The Gamble Of Crypto Airdrop Hunting And What It Means For Blockchain Devs

In the crypto space, the term “airdrop” refers to the unsolicited distribution of tokens, usually for marketing purposes or as a reward for network participation or contributions.

The first recorded crypto airdrop took place back in 2014 when Auroracoin handed out its native cryptocurrency, AUR.

Another well-known airdrop was that of decentralized exchange Uniswap, which gave its UNI (UNI) governance token to its users in 2020. In total, over 250,000 accounts received 400 UNI each.

While airdrops may have encouraged some to be more active on blockchain networks, Chris Bradbury, CEO of decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Oasis.app, told Cointelegraph that users have realized how airdrops can be exploited, which has led to the phenomenon of “airdrop hunting.”

Airdrop hunters aim to make money by farming tokens from airdrops, hoping they will become valuable.

One recent example occurred during Arbitrum’s ARB airdrop, with on-chain activity revealing that airdrop hunters consolidated $3.3 million worth of ARB from 1,496 wallets into just two.

We found 2 super airdrop hunters of $ARB.

0xe1e2 received 1.4M $ARB($1.92M) via 866 addresses and added all 1.4M $ARB to #Uniswap to provide liquidity.https://t.co/sncsZTHrP2

0xbd4e received 933,375 $ARB($1.28M) via 630 addresses.https://t.co/p5vbqXMYxD pic.twitter.com/yK3LzbeC8t

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) March 24, 2023

According to blockchain analysis platform Lookonchain, one wallet received 1.4 million ARB from 866 addresses, worth around $2 million at the time, while another wallet received 933,375 ARB from 630 addresses, worth around $1.38 million.

On March 20, Lookonchain revealed that six specific airdrop hunters had gotten nearly every massive airdrop in crypto.

1/ Missed the $ARB airdrop?

We found 6 smart airdrop hunters who have gotten nearly every massive airdrop in crypto.

Including:$ARB, $OP, $BLUR, $SOS, $LOOKS, $ENS, $DYDX, $1INCH, $UNI, $HOP, $FORTH, $GTC.

Follow their transactions and you won’t miss the next airdrop. pic.twitter.com/5XGmDgFj1t

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) March 20, 2023

Bradbury told Cointelegraph that “pro airdrop hunters will use scripts” to consolidate many different addresses into only a handful. “We’re not talking here about someone with thousands of wallets; these will be sophisticated developers to perform multiple actions across many wallets all programmatically,” he said.