Crypto is evolving quick, and Airdrops are not falling behind. They are a little different now from 5 years ago so there is a need in this video to cover how you can get those free coins in your wallets using updated ways to get them.

In this Article we'll cover:

1. The old way of thinking about airdrops
2. The new way
3. A bunch of different type of airdrops and how to get them
4. How to identify good airdrops from bad
5. How to know when you received an airdrop

When BTC was created, it was being given away among people (for test purposes, not airdrop) like if it had no value, here's the legendary example:

However, now that everyone realizes the potential of crypto, giving away coins in Airdrop has drastically change.

Why Free Coins

There are really only a few reasons a company would give out their assets for free, they are:

1. Awareness:
   Let's be honest, at this point in time everyone knows crypto will be the future, others have doubt, but something that everyone can agree on is that Crypto relies heavily on ‘hype’. By giving out coins to different people it creates FOMO for others to participate in such projects with the promise that they will do great things in the future and that some individuals that got the airdrop are going to be rich.
   Some projects also give coins to allow users to test their platform in case the coin has actual value, for example a coin for a game which you can trade inside the game by buying or selling items.
2. Rewarding Users: A sad reality is that many investors in the crypto ecosystem are only out for the highest return on investment (ROI) and don’t care about a project’s long-term sustainability. Therefore, they hop from one project to another, dumping their heavy bags after a pump and making huge profits off the back of small-time investors without providing any actual value to the protocol. In fact, this type of behavior can actually damage a crypto platform. To counter this, some startups conduct airdrops to distribute free coins in order to reward loyal users who either use their platforms or continue to hold a specific number of tokens in their wallets for certain periods.
3. Decentralizing Token Distribution: One of the points of crypto is to allow equal opportunity in the financial sector, however as more investors with large capital enter the space, the coins can become more centralized, Dogecoin is an example of this. In such cases, projects can opt to conduct airdrops in order to balance out a token’s distribution.
4. Attracting Investments: Crypto airdrops are followed by token offerings in most cases, whether they be ICOs, IEOs, IDOs, etc. A clever way to boost the funds raised without spending too much on marketing is through airdrops, as this strategy is tied to creating awareness.
5. Learning More About Its Community: As an added bonus, airdrops allow projects to collect data from the crypto community since some of them require recipients to fill a form providing personal details such as email, social media and their views on crypto projects. With this information, a project's team can make targeted marketing campaigns.

How to participate in an Airdrop

These are the most well-known ways to get free coins.

Social Media

Getting early and hearing about an airdrop at the right time is all about being in the right community. The best option to stay up to date is to follow people who are heavily involved in crypto into one niche. That will open the doors to new opportunities. I heard of 2 airdrops and 2 brand new game companies with massive potential by just following people on twitter that are all about crypto in 1 specific niche.

Alerts

You can also sign up for alerts in Coinmarketcap to get notified of the latest crypto airdrops.

Learn to Earn

I love this one, because I'm not only learning about a possibly good investment but I'm also getting paid for it. There are 2 good sites two earn free crypto learning:

1. Coinmarketcap earn
2. Coinbase earn
3. Phemex.com

Yield Farming

Yield farming is the practice of lending crypto assets in order to generate high returns or rewards in the form of additional cryptocurrency. Yield farmers, and most protocols and platforms, calculate the estimated returns in terms of annual percentage yield (APY). APY is the rate of return gained over the course of a year on a specific investment.

Here are some of the most popular yield farming protocols:

• Aave - Open-source non-custodial decentralized lending and borrowing protocol.
• Compound - Algorithmically adjusted compound interest rate as well the governance token COMP can be earned.
• Curve Finance - DEX that lets users and other decentralized protocols exchange stablecoins with low fees and low slippage using its unique market-making algorithm.

Staking

You can "block" your coins in your wallet for certain amount of time to participate in maintaining the operations of a proof-of-stake (PoS)-based blockchain system. It is similar to crypto mining in the sense that it helps a network achieve consensus while rewarding users who participate.
You can either stake your coins using your wallet directly or you could use an exchange that provides good staking rewards such as Voyager.

Holding certain coins

Crypto is not only fun, but full of possibilities, here's another one, just by holding some coins such as ONT or NEO you can claim free native gas tokens such as ONG and GAS at certain intervals.

Faucets

A crypto faucet is an app or a website that distributes small amounts of cryptocurrencies as a reward for completing easy tasks. They’re given the name “faucets'' because the rewards are small, just like small drops of water dripping from a leaky faucet. However, in the case of crypto faucets, tiny amounts of free or earned cryptocurrency are sent to a user’s wallet. In order to get free crypto, users need to complete tasks as simple as viewing ads, watching product videos, completing quizzes, clicking links (be careful!) or completing a captcha.

What is the purpose of a crypto faucet?

Though cryptocurrencies have had a great last year, they are yet not completely mainstream and are still new to many people around the world. The idea behind crypto faucets is to give free cryptocurrencies to people so they would take the time to learn about digital assets and hopefully invest in them.

NFTs

A great way to earn with NFTs is being an early user. Several NFT platforms airdrop their native token to people who are using the platform. Whether you’re minting NFTs, buying or selling them, you get paid rewards.

The most famous airdrops like this are from Rarible and Superrare.

And recently there have been some rumors of Opensea has plans to create their own token, which they could possibly airdrop to its users as well.

Of course, you have your regular NFT airdrops. Projects will give you free NFTs for completing tasks to support the project or play certain games to earn NFTs.

As an example, I recently attended a presentation in one of the coins I followed and just for being a supporter I got my NFT, same thing with the Cardano event. I was there and just by being there I got an NFT :)

Best Wallet for Airdrops

1. If the coin can use wallets that begin with 0x... the best bet is MetaMask.
2. If the coin to be airdropped has a different address than starting with 0x... then create a wallet for the specific coin.

Example of Good Airdrops

Some crypto airdrops can actually make you a fortune! (if you know how to HODL and participate). Let's review a couple:

Uniswap (UNI) Airdrop

In 2020, Uniswap, the world’s most popular decentralized exchange (DEX), airdropped its native asset, UNI, to all wallets that had used its platform and performed at least one transaction prior to Sept. 1, 2020. An eligible account received 400 units of the base asset. During the event, most recipients quickly dumped their airdropped token, and UNI changed hands at $2-$4.

Those who “held on for dear life” (HODL) were richly rewarded for their patience and loyalty as the exchange token’s value soared with others in the DeFi ecosystem, climbing from $2 to a current $30 as of April 2021. As such, those of you with hands of steel are now sitting on a nice little nest egg of $12,000 from UNI alone (Sadly, this author sold his airdropped tokens at $3!).

Ontology (ONT) Airdrop

In 2018, Ontology airdropped its native cryptocurrency, ONT, to NEO investors as well as 1,000 ONT for people who simply signed up for its newsletter. In part, the event wanted to reward NEO blockchain users for supporting it during its fundraising. The total amount of airdropped coins was 10 million, worth approximately $42 million and trading at $4.2 per coin at the time. The token later shot up to nearly $11, amid a deepening bear market no less, bringing the airdropped coins to a valuation of $100 million. Sadly, that was the peak time to sell, kids. ONT has since retraced to a more modest value, and currently sits just shy of $2.

Example of Bad Airdrops

Hacks, risks, scams, all these are common words when we don't know how to identify a fake airdrop.

• Send funds to claim airdrop: If an airdrop requires you to send any funds to its project, it is almost certainly a scam. Don’t do it.
• Targeting audience:
  Some airdrops are simply vehicles to get personal information from you and “dusting” attacks are common, in which you receive a fractional amount of crypto into your wallet and thereby reveal your public address to a potential scammer or hacker. Once a project has your public address, its members can easily check your portfolio through blockchain explorer tools.
  
  If you’re holding a valuable sum of crypto assets on that wallet address, you could theoretically get targeted through phishing, SIM swap and other hacking attempts, or real-life extortion and violence.
  
  This is why it's important to use a different browser or computer altogether.
  
  Therefore, it’s best to create a new wallet specifically for airdrops. This is pretty simple. As most airdrops happen on the Ethereum network as ERC-20 tokens, simply set up a new address on the likes of MetaMask to receive airdrops. This will also enable you to separate that “house money” from coins you’ve actually paid for.
• Liquidity:
  More sophisticated airdrops which have almost unlimited supply, give users many coins that reflect in their  wallet as if they had thousands of dollars, which is fake. When the user goes to trade it for USDC, the transaction cannot be validated leaving the user with an unsuccessful transaction and providing liquidity to the coin which the scammer can retrieve later. I'm going to use the app Road2Crypto which helps identify if a coin is a scam or not, here's an example using Road2Crypto:

As you can see, the coin TheVera.io is on my wallet and says that I have 46K, however that is a fake coin, the scammer tries to lure you in to sell that in which you'll spend money in the gas fee with an unsuccessful transaction.