Cryptocurrency Airdrop

March 30, 2022

Olusegun Kehinde

What Is A Cryptocurrency Airdrop?

Cryptocurrency Airdrops are one of the most controversial sectors of the cryptocurrency space. Due to their nature, investors have divided opinions about the legitimacy of airdrops, whether they’re a mere waste of time or can be profitable in the long run.

This Post Contains

  • What Is An Airdrop?
  • Are Cryptocurrency Airdrops Legit?
  • Different Types Of Cryptocurrency Airdrops.
  • How To Identify Scam Airdrops (Types Of Airdrops To Avoid).
  • Top Sites To Get Legit Airdrops.

To be sincere, Airdrops are a waste of time. Why? Because 99.9% of cryptocurrency airdrops are scam and if you’re not reading articles like this one, To find out how you can increase your chances of taking part in the DYDXs, Uniswaps, ENSs, NWCs, Ape Coins and so many other cryptocurrency airdrops that made people thousands of dollars, then you’re on the losing side.

Without further delay, here’s all you need to know about airdrops and how to identify fake (Scam) airdrops.

What Is An Airdrop?

An airdrop is the sending of free coins to multiple wallet addresses, in order to market your project and gain recognition among cryptocurrency investors. It can also be a reward to people who have invested in a particular project or A Selfdrop, where you send 0 of a coin to an address to trigger the smart contract so you can receive the tokens.

Are Cryptocurrency Airdrops Legit?

You’ve read earlier that airdrops are a waste of time. Does that mean that they’re a scam? Should you avoid doing airdrops since you can’t get anything out of it? The answer to these questions is No. 

In the cryptocurrency space, airdrops are common, many projects use it as the starting point for their project in a bid to attract investors to their project. Marketing has proved overtime to be up there with Utility in terms of impact on a project’s success. That’s why you see Meme coins with better marketing strategies have higher value than some projects with good Utility.

In a nutshell, Cryptocurrency airdrops are merely a marketing strategy that helps projects gain recognition in the cryptocurrency space. Many projects who don’t have the needed funds to market their project use airdrops to gain traction.

This means that the fact that it’s free doesn’t automatically make an airdrop a scam.

Different Types Of Cryptocurrency Airdrops

There are different methods that cryptocurrency and NFT projects use to execute their airdrop campaigns, here are the most popular types of Airdrops.

  1. Standard Airdrops:  Small amounts of cryptocurrencies are transferred for free to wallet users, for completing simple tasks such as signing up to a website, providing their email address or sharing a post on social media.

Standard airdrops do not require the users to pay anything to earn the airdrop, they only have to complete simple tasks to qualify.

  • Holder Airdrops: As the name suggests, Holder airdrops are sent to holders of a particular cryptocurrency or NFT, for holding that cryptocurrency or NFT. To illustrate, XYZ Finance may decide to send their free XYZ tokens to holders of Ethereum coin.
  • Exclusive Airdrops: Exclusive airdrops are given to users of a cryptocurrency platform as a reward for their loyalty. The loyal users don’t have to perform any tasks to qualify for the airdrop.

Apecoin is a good example, holders of MAYC and BAYC NFTs were airdropped free Apecoins for investing in the NFTs and being part of the NFT community.

  1. Selfdrops: In a Selfdrop airdrop, users send Zero of a coin to trigger the smart contract so they can receive the free tokens.

To illustrate, users can be asked to send 0 BNB to an address, they only have to pay a transaction fee to get the free tokens in return.

Related: Gigs Of Meta— A Meeting Point For Metaverse Experts And Metaverse Projects

How To Identify Scam Airdrops (Types Of Airdrops To Avoid)

There are numerous schemes that scammers use for their fake Airdrops. To identify an Airdrop scam, make sure to check their website, whitepaper and social media presence. If the project doesn’t have all of these, then avoid their airdrop.

In addition, If they’re asking you to sign up to platforms that are not related to the project then avoid them. A cryptocurrency project shouldn’t be asking you to sign up to a Health and Fitness blog and at the same time refer you to another Football YouTube channel.

Here are a few types of Airdrop Scams

  1. Private Key Scam: Any airdrop that is asking you for the private keys to your wallet is a scam. Legit airdrops only require you to submit your public address.

Never reveal your Mnemonic phrase to any one, you’re the only one who should know about it.

  • Payment Of Cryptocurrencies: An airdrop is something you should get for free without having to pay a dime.

If at the time of withdrawing your Airdrop rewards, you’re asked to send them some coins such as USDT, ETH, BNB, TRX and ADA. Before you can receive your airdrop rewards, then avoid that airdrop it’s a scam.

  • Airdrops For Popular Projects: A cryptocurrency platform such as Pancakeswap wouldn’t go about giving people free Cake tokens. Airdrops are to make your newly launched project to trend, grow your community and attract investors. A project that already has millions of daily users wouldn’t do an Airdrop campaign for new users. Except as a reward for users of their platform and holders of their native cryptocurrency.
  • Personal Information Scams: The aim of the project is not to launch a cryptocurrency or NFT project, they simply want to get your personal information such as Wallet address, social media handles and email address so they can sell it to third-parties or send you phishing emails.
  • Impersonating Popular Companies: Scammers can use A popular company outside of the cryptocurrency space to lure unsuspecting investors. If you see an Ad that says that Instagram is launching an Airdrop for their cryptocurrency project, make sure you do thorough research and check their official social media handles to verify whether Instagram (Or any other popular company the scammers might be using) have announced anything regarding the Airdrop.
Top Sites To Get Legit Airdrops
  1. CoinMarketCap
  2. Airdrops.io
  3. AirdropsMob
  4. AirdropAlert
  5. AirdropKing.io
Conclusion

Most people who fail to earn Airdrop rewards don’t even fulfill all the tasks.

If you want to receive any Legit airdrop make sure you follow their rules, fulfill all the tasks and also try to refer other users once you confirm the airdrop is legit.