Top 4 Ways to Identify a Scam Airdrop
In the previous section, we learned the difference between a Bounty and an Airdrop. Now that you have a good understanding of some of the ways crypto communities offer rewards for their communities and holders, let’s delve deeper into Airdrops, specifically how to get an Airdrop, and how to prevent scam Airdrops.
🤔 How To Identify a Scam Airdrop
Dump Airdrops
One of the most popular motivations for a project to do a free airdrop is to create good PR and buzz around their project. Unfortunately some people use this as a way to scam. With a Dump Airdrop, developers Airdrop real crypto in an effort to generate short-term buzz for a project. Once people are hyping up the project, the team comes in and sells the majority of their coins on an exchange, abandoning the project completely after the project loses momentum.
Private Key Scams
This type of scam preys on newbie crypto investors who still don’t fully understand the lingo. Private Key Scams are completely fake, and are designed to trick holders into giving out the private key to their wallet. A legitimate Airdrop will need a user’s public wallet address to send the drop, but under no circumstance will any promotion ever ask for your private key.
Information Tolling
This type of scam is more annoying than dangerous, but unsafe all the same. With Information Tolling, fake projects offer Airdrops in exchange for your personal information including; social media, wallet address, email, etc. This information is then sold to third parties, often in an attempt to send phishing emails to your inbox. The best way to avoid this scam is simply to research any project that offers you an Airdrop. Check the project’s website (if it has one). Have they published a white paper about the specific technology behind their project? If not, might want to avoid sharing too much personal data.
Bait and Switch
In this type of Airdrop scam, the scammer offers benefits for those who sign up, but the link used to sign up is usually for another purpose. The reason behind the scam can be different, some want to use you to get more referral benefits from a project, while others might be trying to draw attention and traffic to a new pump-and-dump crypto scam. Most normal Airdrops will only ask for your public wallet address, and maybe your email. Beware of Airdrops that ask you to sign up for other services or register on another website in order to receive said benefit.
🤩 How To Get Your First Airdrop?
Retroactive Airdrop
A lot of trust goes into the early formation of many Web3 projects and communities. Crypto is about creating decentralized systems and communities. Once a project blows-up and has a verified utility and has the backing of many institutional investors, more people feel comfortable contributing to the project’s ecosystem. A retroactive airdrop occurs when a project distributes tokens to investors, supporters, users and contributors from the early days of the project. To earn a retroactive airdrop, users usually need to meet a specific requirement from the distributing project.
Hold & Stake
With this type of Airdrop, users will receive crypto airdrops based on who is holding existing tokens and how many tokens they stake/hold. Volatility is a big issue for younger projects, so to help stabilize the tokenomics of an ecosystem, some projects will airdrop rewards to users who take a certain amount of their crypto. This helps to stabilize the market price, while giving benefit to holders. Holder Airdrops will simply give rewards to users for simply holding a certain amount of a coin, or NFT. For example, holders of Bored Yacht Ape Club NFT were airdropped thousands of dollars worth of APE coin when the famous NFT collection released their first token.
Complete Quests
For this type of Airdrop, community members need to complete a set of tasks. Often these are very easy, like contributing content or signing up for the community newsletter. Once the set of tasks has been completed, users can apply to receive the Airdrop! This is a fun way to develop the community and get rewarded for doing so.
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