Unlock High Returns with Minimal Investment: Your Guide to Airdrops!

The Impossible Triangle of Airdrops

The “Impossible Triangle” has always been present in the blockchain industry. In the scalability race, there is the impossible triangle of decentralization, security, and scalability. From a financial perspective, the value of cryptocurrencies being relatively stable, widely circulated, and decentralized is an impossible triangle. The rapid growth of crypto projects, decentralization, long-term value, and fast growth form another impossible triangle.

In the crypto industry, airdrops are seen as an attractive investment method. Participants can gain high returns with minimal costs. However, airdrops also have an impossible triangle: high returns, low cost, and certainty.

• High Returns: The core attraction of airdrops lies in their potential high returns. Participants have the chance to receive tokens from emerging projects that may significantly appreciate in value after listing. Especially when market sentiment is high, airdropped tokens can quickly double or more in value.
• Low Cost: Compared to other investment methods, early airdrops require little to no financial investment or low wear and tear on funds. Participants only need to meet certain conditions, such as holding a specified number of tokens, following social media accounts, or completing simple tasks. However, since the “point system” became popular, user costs have gradually increased.
• Certainty: While high returns and low cost coexist, meeting airdrop conditions remains a challenge. Additionally, market uncertainty and project risks make it impossible to guarantee the certainty of airdrop returns.


The Dilemma of Airdrops

Since Blur, many teams have adopted this new incentive primitive and leveraged its advantages. By 2024, various point system ecosystems had developed quite prosperously. Point systems have become a crucial tool for projects to gain user loyalty and drive product growth.

However, for users, point economics can be quite complex, and the foreseeable yield rate is relatively low.

Apart from the criticism of the “point-based” airdrop distribution system, overly pursued popular projects often fail to deliver satisfactory returns. The reason lies in airdrop participants typically expecting to sell the acquired tokens at high FDV, while secondary investors are often unwilling to provide liquidity.



However, users can still find asymmetric opportunities in the airdrop sector through research. For example, early Atops node setup yielded substantial tokens, the first-generation Solana phones received multiple project airdrops, and recent projects like XAI, Notcoin, and Degen Chain performed well not only in airdrops but also in secondary markets.

Potential Airdrop Projects

Airdrops have an impossible triangle. It is challenging to achieve high returns at low costs through point-based projects. Therefore, it is essential to look for early-stage projects without specific airdrop details, interacting reasonably to secure as many airdrop quotas as possible. Here are some projects that might offer airdrop opportunities:

Monad

Fundraised $244M, led by Dragonfly and Paradigm.



Monad is a Layer 1 blockchain platform promoting the “parallel EVM” concept, accelerating Ethereum transactions with pipelined execution, supporting up to 10,000 transactions per second. Monad combines blockchain and high-performance computing to support complex applications.

The recommendation for Monad stems from the founding team's experience at Jump Trading. Monad has Jump's high-frequency quantitative technology support and has received investment from top blockchain capital, Paradigm. As a “favorite” of Jump, Wormhole airdropped the “nads” character in April, with individual airdrops reaching up to $10,500.



Additionally, Monad's cooperative dynamics and attention information reveal close associations with multiple Solana ecosystem projects like Backpack, Pyth Network, and Phantom. To get Monad airdrops, users can join the official Discord to gain roles, participate in upcoming testnets, and use products with high association.

Berachain

Fundraised $142M, led by Polychain and Framework Ventures.



Berachain is a high-performance L1 blockchain built on Cosmos SDK, using the CometBFT consensus engine, and is EVM-compatible. Built on Cosmos SDK, Berachain seamlessly integrates with the Cosmos ecosystem, achieving horizontal expansion through the IBC module. Additionally, Berachain developed the Polaris Ethereum module, providing EVM compatibility for better aggregation of existing EVM ecosystem developers and users.

Berachain's community has distinctive Ponzi, Meme, and NFT culture traits. The V2 testnet is live, and users are encouraged to interact more with Dapps.

Movement

Fundraised $40M, invested by Polychain Capital and Binance Labs.



Movement is a modular framework for building and deploying Move-based infrastructure, applications, and blockchains in any distributed environment. The co-founders, Rushi Manche and Cooper Scanlon, aim to build the first L2 using Move on Ethereum and plan to launch their token, tentatively named MOVE. Movement is currently holding events on GALXE, offering points through quizzes, community joining, etc. The testnet and a hackathon called “Battle of Olympus” are open until September 17, 2024, for developers, event operators, content planners, and creators to participate.

Bitcoin Ecosystem

The Bitcoin ecosystem is a new sector, gaining attention since Ordinals became popular, with continuous innovations. It is highlighted in the airdrop section due to the fair token distribution and low airdrop competition.



Several well-known airdrops in the Bitcoin ecosystem, like Runestone, $DOGS, and $Pizza, share the following characteristics: low user threshold, broad coverage, and high airdrop value. Current BTC on-chain Gas fees are low, around 4~5 Sat/vB. Recommended wallets like Unisat, MagicEden, and Xverse have yet to issue tokens, all with airdrop expectations. Users can use these wallets to mint some 0-number runes UNCOMMON•GOODS and .btc .sats.unisat inscribed domain names.