What Are Airdrops
Airdrops are the closest thing to free money/tokens. What an airdrop is when a company distributes their tokens to the community. Usually a company will announce an airdrop and in order to receive your share of the airdropped tokens you will have to provide your information (Crypto Wallet Address/Email address) to them. Then they distribute their tokens to the community. The amount of tokens they distribute varies as does the value of the tokens. The majority of them total in value of less than $5 but some airdrops have gone on to be valued up to $1,000. Which is why people participate in airdrops, because you never know which airdrop will be the one.
What type of airdrops are there?
There are basically two common types of airdrops, one is the result of a hard fork, which is the split by the software developers. For example when bitcoin core had a hard fork, it resulted in bitcoin cash which was distributed to holders of bitcoin core. The other airdrop is a freebie airdrop, some airdrops require that you sign up with them, provide the with an email address, like them on Facebook or join their telegram channel in order to receive your free tokens. Another set of free airdops is someone done to holders of a certain currency. If your holding EOS you may see an airdrop of tokens for a project just because you are holding EOS.
History of Airdrops
One of the first airdrops was the Bitcoin Cash Airdrop, which resulted from a hard fork of the bitcoin. Everyone holding bitcoin at the time of the hard fork received bitcoin cash when the airdrop occurred. Ever since that time airdrops have increased in popularity along with the entire crypto space.
Why do companies have airdrops
So you are maybe wondering why companies distribute their tokens. There are a couple reasons why companies hold airdrops.
- Increase awareness – Airdrops are pretty popular and people are always on the lookout for the next airdrop. Once a company announces an airdrop it tends to bring excitement and awareness to the company and the product/service that they are offering. Think of it in another way, it’s a marketing tool. In the process they get your email address which they will use to market their products and services to you at a later point.
- Rewards the Community – It rewards the community, many companies get a lot of support and help from the community, whether its with testing or marketing or ideas. This allows a company to say thank you to the community for all their help.
How to find about token airdrops – Many companies announce airdrops via their official social channels like Twitter, Facebook and Telegram. We will also search and post all of the airdrops that we come across. You can find out airdrop postings on the following page.
There are a couple other sites that post airdrops those being the following.
How to participate in Airdrops
The requirements to participate in crypto Airdrops vary from company to company but most will have the same basic requirements. To Participate in Crypto Airdrops you’ll need a few things, which we have listed below.
Email Address
Most companies that are holding airdrops, will require that you complete an online form, included on that form they will usually require an email address. We suggest that you get a new email address just for airdrops. You’ll be submitting your email address and wallet address, just to be on the safe side you may want to create a separate email account just for crypto airdrops.
Social Accounts
Some companies would like you to follow them, their telegram channel, like their post or engage with them in some form via a social account in order to receive tokens in an airdrop. The most popular social channels for the crypto community are reddit account, twitter, telegram, Facebook, having an account on each social platform will allow you to engage with the companies if they require you to do so in order to receive tokens.
Crypto Wallet
In order to receive tokens from a crypto airdrop you will need a crypto wallet. While it may not be convenient, we highly recommend setting a separate crypto wallet for participating in airdrops. Many airdrops recommend that you submit your information on a public form, you don’t want to keep posting that information where you keep all your cryptocurrencies just in case somebody should decide to use that information to try to hack your crypto wallet. Having a separate crypto wallet for just airdrops is just another precaution that you can take to be safe.
Airdrops Scams
While getting free crypto tokens via an airdrop is exciting because hey who doesn’t love free money, there are some things you need to be aware off when participating in a crypto airdrop.
- Never Pay to receive airdrop tokens – If you come across a company promoting an airdrop where you have to pay to receive the tokens, it’s a scam. The intention of airdrops is to distribute tokens to the community. Anyone asking for money either via cryptocurrency, paypal or another payment method is likely just trying to scam some money.
- Protect your private key – You never want to send out your private key. There are some scammer out there asking for private key in order to verify that you received an airdrop or that that your wallet is active. Once they have your private key they are able to transfer out all your tokens in your wallet. Again never give out your private key.
- Not All Airdrops are real – There are some people that trying to harvest your data by holding fake airdrop announcements. The data they will sell or use your email address to spam you with. Therefore you want to be aware of suspicious airdrops.
How to be safe while participating in Airdrops
There are a few steps you can take which we outline below that will allow you to participate in Airdrops while not risking yourself or your cryptocurrency and token holdings.
- Setup a different/separate crypto wallet – So while it is not convenient to manage and keep track of another wallet, you should create one that you will use just for airdrops. Since your publicly sharing your crypto wallet address, should that be compromised, its only going to risk the tokens that you received as part of the airdrops that you have in there. If you use that wallet just for airdrops. Another step you can take to ever further reduce your risk is to move those tokens to your other main wallet that your maintaining.
- Create a separate email address – Since many airdrops will require that you provide an email address, it is wise to create a new email address. The new email address should just be used for airdrops and not tied to anything used for password recoveries or for anything you use for billing or personal related.
- Use a completely unique passwords – When it comes to passwords and security people tend to be a bit lazy, often using the same email/password on all sites that they sign up for. Now say one of those websites is hacked, the hackers will use that email address/password combinations on other websites. Therefore, anywhere you need to sign up for an account and create a password I would suggest that you create a unique password for each site. I get understand it won’t make it easy to manage but given all the cases of sites you hear about being hacked, plus the ones you don’t hear about then you need to do everything possible to keep your money safe and that includes create a unique password for each service/site you use.
Conclusion
As the crypto market evolves so does the ways of distributing tokens to the users. Airdrops, which started as a result of a hard fork is now a way of marketing a company and their products. If you are careful, and follow our guidelines regarding airdrops then can be a fun way to participate in the crypto space, and in the process make a few dollars from participating in free airdrops.
