What is a cryptocurrency airdrop?
An airdrop, in the business, is a marketing stunt that involves sending coins or tokens to wallet addresses in order to promote awareness of a new virtual curency. Small amounts of the new virtual currency are sent to the wallets of active members of the blockchain community for free or in return for a small service, such as retweeting a post sent by the company issuing the currency.
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Cryptocurrency is becoming popular by the day, and you are now most likely to come across such terms as crypto airdrops. But what does it mean?
The term refers to a process by which cryptocurrency enterprises load the wallets of some users with cryptocurrency, free of charge. Airdrops are popular with wallet services, cryptocurrency exchange platforms, and blockchain based startups.
The process of air dropping
There are two types of crypto airdrops. The first one is where it comes as a surprise to the user. You wake up one day to find your wallet loaded with crypto coins, and it creates a buzz as to where they came from.
The other method is pre-airdrop announcement where the blockchain based startups announce it beforehand to get the buzz going. In the majority of the cases, the primary goal is to bootstrap the project. The user may need to complete several processes before they can qualify for the airdrop.
What are the reasons for airdrops?
The cryptocurrency enterprises and wallet services may choose to reward loyal customers with cryptocurrency tokens. The main aim is to serve as an incentive for the customers to continue using the platforms.
Airdrops can prove useful in creating a buzz regarding a new startup. It is a way of getting people to use the new cryptocurrency through increased user participation. Bitcoin Cash used this method to create awareness, and it became a top 10 cryptocurrency, as a result.
Cryptocurrency enterprises can also use airdrops to enhance their marketing campaigns. For example, users may get promises of tokens once they fill an online questionnaire to generate leads.
hmmm, airdrops are generally the pre-launch projects of the tokens. lets say, before token is launched on exchanges, the project team promotes the project, and normally distributes the tokens to the users, this is called airdrops.
airdrops can be promoted through the bounty channels, which are ranked according to the quality, trustworthiness and the future potential value of the tokens. as such, one of the bounty projects that i have encountered is webounty, you can easily find it online. webounty has proved to be a reliable source of income for me, as the tokens that i receive through webounty, i later sell on exchanges and make some decent money. hope the answer helped you.
How do I know if the airdrops (cryptocurrency) are legit?
Airdrop Scams
Something to consider when beginning to venture into the world of airdrops is there are some scams out there. Below, I describe the most common airdrop scams I have come across and how you can avoid them.
Dump Airdrops
Not all airdrops are focused on building value or community. In a dump airdrop, the goal for the developers is to generate short-term buzz about a token so that people will be eager to buy it when it hits exchanges. Once it does, the developers quickly sell (dump) all their tokens for a tidy profit. Once they have dumped as many as possible they just disappear and the project becomes inactive. Arguably, this is not a straight-up scam since the token is real. However, the goal is to create a situation where the developers benefit financially from dumping tokens they have no plans to develop further.
An excellent example of a dump airdrop was EDOGE in 2017. The EDOGE developers claimed to be trying to breathe new life into Dogecoin by creating a version on the ethereum blockchain. The project sent 5 million EDOGE to those who registered for the airdrop. The developers succeeded in creating a buzz. Yet, when the token hit exchanges airdrop recipients discovered their tokens were locked, which meant they weren’t able to send them. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of EDOGE was being dumped on multiple exchanges. The strong suspicion was the developers were selling off all the tokens they had held back for themselves. The price of EDOGE quickly plummeted to a point where it became virtually worthless. The project was abandoned and its social media accounts went dead.
It can be hard to spot a dump airdrop but a good approach is to spend a bit of time with the project’s website and whitepaper. Typically, those behind a dump airdrop will not put much time into either and the superficiality will show through.
Private Key Scams
Private key scams are airdrops that are entirely fake. They are designed to trick you into giving out the private key to your wallet. A legitimate airdrop asks participants for their wallet’s public address. A scam airdrop, however, asks for the private key to your wallet as well. Those who don’t fully understand how a crypto wallet works and/or how little you can trust people on the internet are most likely to fall victim to this scam.
Avoiding this scam is simple is easy. Do not give out your private key for any reason. If you are ever asked for it, be it on a form, a website, or through direct messaging, do not give it out because you are dealing with a scam. There is no reason a private key is needed for an airdrop. The only reason someone would ask for it is that they want to steal whatever is in your wallet.
Information Tolling
Another type of scam airdrop I came across was designed to collect personal information, either to sell to third parties and/or to use for future phishing attempts. These scams claim to be giving away tokens but the projects are fake. The goal is to get your email address, wallet address, social media info, etc. While a bit less dangerous than private key scams, these are still very risky. I participated in some early on in my crypto career and noticed a lot of phishing emails coming through my inbox.
The best way to avoid an information trolling airdrop is to research the project that is apparently behind it. Most do not even have a website, let alone a whitepaper or social media presence. If a project has no website or whitepaper, any airdrop it is advertising should be avoided.
Bait and Switch
I’ve also encountered what I like to call “bait and switch” airdrops. This scam lies in tricking you into signing up for other things so someone else gets referral credit. Sometimes the referrals are for other airdrops. In this case, you could be asked to sign up for “partner” airdrops. The reality is these are not partners. The airdrop form is merely a smart way for a scammer to generate referrals. Another version of this scam asks you to sign up to a specific crypto exchange so the scammer can benefit from a referral. Yet another version I’ve seen tries to get you to join pump and dump groups, often on discord or Telegram. In all these cases, the common denominator is the airdrop is fake and the form just a way of getting you to sign up for other things.
Bait and switch scams don’t cost anything, but they are an annoying waste of time. They can also be tricky to spot because legitimate airdrops do ask you to join social media accounts or register on their website. A bait and switch airdrop will ask you to sign up for other projects, create accounts on exchanges, or join a discord or Telegram group not explicitly dedicated to the project supposedly behind the airdrop. The best way to avoid them is to not participate in any airdrop that asks you to sign up to unrelated projects or social media channels
Below are the following ways to identify a legit cryptocurrency and Airdrops:
They will not request payment. In this case, any airdrops where you are told to pay a specific coin to them as fees are a scam because if you pay to them, they will take your coin without giving you the airdrop (e.g., if you completed all the tasks and at the end, you are asked to pay a 0.1 Tron to them as gas fees, do not participate in that airdrop again before you get scammed).
They will not request private keys. If you participated in an airdrop and were instructed to provide your private keys in order to determine if you are a human or a bot, please do not do so since they may hack into your wallet and remove all of your cash. If you accidentally give them your private keys, you should go to your wallet and delete your funds and store them in another wallet to avoid complications.
They will not tell you to follow all of their social media accounts, Any airdrop that requires you to follow all of their channels (for example, Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, Instagram, and so on) is a scam.
If Conversion Rate is High: Any Airdrop that guarantees hundreds of millions of dollars in the conversion of their unlisted Coins is a SCAM.
How do I get a legit free airdrop 2022-25
Airdrops are really sweet because they're basically free crypto that is given into your wallet. Most of the time you have to do very little to actually get them apart from using the blockchain any way which you probably want to do.
The biggest potential airdrops in 2022. Well. there are still a ton of extremely large projects that don't have a token and potentially could and will some are nailed on some may happen or may not happen.
OpenSea:
OpenSea got a lot of flack recently because they've basically you know been one of the biggest applications on any blockchain and they wanted to go through an IPO. So that is through the stock market obviously everyone is not happy about that considering that everyone has paid tons in gas fees on the Ethereum network. They've supported Open Sea to become a huge company and they kind of deserve and expect some sort of airdrop. This is one that could be happening the way that you'll get involved with this one is obviously having to use Open Sea. If you've bought NFT's on there or if you have traded or minted NFT's then obviously you can have a much higher chance.
There was the Open DAO airdrop (SOS token) absolutely nothing to do with Open Sea whatsoever that was just a marketing exercise for that DOA. Congrats to them, who got a lot of hype but nothing to do with Open Sea.
Metamask:
Metamask is obviously hotly anticipated. It is one of the biggest names in crypto pretty much everyone that has self-custody of assets has a Metamask. In some respect, if you've used Metamask and if you've linked um blockchains to it or if you've used the swap feature on Metamask or if you've paid gas fees on Ethereum etc you might be in store for an account. Obviously, the earlier that you've had that account the more likely it is can in comparison to the number of transactions that you've sent compared to everyone else.
Starkware:
A very early-stage company on Ethereum that has scaling solutions a lot of people are looking for a potential token for this one. No token right now and there isn't much in the pipeline in terms of rumors for this one but it is obviously a very big company and a lot of people are using this technology on Ethereum. Ethereum is just a classic chain for air drops.
zkSync:
zkSync is coming out with a token. If you go to their Twitter it says they don't have a token yet. So obviously this is implying that they will have a token and usually they will airdrop some tokens to very early users of the blockchain again.
With this one, you have to use the blockchain so you have to you know open a wallet. You can do that with Metamask and just link it up. This is a layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum so link up your Metamask then you'll have to use the tools. So you can mint an NFT on the blockchain that is really easy takes 5-10 minutes. You can use the other options here and then you can use some applications that are built on zkSync.