Author: kkmoat, GANx Labs Founder & stacks.btc Chinese Community Lead
Web3 Airdrops are essentially a core strategy for projects to incentivize early user participation, bootstrap liquidity, decentralize governance, and rapidly accumulate community and TVL (Total Value Locked) by freely distributing native tokens or NFTs.
From the "DeFi Summer" initiated by Uniswap in 2020 to the present, airdrops have evolved from simple "everyone gets a share" marketing tools into complex behavioral incentive systems, anti-Sybil mechanisms, and long-term retention tools.
Current trends in 2026 show: blanket airdrops have significantly diminished, shifting towards threshold-based, quest/task-mining, and hybrid models, emphasizing genuine usage over volume farming.
Phase 1 (2020): The "Genesis Era" of DeFi Airdrops
Representative Projects
- Uniswap
- 1inch
- dYdX
Must mention Uniswap, because:all subsequent airdrops are essentially its derivatives.
September 2020:
Uniswap distributed 400 UNI to historical users
Directly changed the industry's distribution model
It is basically considered:Web3's first large-scale "wealth redistribution event"
Key Characteristics
1) No Sybil
2) No farming
3) No task system
4) No points
Simply:You used the product → You get money, the essence is Protocol ownership, not Marketing.
Phase 2 (2021): The ENS Era — "Users Own the Protocol"
Representative Projects
- ENS
- DYDX
- Gitcoin
The most iconic among them:ENS (2021)
This was a milestone airdrop because it was the first to explicitly state:
Users are not users
Users are shareholders
ENS distributed governance tokens to users holding .eth domains, for DAO governance.
Why is ENS particularly important?
Because it established:Web3's political system, not its financial system.
Three Long-term Impacts of ENS
1) DAO governance became default
Almost all protocols now have: Governance token
2) "Contribution" became a core metric
For example:
- Holding a domain
- Using the protocol
- Participating in governance
Not simply farming DeFi trading volume.
3) Community ownership narrative took shape
This phrase started with ENS:
users → owners
Phase 3 (2022–2023): Airdrops Become Growth Hacking Tools
This is:The most critical turning point
Airdrops changed from:Rewarding users to:Acquiring users
Representative Projects
The listed ones belong to this phase:
- Aptos
- Arbitrum
- Starknet
- Celestia
Aptos (2022)
This is:The standardization of the Testnet airdrop model
Characteristics:
Run testnet
Test claiming NFTs
Run a node
It distributed approximately $430 million worth of tokens to testnet users. I only 5 minutes binding Google and Discord accounts, and received an airdrop of 150 APT tokens worth $1700.
Key Change
This was the first time:Technical contribution = airdrop, not just using a Dapp.
Arbitrum (2023)
This is:The largest L2 airdrop
Value close to: $2 billion USD.
Arbitrum made a key innovation:
Multi-tier scoring
For example:
bridge
transaction
liquidity
DAO voting
This directly led to:Airdrops becoming financialized,because: You could optimize your wallet address behavior to increase airdrop weight.
Celestia (2023)
This is:The modular blockchain narrative airdrop
Airdrop recipients included:
Cosmos staker
Rollup developer
Ethereum user
And distributed approximately: $730 million USD.
Key Change
This was the first time:Cross-ecosystem airdrop,not: Single-chain airdrop.
Starknet (2024)
This is:One of the most controversial airdrops,reason: It was the first to start mass filtering users based on a balance condition, and added multi-dimensional black box criteria.
For example:
GitHub developer
Ethereum staker
contributor
And: Approximately 50 million STRK was allocated to early community member programs.
Key Change
This was the first time:identity-based,
not: activity-based.
Phase 4 (2024–2026): The Points Economy Era
This is: The current era.
Core mechanism:
Points system
For example:
- Blur — Earn points by depositing ETH and trading NFTs
- Blast — Earn points by depositing ETH
- EigenLayer — Earn points by restaking
- LayerZero — Long-term interaction records
- Scroll — Complete tasks to earn Points
Now: Everything you see is not actually an airdrop.
But rather:pre-airdrop incentive system
Key Change
Airdrops are no longer about completing tasks, but:locking funds,the core metrics now are:
- TVL
- duration
- liquidity
Not:
transaction count
Modern airdrops increasingly rely on points systems to measure user loyalty and deposit duration, but deposits can be stolen, or become unprofitable due to time redundancy, and the final airdrop might even be less than the principal.
Monad: A Very Typical "Attention-Driven Airdrop"
Monad's core is not technology,but:Attention engineering
Testnet has over hundreds of millions of address users, but it's not product-driven, it's:socially driven. This is a key characteristic of the new generation of airdrops.
Participating with lots of address interactions is useless; you need to gain project recognition, obtain Discord roles, have social media influence to get a Monad Card, get nominated—it's increasingly developing like a private domain rather than simple interaction.
Why do almost all projects do airdrops now?
The answer is simple:Airdrops are the cheapest user acquisition method
- Traditional method: Google Ads
- Cost: $50–$200 / user
- Airdrop method: Issue token
- Cost: 0 (theoretically)
So airdrops becomegrowth tools,not rewards.
The Real Economics of Airdrops (Most people don't realize this)
This is the most important part. Many airdrop projects experience:First rise → then large-scale sell-off
For example:
- ENS
- dYdX
- STRK
Prices rose rapidly driven by market enthusiasm, but then corrected significantly due to selling pressure.
This is called:Airdrop Dump Cycle
Process:
1) Airdrop
2) Price spike
3) Dump
4) Stabilization
This is something almost all airdrop projects experience. Therefore, if you receive an airdrop, you need to think about a good time frame to sell, rather than simply FOMO or FUD.
The Future of Airdrops: 5 Trends,This is my core judgment.
1) Chain-level airdrop is over
For example:
Arbitrum
Starknet
zkSync
Scroll
Basically all have been issued. The future isonly ecosystem airdrops
For example:
Lending
Restaking
NFT infra
So I believe future opportunities mainly come from ecosystem protocols, not the chains themselves.
2) Airdrops are becoming financial products
For example:
staking
restaking
liquidity mining
Essence:Yield (lending),not reward.
3) Capital门槛 will become higher and higher
Before $0, now $1000+ is just entry level, future might even be $10000+, because Sybil costs are rising.
4) AI will participate in airdrop allocation
This is already happening a lot, e.g., auto-chat, auto-trade. Therefore, future projects might use:
on-chain reputation
behavioral pattern
identity graph
These will determine whether you can claim the airdrop, not just connecting and claiming in a single way.
5) Airdrops are becoming an "attention war"
Not a technology competition, but who can attract users.
Most值得关注的空投类型 (2026)
Tier 1 (Most likely to produce large-scale airdrops) Examples below
Monad
Eclipse
Berachain
Movement
Tier 2 (Medium airdrops)
restaking
lending
derivatives
Tier 3 (Small but frequent)
DEX
NFT infra
social
Final Summary (Core Viewpoints)
If I want to summarize,
1) 2020: Airdrop is a reward
2) 2021: Airdrop is user equity
3) 2022: Airdrop is growth
4) 2023: Airdrop is a transaction
4) 2024-2025: Airdrop is finance
5) 2026: Airdrop is attention
What needs to be done
1# Abandon meaningless testnet volume farming
2# Participate in project testnet nodes or technical contributions
3# Participate in the project's explicit airdrop task system
4# Participate in staking, trading, and other systems designed to explicitly obtain Points
5# Be active in Discord communities to gain community contributor status
6# Continuously use the product and participate deeply, long-termism
7# Build on-chain identity, keep Web2 identity active
Since the genesis event of Uniswap in 2020, Web3 airdrops have evolved from simple "use and get rewarded" to complex behavioral incentives, identity verification, and attention economy systems. From ENS explicitly stating that users are protocol shareholders, to projects like Aptos and Arbitrum optimizing airdrop weights through multi-dimensional scoring, to the current Points systems and attention-driven design, the essence of airdrops is no longer just token distribution, but a tool for long-term participation, community building, and value认同.
For long-term participants and newcomers, airdrops are still full of opportunities, but strategies must be upgraded: abandon simple volume farming, deeply participate in testnets and node contributions, complete task systems, actively stake and interact, and build influence within communities. In this way, you may not only receive quality airdrops but also truly become part of the protocol ecosystem.
Although blanket airdrops have significantly cooled, threshold-based, task-mining, and hybrid models are rising, emphasizing genuine usage and long-term value. This means that,as long as the method is appropriate and the strategy is long-term, airdrops are still a viable way to obtain early equity and participate in innovative ecosystems. The future belongs to those who understand on-chain identity, contribute value, and the attention economy—the opportunities in the airdrop industry have never truly disappeared.
In short,Airdrops evolved from reward → user equity → growth → transaction → finance → attention, becoming a core tool for Web3 user acquisition, governance, and community building. The core capabilities for the future lie in identity, contribution, attention, and long-term participation.
