A brief history of Airdrops

This technique is not new in the world of cryptocurrencies - since the first Ethereum ICO. If you check your wallet on Etherscan (which is what I recommend - never open your wallet with your private key just to check its balance, as this carries unnecessary risks), you will find a line there called Token Tracker. If you see it, it means that you have tokens on your account; if not, it means that you do not have any tokens or airdrops yet.

Some veteran ETH wallet holders may have noticed this - sometimes a new random coin just appears in your Token Tracker. No, no one has sent some unknown cryptocurrency to your address by mistake; this is a team of developers of a new token who decided to distribute a small share of coins among ETH wallets in order to make themselves known to the world.

The first thing to do after receiving a token is to ask Google (or your friends, if you have such know-it-alls) about it. In addition, you can always just ignore the unknown token that visited your wallet.

Source

Of course, in the latter case, the airdrop will not fulfill its function. But if you want to learn more about the token and start searching the Internet for information and discussing it with friends, the airdrop will be completed - and at a very low price (or potentially high price if the coin goes to the moon).

As a result of their development, airdrops have gone beyond mere marketing. Developers of tokens can use them to raise the value of their cryptocurrency, for example, by promising to issue bonus coins in proportion to the tokens in the investor's wallet. Thus, investors will have to buy more coins in order to receive a larger airdrop. However, I won't go back to this airdrop strategy later in this article, as my goal is to tell you how to get coins for free, not how to buy them.

After Facebook banned ICO advertising, many token developers switched to airdrops as an alternative way to promote their projects. Because many ICOs are consumer-facing products, they focus on one metric: viral growth through network effects. In other words, they want to be talked about as much as possible. And they do it with the help of a powerful referral system.

How to participate in free airdrops

To start getting free tokens, you will need the following tools:

ETH wallet.

It must be an ERC20 compliant personal address as most airdrop tokens are based on the ERC20 protocol. I recommend using MetaMask or MyEtherWallet for a quick start, but for the long term it's always better to get a hardware wallet like the Ledger Nano S.

Source

Your ETH wallet must be active. By "active" I mean that you should use it at least once in a while. Many airdrops do checks to make sure you don't generate hundreds of addresses to get more coins in a dishonest way. This means that if your wallet is not being used in any way, it may not receive an airdrop. Sometimes, when airdropping, some specific requirements are checked, such as, for example, the presence of certain tokens on the balance.

Telegram account.

I am sure that token developers choose Telegram to connect with the audience for a reason. Usually, airdrops will require you to subscribe to the corresponding Telegram channel. Do not leave it until you receive your coins, otherwise you may be disqualified and forfeit the airdrop.

Source

Twitter account.

The story here is similar to Telegram: in order to participate in many airdrops, you will need to follow their developers on Twitter. Some teams may even be asked to retweet their posts in order to participate in the airdrop.

Email.

Sometimes when you airdrop, you will need to provide your email as well. If you do not want to reveal your real email address, you can create a separate one for this purpose. Just try not to forget the password for it: most often you will have to confirm your address by clicking on the link in the letter.