Recently, I’ve been seeing quite a few people in the community discussing “airdrop farming,” so I compiled some of my experience from the past two years and am sharing it with friends who want to get involved.

First, let’s talk about what an airdrop is. In simple terms, it’s when a project team gives tokens to users for free. The purpose is nothing more than promotion and building an ecosystem. This kind of game already existed in the early Bitcoin era, and it has since evolved into various forms. Some projects only require you to retweet or share on social media to claim, while others require actual on-chain interaction—such as trading, staking, or providing liquidity.

Why would project teams be willing to do this? Put plainly, it’s using tokens to exchange for users and attention. One successful airdrop example is Arbitrum. They airdropped 1.162 billion ARB to 625,000 wallet addresses—averaging 1859 coins per address. This airdrop didn’t just make community users money; later, ecosystem activity also continued to rise.

So how much can you earn from airdrops? Just look at the historical data. In September 2020, Uniswap airdropped UNI. Each eligible user received 400 coins, which was worth $1200 at the time, and at the peak it could be worth more than $10,000. In the APE airdrop, a single account could receive around 1500 coins; selling immediately could yield $9000 to $10500. Arbitrum’s ARB airdrop has a slightly lower per-token price, but 2000 coins can still be exchanged for $3000. Of course, not all airdrops are this lucrative, but earning anywhere from dozens to a few hundred dollars is still fairly common.

To participate more efficiently, first you need to learn how to judge a project. For projects with funding in the hundreds of millions, they basically all have plans to issue tokens, which means the probability of an airdrop is higher. You can learn about a project’s background through funding information websites, Twitter, and other channels, and following a few airdrop-focused influencers can help you get information quickly as well.

Once you’ve identified the project, you should choose the appropriate interaction method based on its stage. Testnet projects are relatively straightforward—you just need to interact more. Mainnet projects, however, depend on the specifics. Some require trading and swapping, some require staking or providing liquidity, and some are mixed, with integrated task structures. It’s worth noting that project teams increasingly care about the frequency of interactions and the time span—this is to filter out those “wool gatherers” who are simply chasing rewards by farming. If you want to participate with multiple accounts, you must ensure proper isolation; otherwise, if you’re identified as a “Sybil attack,” you could be disqualified from receiving the airdrop.

Entering 2026, competition for crypto airdrops has indeed become more intense. The directions I’m optimistic about are: first, modular blockchain and DA-layer projects—these often require you to deploy nodes or participate in validation; second, cross-chain protocols—these require you to trade and cast governance votes across multiple chains; third, DeFi innovation projects, especially intent-based DEX aggregators; and also projects that combine on-chain social features with AI—these may require content creation or data annotation.

Another trend is that identity binding is becoming increasingly important. Many projects are starting to require KYC or on-chain reputation verification. The purpose of doing this is to prevent fake accounts. At the same time, airdrop allocation is no longer a one-size-fits-all approach—it dynamically adjusts weights based on your actual level of contribution.

Honestly, the era of the best crypto airdrops is already over, and it’s no longer as easy to “farm” huge amounts of profit. But this also means that users who genuinely participate in building the ecosystem can receive more recognition. Instead of blindly chasing trends, it’s better to deeply understand a few projects you’re interested in, keep interacting and contributing over time—this way, the probability of getting high-quality airdrops is actually higher.