I've noticed that in recent years, the crypto community has been obsessed with one thing – the opportunity to receive tokens for free, without any investment. And the main method that implements this is retrodrops. Essentially, it's a free distribution of tokens by projects to active users, and the trend for this scheme was launched precisely by the DEX platform Uniswap when it distributed UNI to its users.

I remember in 2021, during the UNI bull run, the token soared above $40, and people who simply used the exchange made thousands of dollars. After that incident, everyone started believing that retrodrops are an easy way to make quick profit. Users began creating numerous wallets, trading on different DEXs, minting NFTs – all in hopes of catching the next drop. And it must be admitted, expectations are often justified.

Although there are exceptions. For example, MetaMask has been rumored for years to have a token and a drop, but nothing ever happened. Just noise into the void.

For the projects themselves, retrodrops are a great move. They spend almost nothing but gain activity – users start actively using the platform, which looks good in front of investors and exchanges. Meanwhile, developers don't owe anything to anyone, and some indeed end up not distributing anything at all.

But here’s the catch. First, retrodrops are not entirely free because transaction fees on networks like Ethereum cost real money. Second, you never know if you'll actually receive a drop at all because the conditions are not disclosed by developers in advance. And third, everything depends on the market and luck. One project might give out roughly $200 for activity, while another only 25 cents. The difference is huge.

So, retrodrops are more like a lottery than a guaranteed way to earn money. But people still believe in it and continue hunting for them.