What a crypto airdrop is, who qualifies and what it costs

A crypto airdrop is a free distribution of a project's new token to wallets that did something the project values, usually using its product before a set date. Four real drops, from Uniswap in 2020 to Monad in 2025, show how much the design decides. The pool is fixed, the eligible crowd varies, and the payout per wallet follows from both.

How an airdrop reaches a wallet

A project mints its token and sets aside a share of the supply. It then makes that share claimable by wallets that match its rules, such as bridging funds, trading, holding an NFT or earning points. The day the token first trades is the TGE, short for token generation event.

Most drops are retroactive. The team picks a snapshot date, a past moment when it freezes every wallet's history, and scores what each wallet did before it. Criteria usually appear only afterward, which is why the flow below puts the work first and the news last.

The newer design is a points program: the project shows a live scoreboard, you earn points for activity, and the points convert to tokens at the TGE. That moves the uncertainty from whether you qualify to what a point is worth. Hyperliquid ran this model at full scale: users earned points over about six months, and its November 29, 2024 genesis event gave them 31 percent of the supply.

A holder drop needs nothing beyond owning an asset on the snapshot date. Backpack's March 2026 drop combined both designs. Of its 1 billion BP supply, 25 percent went to points-program users and, in a smaller slice, to holders of its Mad Lads NFT collection. CoinDesk reported that no tokens went to founders, team members or investors at launch.

Four real drops, compared

The same word covers very different deals. This table sets four drops side by side, using each project's own documents or the press coverage of its launch.

Design decides who gets paid. Uniswap paid liquidity providers by the liquidity they supplied, about 49 million UNI across 49,192 addresses, and sent 1,000 UNI each to 220 holders of its SOCKS token. Arbitrum set a floor of 3 points and counted points earned before its August 31, 2022 Nitro upgrade at double weight.

Monad split its pool into five tracks. The Community track had 5,935 accounts and was allocated 1.670 billion MON, about 281,000 per account, and 99.7 percent was claimed. The Onchain Users track had 229,433 accounts sharing 1.705 billion MON, about 7,400 each, and 41.0 percent was claimed. The per-account averages are our arithmetic from Monad's official totals.

Price the second number and you see the arithmetic behind most drops. CoinGecko showed MON at $0.02589 on October 7, so 7,400 MON is about $190. A fixed pool is divided among everyone who qualified and then valued at whatever the market pays after the TGE.

Claim windows are real, and so are the unclaimed tokens they leave behind. Arbitrum's claim ran from March 23 to September 24, 2023. Monad's ran from October 14 to November 3, 2025, and the foundation said unclaimed tokens would be reallocated to ecosystem development. Hyperliquid's airdrop tokens were fully unlocked at the event, and Monad's airdrop tokens were unlocked at launch, so recipients could sell on day one.

What an airdrop costs, and why it can pay nothing

The tokens are free in one sense: you never pay the project to receive them. Everything around them has a price. Qualifying activity costs network gas and trading fees, locks up capital and takes hours. The tokens may also count as income.

The IRS covers airdrops that follow a hard fork. New cryptocurrency you receive and control is taxable income in the year you receive it, valued at fair market value, and the IRS treats it as ordinary income. That guidance does not spell out every kind of drop, and other countries differ, so check your local rules before a large claim.

The larger cost is a drop that never arrives. OpenSea postponed its planned March 30, 2026 SEA launch on March 17, citing market conditions, and has set no new date. Jupiter's DAO voted in February 2026 to postpone its 2026 Jupuary round. Abstract, a layer 2 that guides treated as a likely airdrop, announced on October 6 that it will shut down on December 15. Its CEO said Igloo considered a token and chose not to issue one.

A fair test is short. Estimate the pool share by dividing tokens allocated by eligible accounts, value it conservatively, then subtract your gas, fees, tax and the hours you spent. If the result is below what those hours are worth, the drop is a hobby and not income. Our tokenomics guide shows how to run the pool arithmetic before a drop pays.

Keep records as you go. The IRS FAQ sets your cost basis in the new tokens at the amount you reported as income, so the date, the quantity and the price at receipt are the three facts to save. A later sale is then measured against that basis, and a tax professional can say how your country handles it.

Why projects set filters

In our reading, a project gives tokens away to gain users who hold the token and talk about it. Uniswap set aside 60 percent of its 1 billion UNI for community members and put team and investor shares on four-year vesting. Hyperliquid went further and gave private investors nothing at launch. The reward only works if it reaches real users.

That is why projects screen for sybils, meaning one person running many wallets to collect many shares. DL News wrote in December 2025 that airdrop enthusiasm had faded as sybil attackers exploited distributions. Arbitrum published two of its filters. It subtracted one point from a wallet whose transactions all fell inside a 48-hour period. It also subtracted one point from a wallet holding less than 0.005 ETH that had touched no more than one smart contract.

Arbitrum also excluded wallets flagged in a Hop Protocol sybil bounty. With a 3-point floor, a single deduction removed a wallet that had earned exactly 3 points. Most teams publish far less than Arbitrum did. Monad said it checked claimers against sanctions lists, geo-blocked several jurisdictions and excluded team members. Its results post lists no sybil rules.

Before you spend a week on one

Write down three numbers before you start: the share of supply set aside for the community, a guess at how many accounts will qualify, and a price range. Divide the first by the second and apply the third. If the project has published none of them, you are estimating from nothing, and the effort should be small. Our airdrop tracker records which of these a project has confirmed, and our reality check covers how the 2026 season has gone.

Then run four checks.

1. Has the project itself confirmed a token? Polymarket confirmed one in October 2025 and has published no criteria, so activity aimed at it has no stated target.
2. Are the terms published? A points program with no conversion rate is a scoreboard, not a promise.
3. Does the cost fit? Add gas, fees, locked capital and hours, and keep it to activity you would do anyway.
4. Is the claim page official? Use only links from the project's verified channels, and only while a claim window is open.

One rule has no exceptions. A real claim can cost network gas, but it never costs a fee paid to the project, and no claim needs your recovery phrase. Ledger says it will never ask for the phrase, and Trezor says any request for a wallet backup is always a scam. The traps built around that rule are in our scam guide, and a safer farming setup is in our farming guide.