Does anyone have experience making money through cryptocurrency airdrops?
So, it’s a process where you use, for example, Ethereum in a wallet like MetaMask, moving it around through some bridge and swapping back and forth. This leaves a record on the blockchain, and the actions performed through these “infrastructures” are visible, and the cryptocurrency project rewards the user for “testing” said crypto infrastructure.
The previous paragraph is just my basic understanding of the matter; I apologize if the terms aren’t entirely correct.
I was looking into a new side hustle method, as Matched Betting doesn’t seem to be as profitable these days.
So, are there any successful experiences with crypto airdrops?
I haven’t engaged in direct airdrop farming, but for example, in 2017 all Ethereum holders received OmiseGo tokens, which didn’t result in a huge payday, but something nonetheless. Similarly, of course, there were these chain splits, like Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum Classic. Nothing major, but a little something at least.
The biggest one has been the ENS tokens, which were distributed to everyone who had registered those ETH domains back in the day. The amount depended on when they were registered, and I was among the very first to get them back then. I eventually received about 4,000 of those tokens and sold them somewhere between €40–44, if I recall correctly. In any case, they resulted in about €170,000 of free money.
Did all Ethereum holders get OmiseGo tokens regardless of the wallet? So, if your coins were on Binance, did you get OmiseGo tokens, did they just appear in your account like that? Could the same thing happen nowadays, where you own some rarer, newer alt-coin on Binance, and then some coins just suddenly appear there as a reward?
What is an ETH domain and its registration? An Ethereum-based website?
Where did you get information, or how did you think to look for it?
Yes, those exchanges have generally given those larger airdrops to their customers if they hold those tokens on the exchanges. Some faster and some slower. For example, Coinbase is known for the fact that the process takes a long time for them. And you probably won’t even get all the smaller airdrops if they don’t support that token. But those are often practically worthless anyway.
An ETH domain is a name ending in .eth that links to a wallet. So you don’t need to remember that string of numbers and letters starting with 0x; instead, for example, vitalik.eth routes to one of Vitalik Buterin’s accounts. It makes transfers significantly easier since mistakes aren’t made as easily. And most wallet apps support them natively nowadays.
And there’s also the possibility of building a decentralized website behind the domain as well. I don’t remember if there are active projects like that currently, but previously it was possible through some Ethereum clients.
Back then, all Ethereum development was practically concentrated on Reddit in the r/Ethereum group, or r/Ethfinance etc. So, 2016-2017. By following those, you stayed well-informed about what was happening in the Ethereum ecosystem. And in those days, you could still discuss things publicly or via private messages directly with those developers and today’s biggest influencers in the field. Nowadays, it’s considerably harder. And the discussion has largely moved to other platforms anyway.
Nowadays, the best information channels for those airdrop farmings are probably X and various Telegram channels. I don’t do it myself anymore, so I don’t know where to find the best info. Of course, back then, airdrop farming wasn’t really a thing; instead, those often came as a surprise. And the best airdrops were precisely the ones that always came as a surprise a few years later. For example, that ENS token probably came 3 years after the service was launched.
And nowadays, it seems they don’t really do OmiseGo-style drops anymore, where tokens are given to all holders. Back then, it was a kind of “show of gratitude” to the whole Ethereum community, and that’s why everyone got it. Nowadays, there is some kind of economic or adoption-related incentive behind them. You have to perform some task, or for example, in the case of Solana, buy a Solana phone, which then automatically receives various tokens.
In addition to X and Telegram, Discord is an essential source of information. Simply holding on an exchange rarely yields an airdrop, with the exception of Binance’s “BNB vault,” which distributes listing fees for new tokens to Binance users.
In practice, you only get decent drops by being among the first to use a new protocol. Nowadays, there are often various requirements involved, such as collecting points, reaching a certain volume, etc. There are quite a lot of people involved, so you easily end up competing with Indian airdrop farmers, which makes the hourly earnings modest.
I would say that making easy money with airdrops is a thing of the past, but you can always try it yourself and then evaluate based on the results. Someone coming from a matched betting background might be interested in Polymarket, for example, which is believed to be doing an airdrop sometime next year—after all, it’s essentially a betting platform.