Understanding the Evolution of Crypto Airdrops
In recent years, crypto airdrops have become increasingly popular as an incentive practice to attract new users to the new web3 infrastructures. At the same time, the eligibility criteria, which establish the necessary requirements to be recognized as active users, change very quickly over time, making it complex to identify in advance what are the correct actions to be performed in order to be rewarded. In this article we will see how these criteria are changing and how they influence the behavior of airdrop hunters.
How Eligibility Criteria for Crypto Airdrops Change Over Time: from Uniswap to the Present Day
When in 2022 Uniswap announced the airdrop of its native crypto, introducing a completely new practice in blockchain environments, all users who had interacted with the protocol were rewarded with a minimum of 400 UNI, up to a maximum of 2,100,000 UNI. No particular action was required to redeem the airdrop other than meeting the only eligibility criterion which included executing at least one transaction on the platform (exchange, provide liquidity) or being a holder of the SOCKS coin before September 1, 2020. Until today, projects that release an airdrop have significantly more complex criteria with which the lucky user categories and their respective allocation are determined.
- bridge on Abitrum One and Arbitrum Nova
- number of transactions
- activity over time
- number of smart contracts used
- traded volume
The criteria established by the Arbitrum Foundation are considered by the crypto community as one of the best ever used for an airdrop, given the way in which they managed to reward all deserving users in proportion to the effort dedicated to using the infrastructure. However, even these have been questioned by new requirements, which divert attention from mere on-chain activities (volumes, transactions) performed on a protocol or chain, to make room for external recognitions.
Several projects, in planning how the airdrop will be allocated to users, take into account conditions never used before such as having put in staking on official platforms ETH, TIA, OSMO, ATOM, SOL resources. This type of criterion allows for the even distribution of the airdrop to a community without only the farmers who promptly disappear after claiming the crypto receiving rewards. It is clear that to become eligible for every airdrop; it is not enough to do some transactions but also necessary for users to carry out more operations and remain within specific ecosystems.
The Disappointment of Starknet Community for an Unfair Distribution of STRK Token
The Starknet airdrop is a striking case of how new eligibility conditions may have shocked a good part of the cryptographic community which did not expect such criteria. The team of Ethereum layer-2 announced that it would distribute STRK tokens to specific set users including Members of Starknet ecosystem and members of StarkEx ecosystem. So far nothing new; however what has shaken many users and prevented them from being eligible for the airdrop is that they had to have a minimum balance of 0.005 ETH in their wallet at snapshot time along with carrying out five or more transactions within three months with minimum volume. The result is that several farmers who spent months performing operations on network then removed everything from those addresses found themselves empty-handed at announcement time. Several developers have received very important incentives most exceeding 10,000 STRK.
This demonstrates how every project intending releasing cryptocurrency through an airdrop can use entirely new eligibility criteria or criteria previously playing marginal role in determining user allocation. Starknet teaches us that it’s no longer enough for Airdrop Hunter activity; one must thoroughly study principles and objectives of each project and dedicate oneself fully into activities advertised by groups diversifying activity in web3 world.
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