"Airdrop earned nearly 1 million dollars," revealing the "airdrop hunter" from Russia

Original: "We made close to $1 million': Inside the murky world of airdrop farming

Author: Tim Copeland

Translated by: Ehan Wu, Blockchain Talk

Airdrops are a phenomenon that is truly unique to crypto, involving the distribution of crypto tokens to early adopters of protocols and platforms. While this may sound unbelievable to outsiders, sometimes these airdrops can yield very valuable tokens. Over the years, such windfalls have come and gone, but with the resurgence of Layer 2 networks like Optimism and recently Arbitrum, airdrops have made a comeback.

With so much potential funding on offer, some on-chain users are certainly trying to secure as many airdrops as possible for themselves. These so-called "airdrop farmers" attempt to speculate on which projects might conduct airdrops and position themselves to qualify for as many tokens as possible. Such communities have flourished over the past year, with some hardcore players managing hundreds or more wallets.

For those who master the game, the rewards can be substantial.

"We made close to $1 million," said an anonymous Russian known as LEOresearch, referring to the total amount generated by their team. "Blur gave us about $300,000, Arbitrum gave us about $180,000, Aptos gave us $125,000, Optimism gave us $120,000." LEOresearch has been active in the crypto space since 2020. They maintain a Telegram channel that pushes crypto information to over 56,000 Russian speakers from the Commonwealth of Independent States, as well as an active chat room with 6,000 members.

Turning Airdrop Hunting into a Business

During the cryptocurrency bull market, LEOresearch focused on making money through token sales and issuances. When the bear market hit, they began looking for new ways to earn, and after the Aptos team conducted an airdrop in October 2022, they turned to airdrops. "After that, we decided to form a team of researchers, software developers, and managers, and make hunting airdrops a business for us, which is an important way to earn regularly."

In some ways, airdrop hunting is a straightforward business. The core idea is to identify projects that may distribute tokens to early adopters of the platform, then interact with that platform over a period of time, preferably involving significant amounts of capital. Then, if an airdrop does occur, each wallet receives a reward—payday. But there are also risks. Depending on the network, using the network incurs some costs, including transaction and bridging fees between blockchains, trading fees, and slippage. The more wallets used, the greater the costs.

If an airdrop does not occur, airdrop hunters may ultimately lose money.

In the case of LEOresearch, they typically use only a small number of wallets each, as it is a slow manual process. However, they encourage their friends and family to follow the same strategy, thereby expanding the earnings within the community. They have also recently started trying out software that can automatically conduct trades at regular intervals while randomizing the number and frequency of trades—this move makes airdrop deployment more efficient.

LEOresearch and his team have also built a community focused on airdrop hunting and a similar crypto strategy called NFD. The goal is to provide research for this community, focusing on helping them maximize their chances of receiving airdrops. They sold 2,000 NFTs that provide access to the platform, demonstrating the strong demand from the broader crypto community for airdrop farming.

Filling Out Forms for $80,000

An anonymous Russian cryptocurrency user named Auri stated that their first airdrop came from filling out a Google form for a project called Inverse Finance. In March 2021, they lived for free in a dorm with friends, with monthly expenses of only $400. When the airdrop occurred, they received 80 tokens worth $80,000—all based on filling out the form. Auri noted that the broader cryptocurrency market crash last spring rendered this worthless. But they stayed in the crypto space, participating in projects in the pre-launch phase. Then came the Biconomy airdrop in September 2021, where a coding error meant some people received larger allocations. "A few of my friends made $500,000 from that mistake, and I thought, 'What am I doing?'"

From that moment on, they couldn't help but start deploying for airdrops. They used 100 wallets to trade on the Arbitrum network, hoping to qualify for a potential (but at the time unconfirmed) airdrop. They also ensured that these wallets were not explicitly connected, as this would likely exclude them from token distribution. Auri stated that these wallets qualified for the airdrop but did not disclose how much they earned from it (there are multiple levels of rewards based on specific requirements like trading volume). The minimum airdrop was 625 tokens, indicating they received at least 62,500 tokens—worth about $80,000 at the time of release.

Auri mentioned that they have tried to ambush 10 to 20 projects with potential airdrops, focusing on larger potential projects, believing that smaller projects are more likely to seek out and remove airdrop hunters. They have targeted projects like Scroll, zkSync, Fuel, and StarkNet. They manually complete all trades, allocating funds to various wallets through centralized exchanges without linking wallets, and discuss the best strategies with other airdrop hunters.

"I feel like all the communities are talking about airdrops now. The ones I’m in are just like a small group of people I’ve met along the way. Honestly, there’s no alpha in those groups. Everything is so straightforward," Auri said. "It’s all about scale—that’s it."

Alpha Sharing

Some believe that broader projects may have potential airdrops. For example, Alpha Drops is a website focused on providing information about airdrop farming, with strategies targeting around 170 projects. 28-year-old Alpha Drops founder Aram Barzani stated that he established the site in May 2022 to provide this information more clearly, having previously run a shared spreadsheet widely used by airdrop farmers. He noted that he saw a community grow around airdrops, and then his Twitter following quickly increased as well.

Barzani stated that these strategies are primarily based on previous airdrop experiences, especially those that provide clear lists of how they allocate tokens. He mentioned that projects typically reward similar behaviors—such as trading volume or the number of smart contract interactions—and estimated that about 10% to 15% of projects would offer airdrops.

That said, he does not consider himself an airdrop farmer. He targets projects with only a few wallets but pursues high trading volumes to maximize the chances of meeting the criteria for generating a multiplier effect. For the Arbitrum airdrop, he conducted over 1,000 trades with a trading volume of about $300,000. This cost him $1,000 in trading fees and other expenses. But he received $15,000 in airdrops, far exceeding his costs.

Barzani takes a more cautious approach, using only a few wallets. This is because airdrops attempt to counter witch-hunting, and they usually identify clusters of wallets that may be connected and exclude them from airdrops. This largely began with the Hop Protocol airdrop in June 2022 and continues to impact today—striking back at airdrop hunters, forcing them to find new ways to evade detection.

Is the Crypto Airdrop Industry Ethical?

Airdrop farming raises a series of ethical questions—but there are no clear answers.

In many ways, airdrop hunters are simply using protocols with many wallets when there are typically no public instructions or guarantees of an airdrop. If a project chooses to reward them with tokens, it does not mean they are violating any rules or agreements.

"A project rewards you for being a real user and hopes you continue to use it. However, if you deploy with multiple wallets, you are trying to extract the maximum return from the project, which should be fairly distributed among people. I think that is somewhat unfair," Barzani said.

Auri, more of an airdrop farmer, admitted they feel uneasy about the whole concept of airdrop farming. "For some reason, I do feel a little uncomfortable about it, and I think it’s a bit of a lie." However, they justify this by claiming that large projects do not work that hard to get rid of airdrop farmers, speculating that they would rather be overly generous than overly restrictive and annoy real users (like the previous Paraswap airdrop). "I don’t know, unfortunately, I’m becoming increasingly cynical about crypto. Before the Arbitrum airdrop, I did feel a bit nervous. But now, I feel fine," Auri said. "If that’s the game we’re playing, then let’s play the game."