Catching Airdrops
In the first half of 2018, as the bottom was falling out of the Cryptocurrency markets and I was watching my investments sink deeper into the red, I began to cast about for something to focus on, other than my declining portfolio. I had dabbled a bit with mining and staking coins to get a return on my investment, but then I was turned on to something different. Airdrops.
'What the hell is an Airdrop?', you might ask. In the Cryptocurrency world, an Airdrop is the term used for a gift of digital coins or tokens that is automatically delivered to a digital wallet. Instead of having to run a program on your computer, as is usually required for mining and staking, Airdrops involved simply filling out a form and waiting for some free coins! No investment required other than your time and willingness to engage with various social media platforms.
Airdrops have become a major part of the game in the world of Initial Coin Offerings or ICOs. ICOs are akin to the traditional IPOs, but within the Cryptocurrency space (and almost completely unregulated). You purchase their coins or tokens at a set price, and then hope that at some future date those tokens have increased in value, and that there are people who will buy them from you. All of which can be a pretty big crap-shoot.
As part of a typical ICO bootup, they plan on creating an initial number of tokens for their system. Many of those tokens will be sent to those who bought them as part of the ICO process, while others will be used for promotional activities, such as Airdrops and bounty programs, where people are paid in tokens to make posts and generally speak well of the project, in an attempt to generate extra buzz for the token sale.
At the time I didn't really know much about the scene. I did know that bounty programs required a level of engagement that I was not prepared to offer, Airdrops, on the other hand, seemed right up my alley. Simple, one-off events. Sign-up, follow, like, forget about it, and sometime later the coins will roll in. I wasn't going to risk any of my own money on the ICOs, I was just signing up for free handouts.
=====
My introduction to Airdrops came from a surprise gift I received on Binance. A project called Ontology Network was airdropping their new tokens to anyone who was currently holding coins for another project called NEO (Ontology is using the NEO network for their system backbone -- more on how that works in another article). I did happen to own NEO at the time, but it was housed on an exchange, and exchanges usually don't participate in Airdrops as they have an internal management system for their users' wallets that doesn't allow for automatic token delivery. But, in this particular case, Binance decided that they would honor the Airdrop and distribute the tokens to their constituents. As a result, I suddenly I found myself the bemused owner of a single ONT token! Little did I know that had I been more in tune with this project, and Airdrops in general, I could have made a nice windfall from the Ontology Airdrop.
Emboldened by this idea of free coins and tokens falling from the sky, I set off in venture of more Airdrop offers. I soon realized that one of the first steps would be to acquire a digital wallet. Up to this point I had kept all of my digital assets on the exchanges where they had been purchased. Old-school Crypto-heads will decry this decision, saying that it is never safe to keep your money on an exchange, which is somewhat true, and bolstered by previous experiences in the community with various exchanges being hacked and/or becoming insolvent. But I had chosen my exchanges with care, and felt that if Coinbase and Binance suddenly became insolvent, the entire market would collapse, and it wouldn't really matter where you kept your coins. That last bit is actually a bit of a misnomer. Your coins are always part of the blockchain. You don't ever take them anywhere. What you instead have is your Private Key that gives you access to a certain address on the blockchain that can hold your funds. You can have as many of these addresses as you want! A wallet is simply an interface that provides an interface to access to your funds.
Ethereum, with smart contracts specifically designed for token creation and distribution, is currently the king of ICOs, and as such, 90% of these Airdrops are happening on the Ethereum network. I would need an Ethereum address of my own to participate. Making one is easy enough. The hard part is deciding which wallet to use. I knew that I was not interested in a hardware wallet. Those cost real money. And spending money was not the point of this whole endeavor. It turns out that there are a number of free desktop wallets to choose from, but rather than wading through reviews and doing my own research, I decided to simply hit the official Ethereum site and download whatever they had, which was a wallet by the name of Mist.
It certainly sounded nice. I envisioned a light, fresh mist that lifts the spirit and adds an enchanting, ethereal quality to your surroundings. Alas, such a mist was not to be. I had inadvertently installed a full node client, which required downloading the entire blockchain. Not knowing how long the setup would take, I decided to wait it out. Two days later, it finally finished, downloading the full 64 gigs of data. I closed the client and never looked at it again (I guess I should uninstall the damn thing).
The Mist client was not what I wanted. I was looking for something light and simple. Begrudgingly making some minimal investigation into my options, I found that the path of least resistance seemed to be a site called My Ether Wallet. This turned out to be a fine choice, and soon, I had a public Ethereum address that I could use to collect my handouts!
My quest for Airdrops started with a Google search. I rustled up links to a few projects that were having Airdrops; Algebraix (advertisement monetization), PhotoChain (photography monetization), and Encrypgen (DNA monetization). I registered for all three.
=====
The real kick in the pants for me soon arrived when I discovered that a project called Ontology Network (the ones who created the ONT token I mentioned earlier in this story), had Airdropped 1000 ONT tokens to everyone who signed up for their newsletter back in January. A thousand tokens is pretty meaningless in of itself, but as it turned out, the ONT token had seen a rather rapid rise in price since it's release and were going for $8 USD each (later reaching as high as $10)! Holy crap! That was a potential 8-10 thousand dollar gift, just for adding your email to a newsletter list and then holding the tokens for a few months!
Well, damn. Where can I get me some more of them Airdrops? And thus began the frenzy.
With the help of a couple of Airdrop aggregation sites (Worthy Airdrops and Airdrop Alerts were the first, though I now seem to be following a half dozen of them), finding new Airdrops became a daily routine and I signed up for every one I could, sometimes hitting 5 or 6 in a day. Initially, I only went for the easiest targets. Ones that have simple requirements such as following them on Twitter and joining their Telegram channel. I already have a Twitter account that I had planned on using for promoting this blog and talking about Crypto stuff. I have no problem following these folks for some free tokens. And installing the Telegram chat app is easy as well. There is generally no requirement that I actually participate in the chat. They just want their subscription numbers to look good.
I do tend to hesitate on making Tweets at the behest of these companies. When I created my Twitter account, it was meant to be a venue for broadcasting about my blog posts and posting occasional witty commentary about the Crypto scene. Not a shill machine. And I certainly don't want to deluge my six loyal followers with a bunch of spam about upcoming ICOs! Though admittedly, I do sometimes make re-tweets for Airdrops, anyway.
As more opportunities arose, I begin stepping in a little farther down the rabbit hole to try and take advantage of the offers. I create a new Facebook account, just for Airdrops. Many Airdrops dole out rewards for each individual social media task, so I also create or link accounts on Medium, Youtube, Instagram and Bitcointalk, (all popular media channels for ICOs). A number of Airdrops require signing up on their own websites, which I do with abandon. Who knows how many accounts I have signed up for? Not I! I mostly just rely on the hope that they will send me an email when I have to login and do something to claim my tokens.
Some of the Airdrop requirements are too much for me to bother with. It doesn't matter how awesome your idea is or how much supposed value your Airdrop has, if you need me to comment on and upvote a half-dozen articles and posts, you can forget it. I ain't got time for that! I have two kids and more Airdrops to sign up for! And WTF is up with asking for control over my Twitter account?! I can understand wanting to link up so you can programatically check that I am following and tweeting as required. But updating my profile and making tweets on my behalf!? Fuck that shit! I'm kind of surprised that such actions are not against the Terms of Service for Twitter, but since this is an official Twitter connection, I guess it is not. No wonder we have legions of social media bots influencing those that are easily-influenced when we make it easy for them to make mass-postings across multiple accounts!
But I digress.
While on my path of catching Airdrops, I discover that there seem to be a disproportionate number or projects attempting to create new decentralized exchanges for trading Cryptocurrency (and sometimes regular currency), and a number looking to make their mark as the new middlemen for real estate markets. I'm guessing the former have seen that Binance and Coinbase are both billion dollar companies within 6 months of opening! As for the latter, well, real estate seems to always be a lucrative business.
A number of the business proposals for these ICOs seem outlandish to me. But as long as their signup requirements are easy enough, I am more than happy to gather tokens that will help revolutionize the skincare industry or unite party-goers with the hosts who like to impress them or bring more of the thug life to Cryptocurrency (all of which are real projects!)
Managing information about all of these airdrops becomes a Herculean task, and I mostly just give up on that front. I try to jot down referral links, if given, and the name of the company (mainly just so I can avoid accidentally trying to sign up for the same Airdrop twice).
My Twitter feed, once a sedate trickle of Tweets from a handful of Cryptocurrency personas (and a steady stream of zaniness from @johnMcafee), becomes a deluge of ICO notifications. Some of these folks are quite spammy. One company even re-tweets responses to its own tweet in some sort of weird, Inception-like, tweet-within-a-tweet-within-a-tweet loop!
My email also gets pummeled with reminders about the upcoming (or soon ending) ICO sales, often hawking special deals for those who BUY NOW!
But all of this is acceptable, and expected, which is why I created new accounts for these Airdrops. I suspect that I am missing out on some drops by not checking in to make sure I am registered properly and/or not realizing that I have to go create a wallet on their site in order to receive my free tokens, but I'm operating on more of a shotgun approach rather than focusing on specific projects.
================
It's been about four months now since I began signing up for Airdrops. The first waves of tokens have arrived. And though I continue to sign up for more drops, my enthusiasm has begun to wane. Or perhaps I am simply becoming jaded. It certainly does not help that I have been flagged on Facebook and am not allowed to follow or like anyone for several weeks. I guess that they have marked me as some sort of malicious bot since all I do is follow these ICOs and re-post whatever message they are wanting to get across. So sure, political manipulation bots, data mining without permission -- that's all fine. Yet somehow, I'm the bad guy here for just trying to get some free stuff. Isn't that part of the American Dream!?
Some of these projects are actually coming to fruition, offering beta versions of their products, and catching my attention (which I guess makes their Airdrop a success in that regard).
One of those is Stox, a betting platform. They are currently testing their site, so any and all bets (which are made using their STOX token), are refunded. They also provided some STOX to play around with and host regular competitions in which one can win actual tokens. They just finished up a betting series on the World Cup matches and Wimbledon. Looks like I won a few tokens in the process.
Another project is called Algebraix. They are looking to make a direct monetization connection between advertisers and the viewers. They reward you in their ALX coin for watching trailers and other videos. I've used their beta apps a bit and accumulated a number coins for doing so.
Will any of this have been worth the effort? Hard to tell, really. Logically I know that the odds of another Ontology windfall happening are pretty slim. Nonetheless, free stuff is free stuff. And if some folks want to rain down free digital gifts upon me, I am happy to let them!
=====
Below is an incomplete list of the Airdrops I have signed up for over the past few months. Who knows which ones will actually come through, much less ever be worth enough value to transfer out of my wallet. (Note: the links in this list are referral links and may or may not still be active.)
Photochain, 0Chain, Deconet, Bulleon (some sort of tie-in with real-world metals), ELYSIAN, ARAW, Acorn, IvyCoin, Paygine, EasyLoot, WeGold, TREON, CoinBundle, ASKT, iRegMed, BTCIX, RootBlockchain, FanFaire, Brainmab, Datavit, Jibbit, IncX, Zeering, GoEureka, Xeeda, Buglab, Aiur, Open Wifi, NOBAR, AMO, ORMEUS, Shipit, Origin Sport (wagering platform), GreenX, RedCab, Worldopoly (Pokemon Go-type gathering game using geo-location) NaviAddress, RedCab, Lendsbay, VideoCoin, ParkRes (parking app on a blockchain), Gratz, Coolomat, Crowdif, Locktrip, Atlantis Blue, HydroCoin, Setteo, CryptovationX, FilpNPik, WeMark, Realista, PlayUp, BreezeCoin, OpenBrix, Efir, Nauticus, miBoodle, blockchain.io, Blockfollow, CyberVein (is it just me or does that sound like the name of a robotic porn star?), Pigzbe, Casper, Vuzzbee, Kvantor , Traxion, ZeroBank, ParcelX and ODMC (oil drilling mud coin), VIP2Fan, ImmVrse, Havven, Human Coin (!), Barrel Protocol, Coin Analyst, Quadrant Assets, LareCoin, BasisNeuro, Atomic Wallet, Me Token (treat yo'self!), Monopoly (kind of surprised this isn't a trademark violation, Cremit, Prospectus, Creatanium, Rubiu, OSADC, Epiphany, Bizshake Well, Lambda, Bailsman, Blackbox, CoinPulse, Odyssey, SuperBloom, Prime Shipping, Little Phil (ha!), IZX, Agent Mile, Zeon, Apollo, Deconet, Avinoc, Zaza, Alive Casino, Rays, Medipedia, Mobu, Qravity, Muse, Crypto Index, Block-chain, Craftr, Marachain, RockerCoin (for those who like to rock out on Cryptocurrency), and Innercore. Shew! And these are just the ones I wrote down!
For anyone interested in following further, here is a link to details about the Ethereum address I am using to subscribe to these Airdrops. You can check it periodically to see how much luck I've had at acquiring more of my precious tokens.
Up Next... Adventures in Staking!
Airdrops have become a major part of the game in the world of Initial Coin Offerings or ICOs. ICOs are akin to the traditional IPOs, but within the Cryptocurrency space (and almost completely unregulated). You purchase their coins or tokens at a set price, and then hope that at some future date those tokens have increased in value, and that there are people who will buy them from you. All of which can be a pretty big crap-shoot.
As part of a typical ICO bootup, they plan on creating an initial number of tokens for their system. Many of those tokens will be sent to those who bought them as part of the ICO process, while others will be used for promotional activities, such as Airdrops and bounty programs, where people are paid in tokens to make posts and generally speak well of the project, in an attempt to generate extra buzz for the token sale.
At the time I didn't really know much about the scene. I did know that bounty programs required a level of engagement that I was not prepared to offer, Airdrops, on the other hand, seemed right up my alley. Simple, one-off events. Sign-up, follow, like, forget about it, and sometime later the coins will roll in. I wasn't going to risk any of my own money on the ICOs, I was just signing up for free handouts.
=====
My introduction to Airdrops came from a surprise gift I received on Binance. A project called Ontology Network was airdropping their new tokens to anyone who was currently holding coins for another project called NEO (Ontology is using the NEO network for their system backbone -- more on how that works in another article). I did happen to own NEO at the time, but it was housed on an exchange, and exchanges usually don't participate in Airdrops as they have an internal management system for their users' wallets that doesn't allow for automatic token delivery. But, in this particular case, Binance decided that they would honor the Airdrop and distribute the tokens to their constituents. As a result, I suddenly I found myself the bemused owner of a single ONT token! Little did I know that had I been more in tune with this project, and Airdrops in general, I could have made a nice windfall from the Ontology Airdrop.
Emboldened by this idea of free coins and tokens falling from the sky, I set off in venture of more Airdrop offers. I soon realized that one of the first steps would be to acquire a digital wallet. Up to this point I had kept all of my digital assets on the exchanges where they had been purchased. Old-school Crypto-heads will decry this decision, saying that it is never safe to keep your money on an exchange, which is somewhat true, and bolstered by previous experiences in the community with various exchanges being hacked and/or becoming insolvent. But I had chosen my exchanges with care, and felt that if Coinbase and Binance suddenly became insolvent, the entire market would collapse, and it wouldn't really matter where you kept your coins. That last bit is actually a bit of a misnomer. Your coins are always part of the blockchain. You don't ever take them anywhere. What you instead have is your Private Key that gives you access to a certain address on the blockchain that can hold your funds. You can have as many of these addresses as you want! A wallet is simply an interface that provides an interface to access to your funds.
Ethereum, with smart contracts specifically designed for token creation and distribution, is currently the king of ICOs, and as such, 90% of these Airdrops are happening on the Ethereum network. I would need an Ethereum address of my own to participate. Making one is easy enough. The hard part is deciding which wallet to use. I knew that I was not interested in a hardware wallet. Those cost real money. And spending money was not the point of this whole endeavor. It turns out that there are a number of free desktop wallets to choose from, but rather than wading through reviews and doing my own research, I decided to simply hit the official Ethereum site and download whatever they had, which was a wallet by the name of Mist.
It certainly sounded nice. I envisioned a light, fresh mist that lifts the spirit and adds an enchanting, ethereal quality to your surroundings. Alas, such a mist was not to be. I had inadvertently installed a full node client, which required downloading the entire blockchain. Not knowing how long the setup would take, I decided to wait it out. Two days later, it finally finished, downloading the full 64 gigs of data. I closed the client and never looked at it again (I guess I should uninstall the damn thing).
The Mist client was not what I wanted. I was looking for something light and simple. Begrudgingly making some minimal investigation into my options, I found that the path of least resistance seemed to be a site called My Ether Wallet. This turned out to be a fine choice, and soon, I had a public Ethereum address that I could use to collect my handouts!
My quest for Airdrops started with a Google search. I rustled up links to a few projects that were having Airdrops; Algebraix (advertisement monetization), PhotoChain (photography monetization), and Encrypgen (DNA monetization). I registered for all three.
=====
Well, damn. Where can I get me some more of them Airdrops? And thus began the frenzy.
With the help of a couple of Airdrop aggregation sites (Worthy Airdrops and Airdrop Alerts were the first, though I now seem to be following a half dozen of them), finding new Airdrops became a daily routine and I signed up for every one I could, sometimes hitting 5 or 6 in a day. Initially, I only went for the easiest targets. Ones that have simple requirements such as following them on Twitter and joining their Telegram channel. I already have a Twitter account that I had planned on using for promoting this blog and talking about Crypto stuff. I have no problem following these folks for some free tokens. And installing the Telegram chat app is easy as well. There is generally no requirement that I actually participate in the chat. They just want their subscription numbers to look good.
I do tend to hesitate on making Tweets at the behest of these companies. When I created my Twitter account, it was meant to be a venue for broadcasting about my blog posts and posting occasional witty commentary about the Crypto scene. Not a shill machine. And I certainly don't want to deluge my six loyal followers with a bunch of spam about upcoming ICOs! Though admittedly, I do sometimes make re-tweets for Airdrops, anyway.
As more opportunities arose, I begin stepping in a little farther down the rabbit hole to try and take advantage of the offers. I create a new Facebook account, just for Airdrops. Many Airdrops dole out rewards for each individual social media task, so I also create or link accounts on Medium, Youtube, Instagram and Bitcointalk, (all popular media channels for ICOs). A number of Airdrops require signing up on their own websites, which I do with abandon. Who knows how many accounts I have signed up for? Not I! I mostly just rely on the hope that they will send me an email when I have to login and do something to claim my tokens.
But I digress.
While on my path of catching Airdrops, I discover that there seem to be a disproportionate number or projects attempting to create new decentralized exchanges for trading Cryptocurrency (and sometimes regular currency), and a number looking to make their mark as the new middlemen for real estate markets. I'm guessing the former have seen that Binance and Coinbase are both billion dollar companies within 6 months of opening! As for the latter, well, real estate seems to always be a lucrative business.
A number of the business proposals for these ICOs seem outlandish to me. But as long as their signup requirements are easy enough, I am more than happy to gather tokens that will help revolutionize the skincare industry or unite party-goers with the hosts who like to impress them or bring more of the thug life to Cryptocurrency (all of which are real projects!)
Managing information about all of these airdrops becomes a Herculean task, and I mostly just give up on that front. I try to jot down referral links, if given, and the name of the company (mainly just so I can avoid accidentally trying to sign up for the same Airdrop twice).
My Twitter feed, once a sedate trickle of Tweets from a handful of Cryptocurrency personas (and a steady stream of zaniness from @johnMcafee), becomes a deluge of ICO notifications. Some of these folks are quite spammy. One company even re-tweets responses to its own tweet in some sort of weird, Inception-like, tweet-within-a-tweet-within-a-tweet loop!My email also gets pummeled with reminders about the upcoming (or soon ending) ICO sales, often hawking special deals for those who BUY NOW!
But all of this is acceptable, and expected, which is why I created new accounts for these Airdrops. I suspect that I am missing out on some drops by not checking in to make sure I am registered properly and/or not realizing that I have to go create a wallet on their site in order to receive my free tokens, but I'm operating on more of a shotgun approach rather than focusing on specific projects.
================
Some of these projects are actually coming to fruition, offering beta versions of their products, and catching my attention (which I guess makes their Airdrop a success in that regard).
One of those is Stox, a betting platform. They are currently testing their site, so any and all bets (which are made using their STOX token), are refunded. They also provided some STOX to play around with and host regular competitions in which one can win actual tokens. They just finished up a betting series on the World Cup matches and Wimbledon. Looks like I won a few tokens in the process.
Another project is called Algebraix. They are looking to make a direct monetization connection between advertisers and the viewers. They reward you in their ALX coin for watching trailers and other videos. I've used their beta apps a bit and accumulated a number coins for doing so.
Will any of this have been worth the effort? Hard to tell, really. Logically I know that the odds of another Ontology windfall happening are pretty slim. Nonetheless, free stuff is free stuff. And if some folks want to rain down free digital gifts upon me, I am happy to let them!
=====
Below is an incomplete list of the Airdrops I have signed up for over the past few months. Who knows which ones will actually come through, much less ever be worth enough value to transfer out of my wallet. (Note: the links in this list are referral links and may or may not still be active.)
Photochain, 0Chain, Deconet, Bulleon (some sort of tie-in with real-world metals), ELYSIAN, ARAW, Acorn, IvyCoin, Paygine, EasyLoot, WeGold, TREON, CoinBundle, ASKT, iRegMed, BTCIX, RootBlockchain, FanFaire, Brainmab, Datavit, Jibbit, IncX, Zeering, GoEureka, Xeeda, Buglab, Aiur, Open Wifi, NOBAR, AMO, ORMEUS, Shipit, Origin Sport (wagering platform), GreenX, RedCab, Worldopoly (Pokemon Go-type gathering game using geo-location) NaviAddress, RedCab, Lendsbay, VideoCoin, ParkRes (parking app on a blockchain), Gratz, Coolomat, Crowdif, Locktrip, Atlantis Blue, HydroCoin, Setteo, CryptovationX, FilpNPik, WeMark, Realista, PlayUp, BreezeCoin, OpenBrix, Efir, Nauticus, miBoodle, blockchain.io, Blockfollow, CyberVein (is it just me or does that sound like the name of a robotic porn star?), Pigzbe, Casper, Vuzzbee, Kvantor , Traxion, ZeroBank, ParcelX and ODMC (oil drilling mud coin), VIP2Fan, ImmVrse, Havven, Human Coin (!), Barrel Protocol, Coin Analyst, Quadrant Assets, LareCoin, BasisNeuro, Atomic Wallet, Me Token (treat yo'self!), Monopoly (kind of surprised this isn't a trademark violation, Cremit, Prospectus, Creatanium, Rubiu, OSADC, Epiphany, Bizshake Well, Lambda, Bailsman, Blackbox, CoinPulse, Odyssey, SuperBloom, Prime Shipping, Little Phil (ha!), IZX, Agent Mile, Zeon, Apollo, Deconet, Avinoc, Zaza, Alive Casino, Rays, Medipedia, Mobu, Qravity, Muse, Crypto Index, Block-chain, Craftr, Marachain, RockerCoin (for those who like to rock out on Cryptocurrency), and Innercore. Shew! And these are just the ones I wrote down!
For anyone interested in following further, here is a link to details about the Ethereum address I am using to subscribe to these Airdrops. You can check it periodically to see how much luck I've had at acquiring more of my precious tokens.
Up Next... Adventures in Staking!
Thanks For This Informative Article. It Helps All Those People Who Are Confused about the crypto market.
ReplyDeleteweblock coin Airdrop