The 3 Most Anticipated Airdrops In 2023
With some of the largest airdrops over the past 3 years like Uniswap and ENS rewarding early users upwards of $10,000 – airdrops have become major events to look out for within the cryptosphere.
What Are Airdrops?
Airdrops are a method for crypto projects to reward early users for participating and using their project as well as to attract attention from the market in general. An airdrop means the project sends tokens to user’s wallets or the tokens are claimable through a website.
Projects use various methods to initially distribute tokens. Generally a percentage will go to the team and early investors and a large portion allocated to users as an airdrop. How the airdrop is distributed amongst users differs by project. Some will directly reward people who used their project. Other projects who have only recently launched and don’t have users yet may award tokens based on user’s use of their direct competitors. That was the strategy employed by LooksRare, who allocated their airdrop based on Opensea usage in an attempt to become the most popular NFT marketplace.
Let’s dive in and discuss the most anticipated airdrops of 2023.
1. Arbitrum
Arbitrum is a layer2 ethereum scaling solution offering faster transaction speed and lower fees all whilst benefiting from Ethereum’s security. Arbitrum has been available to use for over a year and has quite a few applications, the best known being GMX, the decentralized trading platform.
Arbitrum haven’t yet announced any dates or details around a potential airdrop. The community suspects there will be an Arbitrum airdrop as their biggest competitor Optimism did an airdrop, plus an airdrop is rumoured to be part of Arbitrum’s tokenomics. Your best shot at eligibility for an Arbitrum airdrop is by regularly using the chain and its applications. Arbitrum can be used by bridging tokens over to the network. Some popular bridges in Hyphen and Synapse.
2. Blur.io
Learning from the pitfalls of other NFT marketplace airdrops who launched and were swiftly abandoned by target users, Blur have chosen to allocate their airdrop over 3 stages, each with increasing rewards in exchange for real usage. It’s a strategy which has worked well for Blur so far. Since launching in September 2022 Blur has become the 2nd most popular NFT marketplace by volume after Opensea. On some days Blur’s volume is even higher then Opensea’s. This is a substantial market gain on Opensea that no other marketplace has achieved over a prolonged period.
The first 2 stages of Blur’s airdrop are complete. The third and final stage is focused on placing bids on their platform to earn points. Maintaining loyalty by using Blur as your main NFT marketplace is also an important element in receiving their airdrop. Blur’s website currently states $BLUR will launch in January but it’s likely to be delayed.
3. Sui
Sui is a new alternative layer 1 and their biggest competitor is Aptos. Both chains have venture capital backing and deep treasuries. As Aptos awarded users of their testnet approximately $7,000 in tokens in 2022, there is an expectation Sui will also award early users with an airdrop, though the team has not yet announced any plans for an airdrop.
Even so, As Sui is a layer 1 it will inevitably require a token to run so there is an expectation for an airdrop. To improve your chances of eligibility for a potential Sui airdrop you should interact with the Sui testnet and engage with the project socially through twitter and discord.
Conclusion
The best way to keep up to date and ensure you don’t miss any airdrops is by following Twitter accounts dedicated to airdrop news and guides. It’s important to verify that the Twitter accounts you take airdrop advice from are trustworthy and not promoting scams. Good airdrop accounts post comprehensive step-by-step guides detailing the best way to be eligible for each airdrop. To find trustworthy sources for airdrop news we’ve created a Twitter list for Airdrop Alpha, you can check out the list and follow it here.