Airdrops were created especially for the crypto space. A new kind of marketing style involves dropping gifts of free tokens to a select number of new users to reward their loyalty, to draw attention to the project, or to attract new users. For the recipients of the airdrop, it proves to be a great way to earn new tokens from a variety of platforms and protocols or to build up an NFT collection without paying a cent.
When the idea of airdrops first started out, they were extremely popular and successful, with some of the largest airdrops giving away around $500,000 worth of tokens to new registrants. Here’s a look at some of the biggest airdrops in crypto history:
- Decred, an autonomous digital currency saw 258,000 DCR airdropped
- At its high, each BCH token that was airdropped was worth $4300
- Oyster airdrop, which saw 2227 PRLs being airdropped
- Minereum, who airdropped 32,000 MNE tokens to the tune of $440,000.
- Stellar, airdropped $125,000,000 worth of XLM tokens
- BitTorrent airdrop for Tron holders. Saw a remarkable 100 billion worth of BTT tokens airdropped to TRX wallet holders. BitTorrent plans to conduct an airdrop each month right up to 2025.
Airdrops commonly take place around the hard fork of a major cryptocurrency. Of the twenty or more bitcoin hard forks, some have brought bitcoin holders the chance to get new tokens by simply keeping holding their investments (HODL’ing in crypto speak). Apart from bitcoin, EtherZero, LitecoinCash, and MoneroV also took part in airdrops.
Here’s our list of the biggest airdrop rumours circulating:
SynFutures
SynFutures is a decentralized derivatives exchange. It allows anyone to synthesize their own assets, from Ethereum native, cross-chain and off-chain real assets, and to list them and offer them for futures trading, in the first futures trading user-generated market. It takes users just 30 seconds to list their assets. They recently completed a successful $14M Series A funding round, which was Led by Polychain Capital.
This is certainly an increasingly popular area with DeFi derivatives enjoying a TVL of $4.4 billion as of November 2021. Whie this represents just 4% of the entire DeFi Market, it is a 5x gain since last year when $875 million was locked in.
SynFutures has advertised that they will “be giving away 2000 NFTs valued at $50 each as airdrops for FutureX.” According to them, “Supply is limited and it’s first come first serve so make sure to hurry over to Gleam and enter today”.
FutureX is the SynFutures pre-DAO committee, which will decide the path for future decisions, adhering to full community governance. The members will be meeting up and sharing ideas including about the upcoming airdrop.
Infinity
Infinity is a decentralized NFT marketplace powered by its users, which gives them the chance to explore, create and own NFTs. The difference between Infinity and OpenSea for instance, is that this marketplace fulfills the Satoshi dream of decentralization, whereby the protocol is controlled by a DAO. A DAO is a decentralized autonomous organization, consisting of users and community members that make all decisions about the future direction of the project.
Infinity was launched in early October 2021 and in that short time it enjoyed a massive influx of over 60,000 users, with around $10M in transaction volume and approximately 2000 NFT sales. The community came up with the idea of conducting an NFT airdrop, with the most active users in terms of transaction volume getting 5 times the earlier airdrop it had conducted to OpenSea users. According to an article on The Block, “10% of the governance token supply ($NFT) will be distributed to existing OpenSea users who transacted before October 4th, 2021 11:59 PM UTC.”
With this airdrop, there are some stipulations that apply. From the start date of this airdrop, users who get tokens will need to make at least one transaction on Infinity in order to claim the token. Those who get multiple tokens need to place a larger transaction size with ETH. Those users who get a token and don’t make a transaction will find that their tokens sadly revert back to the incentive pool.
Stay on top of airdrops
Crypto community members have heard whispers of the next airdrops coming up soon from major projects like these and are encouraged to watch this space. To stay on top of some of the latest and hottest airdrops happening, there are specific websites created to keep users updated like: https://airdropalert.com/ and https://airdrops.io/. Additionally, new airdrops are listed on social media platforms like Twitter. One tip is to regularly search for the hashtag “airdrop” to see the latest rounds. Good luck!
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