Airdrop
A free distribution of tokens to numerous wallet addresses by blockchain projects to promote awareness, bootstrap liquidity, and reward early user engagement.
What is Airdrop?
An airdrop is the distribution of tokens to multiple wallet addresses on a blockchain, often tied to the launch of a new protocol or DeFi application to drive adoption and community growth.
Airdrops have evolved into sophisticated strategies incorporating both on-chain activities—like interacting with testnets or providing liquidity—and off-chain tasks such as social media engagement or newsletter subscriptions, with eligibility determined via blockchain snapshots capturing wallet states at specific block heights. For example, projects now frequently use points systems to rank participants, converting accumulated points into tokens post-launch.
Recent airdrops emphasize rewarding genuine protocol usage over mere speculation. For example, Story Protocol rewarded early supporters of its decentralized intellectual property framework with tokens for testing and community participation, highlighting airdrops’ role in bootstrapping governance and utility in niche blockchain applications.
Participants must verify legitimacy through official channels to avoid scams, such as phishing attempts mimicking airdrop claims, and note that received tokens are generally treated as taxable income upon vesting or sale in most jurisdictions.
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