The cost is not low, and I have put in a lot of effort.

Some players who have been brushing for 3 years have nothing to gain, and even some studios with outdated strategies have not made any profit. This airdrop is undoubtedly disappointing to most people.

2.4 Layerzero

L0 airdrop is worse than ZK, it is shit among shit. The airdrop share is extremely low, the conditions are strict, and there is also the unpleasant experience of "checking witches" reporting, I don't want to talk about it.

Evaluation of income

The income of L0 is very low. Most accounts have just recovered their investment. Large accounts may have 2 times the income. I don’t even have an account with a single number of 1000u. Then L0 carried out a wave of secondary airdrops, and the effect can only be said to be unsatisfactory.

In general, the ETH ecosystem is still a gathering place for various airdrop projects, but the rules of airdrops are gradually improved, witch checks have become stricter, and the income of single accounts is difficult to return to the past.

From the past "multi-account era" to the current "fine account" era, it has shown the transformation of airdrops from "0" to "investment".

03Solana Ecosystem

Finally, the Solana ecosystem, the main airdrop projects in 2024 are: Jupiter, Wormhole.

3.1 WEN

In January, before the launch of the $JUP token, a meme coin issuance experiment was conducted, and 70% of WEN was airdropped and evenly distributed to more than 1 million Solana wallet addresses.

The airdrop targets include Jupiter users, Ovols NFT holders, Blue Chip NFT holders, Genesis Saga NFT holders, and mockJUP test users.

Benefit Evaluation

Each address gets an average of 643,652 tokens, and the order number has a profit of 50-100 dollars, depending on the time of sale.

3.2 JUP

JUP airdrop went live on January 31st, and as of November 2, 2023, more than 950,000 wallets that directly interacted with Jupiter were eligible to participate in the first airdrop, of which 336,000 wallets received 200 JUP.

The minimum airdrop guarantee for JUP is 200 tokens, which is about $120. In addition, OG BONUS, trading volume, continuous use, whether it is still used in 2023 (during the bear market), and whether the limit order function is used are additional bonuses. JUP has marked and excluded robot accounts.

As a new player who entered the circle in 2022, most players who have tried the Solana ecosystem have basically used Jupiter. However, from a personal perspective, most players have less than 500 tokens in a single wallet, because after the collapse of FTX at the end of 2022, the Sol ecosystem fell into a silent period of nearly a year, and it is indeed difficult to insist on using JUP.

Evaluation of income

I have used Jupiter in 10 Solana wallets, but only one main wallet has received more coins, a total of 10 $Wen minimum guarantee (sold for $800) and 10 $Jup minimum guarantee (sold for $2,000).

From the perspective of ROI, the return ratio of the Jupiter series is very high, because the interaction cost of the solana ecosystem is very low, but if the players who just try it out only take the minimum living allowance, the absolute income is not high, which is a very good pig's foot meal.

For multi-account batch players, as long as they avoid robot review, the JUP airdrop is definitely a victory for the minimum living allowance multi-account party. From the perspective of airdrop rules, there is no obvious rat warehouse rule setting.

3.3 Wormhole Airdrop

$W is considered to be the cross-chain protocol with the largest airdrop income so far.

The main reason is that the financing is large, backed by solana, compared with Layerzero, it is relatively uncompetitive and the number of qualified addresses is small (40w+ qualified addresses).

Wormhole examined the user's full-chain activities, set a minimum interaction threshold of about $1,500, and rewarded early users, users who continued to use, and users who continued to use during the bear market.

Of course, Wormhole also has anti-sybil measures. In addition to the common analysis of funding sources, Wormhole uses behavioral clustering analysis to identify clusters (https://arxiv.org/abs/0803.0476) and analyzes spam transactions.

Evaluation of returns

In addition, some Solana and EVM wallets also received a small amount of airdrops, but the official did not disclose very specific criteria, and it is not clear why some accounts did not receive airdrops.

In summary, the Wormhole airdrop has a high ROI because there are few monks and a lot of meat. However, the project's anti-witch and specific airdrop standards are not very transparent, and some users who have not received airdrops have questioned the opacity of their airdrops.

In general, the Solana ecosystem is still a capital game, that is, only projects with a good investment background have the possibility of making money through airdrops. In contrast, the returns of other airdrop projects on Solana are extremely low.

04 Summary and Outlook

From the overall trend, there are few "rat warehouse" disputes in airdrops such as Op and Arbitrum in 22 and 23.

Their airdrop standards are relatively "natural" and "normal". Even if there are some projects that reward NFT collections such as Galxe and ZKBridge, those NFTs are also well-known collections of task synthesis, such as "Galaxy Girl" and "Panda King".

The operation of the insider warehouse is limited to knowing the snapshot time in advance and selling the NFT in time after the snapshot. Normal players will not be affected much as long as they hold the NFT.

However, judging from the airdrops such as zk and l0, the standard is already difficult to guess. These projects always reward some "inexplicable" tokens and NFT communities, and it is difficult for ordinary players with information asymmetry to prepare in advance.

Therefore, the strategy of the EVM airdrop track needs to be transformed to a certain extent, and the focus should not continue to be entirely on the EVM track.

Strategy for future EVM airdrops

1. Defi income

(Re)staking projects or RWA stablecoin projects and L2 projects are combined with Defi projects to kill two birds with one stone, earning 10% or higher apy and points income. This is suitable for large funds seeking stability. In order to pursue higher points income, you can participate in the pt gameplay, which includes more intense games.

For example, in the Stone project around May, you can first stake eth into stone, then cross-chain into the Scroll chain, buy pt, and sell it at the end of June, which can "freeload" Stone points without loss or even profit. If you want to be safe, you can split queenstone to obtain stable income and points.

This series of operations interacts with the Stone+Layerzero+Scroll project, and you can get double points of Stone and Scroll. This is a typical example of killing two birds with one stone.

There are many similar examples, for example:

Transfer ezETH to Linea across chains and deposit it into Mitosis. This series of operations interacts with four projects: Renzo+Hyperlane (cross-chain)+Mitosis+Linea.

The above example is for points. If you want apy income, you can consider stablecoin/RWA projects such as usde/Usual or Anzen.

2. Start an account and maintain an account

Although EVM has not seen any new airdrop projects that are eye-catching, some test network projects now have requirements for wallets to receive water, such as Initia requires Gitcoin20 points to receive water.

Some projects will have bonuses for old wallets, such as Particle, which has additional points for old accounts with tx.

3. Alpha projects, imaginative tracks

Currently, the proportion of alpha in the base ecosystem is larger, although base does not necessarily issue coins; Superchain with Optimism as its core is also a potential narrative, because it does not actually need excessive L2.

Turning to other tracks

1. BTC track

For the BTC track, a wave of inscriptions has been hyped, and there is still a lot of room for growth. In 2024, BTC has already produced big names such as RSIC/DOG/PIZZA/Bitsmiley/Babylon NFT. The important features of these big names are "lying down to make money", as well as reference tx and holding assets.

Therefore, the current strategy is to use wallets such as unisat, wizz or websites such as gennidata to mint some special assets, such as rune 0/BRC20 assets, or go to the marketplace to buy hot assets such as pizza/sats/ordi/rsic.

After configuring the account, there will be many opportunities to participate in new projects in the BTC ecosystem at low cost (because you can get the whitelist)

2. Solana track

The Solana track is a capital-rich track, and the foundation supports excellent projects more strongly. Solana has long been called the "ETH" killer. According to this way of thinking, the successful applications on the ETH chain should also be on Solana, such as Lido-Jito on Solana. For Jito airdrops, you only need to stake 1 sol to get a return of tens of thousands of US dollars.

There is also opensea/Blur-Magiceden on Solana, and there are Safe-Squads on Solana that have not issued coins. The number of Solana users is still relatively small compared to the EVM chain, and there are still great opportunities.

3. Ton track

The Ton track is a very contradictory track. On the one hand, it is a track with a very low threshold suitable for retail investors.

Different from the EVM/BTC ecosystem, you only need a tg number and a very small amount of funds to participate in the ton ecosystem; but on the other hand, it is almost impossible for retail investors to make a lot of money from it.

Because of the existence of mass adoption, the number of players in the ton ecosystem is extremely large, at the million level. The airdrop single number may only be a few hundred dollars. It seems that a retail investor with ten accounts cannot make a lot of money.

And batch multi-accounts have extremely high requirements for device/ip/account risk control management. Retail investors without operating experience are likely to lose half of their accounts in the short term.

However, for studios with experience and account resources, since 90% of the studios are still in the evm/sol track, these ton track studios are likely to get the huge profits of the first wave of crabs. However, I don’t think retail investors have a great chance in this track.

4. Move Ecosystem

The Move ecosystem has been quite active recently, SUI has been constantly pulling up to new highs, and APT has returned to the $10 mark.

It is worth noting that the SUI ecosystem has also seen a large airdrop Deepbook: you only need to stake or interact with related staking defi protocols to qualify, with single numbers ranging from tens of U to hundreds of U.

Similarly, the APT Foundation has also retained some tokens for subsequent airdrop rounds. The way to seek the sword in the boat is to stake on APT or interact with staking protocols such as Amnis and wait for the blessing.

The new darling of the Move language is undoubtedly Movement. At present, Movement has already opened a series of test network tasks for all the hard-working people.

But it should be noted that the studio's automation scripts are relatively mature, and the hand-rubbing party needs to focus on the number of tasks completed on the single number and the quality of the characters and props obtained rather than pursuing the minimum living security in batches.

Risk warning: The above is only for information sharing, not investment advice. Readers are requested to comply with local laws and regulations.

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