The airdrop is an efficient and common way of marketing a new crypto-oriented project, spreading awareness and helping boost the user base of crypto startups. At its core, the airdrop is used to distribute tokens into the wallets of users who fulfil some reward-based criteria or who sign in to get tokens for free. The requirements set to obtain tokens range from following specific social media accounts to sharing tweets to inviting new potential investors to the project. In turn, startups manage to push their projects to the limelight in a super-saturated crypto realm and gain the needed exposure to fund their initiatives and grow their projects. Noteworthy, airdrops are used to reward active users and incentivize trading.
You can hang out on different community groups and discover launching crypto airdrops, or stick with popular online crypto exchanges and play it safe. Popular online crypto exchanges offer their own airdrops, which you can find out about via airdrop news. For safety-related reasons, we’re here to share some of the most valuable key things to keep in mind when breaking into this sector. Here’s the juice.
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Understand the Airdrop’s Purpose
Before determining how you’ll find airdrops, ensure you can clearly identify the purpose the project serves. There are airdrops developed to:
- reward committed backers and early supporters of a blockchain or project by distributing tokens to a specific group
- reward those who contribute to the project’s awareness-raising and advertising efforts, boosting the hype and shoving the project into the limelight.
- give people tokens to attract newcomers and foster a sense of community ownership and early participation.
- focus on increasing decentralization by scattering tokens and diluting ownership concentration.
Ensure you differentiate the different purposes behind your targeted airdrops, for they can determine the project’s appeal to the broader public and the overall success. Do your due diligence and stay away from spoofs or offerings that sound too good to be true, for they’re likely not that good in the end.
How to Find Legitimate Airdrops
The first step to investing in crypto airdrops is knowing where to get free or promising ones. These currency startups are often a dime a dozen nowadays, with new ones emerging consistently. The challenging aspect is finding an airdrop that’s worth your money and research time and sticking to your investment as it matures.
- One way to find airdrops is to scout for fresh projects that look like they’ll launch new airdrops sooner or later. Keep an eye out for innovative crypto coins in their pre-launch stage—they may be launched accompanied by an airdrop.
- You also need to stay on top of new releases, monitor fresh airdrop announcements, partaking crypto-based platforms and blockchain projects, and research new tokens. Track airdrop announcements on reputable platforms like CoinMarketCap, AirdropAlert, and official project social media channels.
- Set Google Alerts using keywords such as ‘crypto airdrop’ or ‘token distribution’ to stay updated. Verify the project’s legitimacy by checking the team’s credentials, reviewing the whitepaper, and engaging with their online community.
- Airdrops are also announced on social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, X, Telegram, and so on. You can use various tools to discover trending hashtags associated with these projects, like #airdrop, #cryptocurrency, #NFT, etc.
- Additionally, you can reach communities on Telegram, Bitcointalk, Quora, Reddit, and more. Subreddits are among the locations where like-minded people discuss all types of airdrops, making them great knowledge resources.
Make Sure Your Wallet Is Compatible
More often than not, cryptocurrency airdrops require you to log onto your crypto wallet, which you’ll later use to receive tokens unless they present a different form for signing up. Before jumping on an airdrop, make sure your wallet address is compatible with the provider. This means you should get a self-custodial third-party cryptocurrency wallet. Previous trading activity on centralized exchanges doesn’t facilitate your way into airdrops. These creations are tied to the web3 space, making the self-custodial necessary to connect to decentralized apps (dApps) and manage your private keys.
Here are some criteria to keep in mind when vetting wallets:
- Intuitive interface. You don’t want to deal with annoying forms, undetectable buttons, and so on, so make sure your chosen wallet shortcuts your dApp connection and other processes.
- Protection. Choose a wallet that offers anti-phishing security tools, superior encryption models, and 2-factor authentication, among other security measures.
- Extra support. Getting a wallet that connects to more blockchains is important because airdrops can run on more ledgers at once, such as Solana, Cardano, Ethereum, etc.
- Backlisting. Going with a wallet that backlists shady sites and alerts you about potential spoof contracts is an easy way to keep scams at bay.
Evaluate the Project’s Long-Term Potential
Now that you’ve acquired some knowledge, it’s time you appropriated a new strategy, namely boning up on the airdrop’s long-term proposition. After all, what’s the point in finding a cheap airdrop if the token will come to nothing before you know it?
Here are some questions to answer yourself before leaping:
- Is the token built on mere buzz and good advertising, or can it have a real use case?
- How’s the development team behind the project in terms of trustworthiness and transparency?
- Is there an active community on social media platforms backing up the project?
- Are there controversies associated with the token? What about red flags?
- What’s the project’s roadmap, and has it been respected so far?
- What’s the token’s distribution system?
Superior Security
In your hunting journey, you can encounter legitimate and fraudulent airdrops, the former of which are the shortcut to losing your personal or wallet information if you fall prey. Seek out wallets with alerts for dubious activity and software dApp blocklisting. Ensure that your wallet processes a wide selection of blockchains and tokens.
Bottom line
Assuming you’ve just broken into airdrops, then it’s safe to say that looking into a project with easy-to-understand requirements is a sound starting step. You can work your way as you go and grasp more about these projects. Look for low-threshold launches that offer tokens for easy tasks like sharing ads or following specific accounts.
