With Blur’s token airdrop last month, and Arbitrum’s latest token launch yesterday, it has got the entire crypto space excited and looking forward to the next big airdrop.
Yesterday, Arbitrum Foundation had finally launched their highly anticipated $ARB token following their initial announcement on 16th March about their transition to become a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization).
What are airdrops?
Token airdrops basically marketing or promotional strategies commonly used by projects or organizations whereby they will distribute their own cryptocurrencies to holders of a certain asset or those who meet certain criteria. These criteria are mostly predetermined by the organization or project. The tokens are usually distributed for free as the ultimate goal is to give back to the community and encourage the awareness and circulation of the new cryptocurrency.
For the case of Arbitrum, they had predetermined criteria such as engaging in transactions over a certain value on their network. Eligible wallets are determined based on a point system which rewarded them with number of tokens ranging from 625 tokens to 10,250 tokens.
Airdrops are extremely popular, as it is essentially “free money”, and they have led to the formation of “airdrop hunters” who constantly chase the next big airdrop and try to farm these airdrops.
If you have missed both the Blur and Arbitrum airdrop, fret not, as here are some projects that may potentially release an airdrop this year:
zkSync
zkSync is a Layer-2 protocol that aims to scale Ethereum’s security and values through zero-knowledge (ZK) cryptography. It is able to provide scalable and low-cost transactions on the Ethereum blockchain.
Matter Labs, the team behind zkSync, had raised about $200 million in Series C funding led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly Capital back in November 2022 to reach a total of $458 million in funding. They have also teased about a potential token launch in the future, although no confirmation with regards to when or if it will actually happen.
For comparison, Arbitrum had raised about $120 million in funding, while zkSync had raised a total of $458 million. This has led to a massive interest and speculation that zkSync’s future token launch have the potential to be as big or perhaps even bigger than Arbitrum.
According to DefiLlama, the total-value-locked metric on ZigZag, a zkSync-based decentralized exchange, have seen a sharp spike to an all-time-high of about $13.26 million on 21st March, compared to $1.95 million a week earlier. This movement is likely due to the airdrop hype caused by Arbitrum and in anticipation of zkSync’s token launch in the future.
Sui Blockchain
Sui Blockchain is a proof-of-stake Layer-1 blockchain similar to Aptos, that utilizes the Move programming language that was developed by Meta for their blockchain project Diem.
Back in October 2022, Aptos Labs had launched their own token $APT via an airdrop of about 20 million tokens to those who minted a NFT on their testnet. It is rumored that Sui may follow a similar style, given that they are also heavily backed by VCs.
Mysten Labs, the team behind Sui, had announced on March 21 the launch of their campaign called The Wave to Mainnet, which is a “series of events and content that further educate the community about the potential for Sui protocol” as they lead up to the Mainnet launch. Although in their announcement the team had clarified that there is no plans for a token launch, we could still possibly see rewards and airdrop being distributed to testnet users when the mainnet is launched.
Sei Network
Sei Network is a layer-1 blockchain built on the Cosmos network that focuses on optimizing trading on decentralized exchanges by ensuring reliability, scalability and speed. Some of the optimizations they provide includes: native order matching engine, twin-turbo consensus, frontrunning protection, market-based parallelization, and more. The project is also backed by various giants in the industry including Coinbase Ventures and Delphi Digital.
An airdrop or token launch by Sei is likely due to the launch of their incentivized testnet back in 2022, along with various missions and NFT minting campaigns. The team also hinted a token launch by announcing that they will be compensating and rewarding early participants, with 1% of the token supply being allocated to testnet rewards. It is very likely that those who participate in their events will be eligible for an airdrop when they launch their token.
Starknet
Starknet is a decentralized ZK-rollup operating as an Ethereum layer-2 network. It enables Ethereum to scale securely and dApps to achieve unlimited scale for transactions and computation.
Starkware, the company behind Starknet, had announced and confirmed the launch of their token back on 13 July 2022. 8.1% of their token supply is currently unallocated, as they have plans to “further support the Starknet community”. This hinted the possibility of users who interact with their mainnet and testnet will have a chance for an airdrop.
The Starknet mainnet was launched in November, and after the announcement of Arbitrum’s airdrop, the total deposits on Starknet skyrocketed to an all-time-high of $2.7 million as of the time of writing.
Summary
With token launch and airdrops becoming more and more popular due to the idea of “free money”, more projects are starting to come up with their native tokens to attract these airdrop farmers, and more users are beginning to hop on the airdrop farming bandwagon. Although many of these projects are merely under the speculation of having a token launch, many users are willing to take a risk and get in on as many new projects as possible.