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So I searched the forum and online. The world seems to be divided (not surprisingly) between airdrops lovers and haters, and not much in terms of actual data a newbie can use.
Could anybody please help me out?
What are they?
Are they good? Are they bad? Are they worth it?

Any info (ANYTHING) will be greatly appreciated.
Thank you all in advance.  :)

Free giveaways like in coins or tokens. Which can even actually be fake coin or token that will remain dead from the beginning and not becoming tradable.

Some people are smart and have actually collected fee airdroos. But the danger is more.

First, you can be asked to pay VIP fee, it that airdrop again (free giveaway)? No. You will pay for it and no coin given, which means you have been scammed.

Another is that you will be requested to provide your email or other personal information (kyc). Do you know just only email can be used to scam you? Scam through text message or call is also possible. They know you are novice, they will not give you any coin. You would have forgotten and not link it to an email that you will be sent some days, weeks or months after which are actually from scammers, called phishing email. The email is gotten by scammers from the airdrop form you filled without you not given any coin or token (even very risky if you were given as it can still be useless and is worth nothing). The email would contain a malware link or a phishing link to input your seed phrase. If you click on the phishing link, you have been scammed.

In my opinion, they are not worth it. Especially by not knowing the risks involved, many people have become the victim of scammers through airdrops. Some airdrops remain not tradable. Some remain shitcoin, not worth anything good.

Learn how to avoid scam. Do not pay 2 to get 4, it is a scam. Nearly all airdrops are scam and someone can directly or indirectly end up being an airdrop scam victim.

Here are the airdrops currently littering my ETH address
https://etherscan.io/address/0xD65400079AdAba8cCcaD4f3D20D21f13B6240514#tokentxns

Nuff said ;)

No, for real... In the beginning, there might have been some tokens airdropped that were actually worth a couple of bucks (but not more than that). Then came the scams (those guys that tried to get their hands on your private keys), then came those bounty campaign thingies, then came the worthless spam airdrops.

If i had to give you some advice: sure, from time to time you might get a couple bucks worth of tokens airdropped, but it's probably not worth your while... Forms, administration, gas fees, exchanging,... just to get a couple of cents... It might be a better idear to focus your energy towards something that gives you a guaranteed profit instead of having to grind trough so many worthless tokens (and risk getting scammed along the way if you're not super carefull).

Before, back 2017 or 2018 airdrop was worth it too much.  I remember I earned $200+ in just one single airdrop project but now, it's totally nonsense and not worth it.  It just wasting your time, effort and it could be your personal might be at risk.  It's more task than giving a free giveaway, considering this isn't an airdrop that I've known before.  That's the reason why I stopped being an airdrop hunter, it's a lot of tasks before you will get their fancy token and none of them has been successfully having a value in the market. 

Plus another factor is, the Gas fee of ERC20 tokens is very expensive, though you will receive a token in airdrop worth $20 the fee to transfer your token to exchange, isn't completely worth it.

i feel they're useless.

you basically promote them to various platforms.

in the hopes that they'd reward you with something that might or not hold value in future.

plus, i have seen ones that ask for kyc later.

so, absolutely not worth it.

Thanks for the replies.
Well, the thing is I am super careful, and I've been going crazy for the last 2 months trying to get even a single buck to start investing, so at this point my energies are running kinda low.
That, and I have a few bad experiences (like Binance lying shamelessly through their advertising, claiming they support ARS, which they don't) that also made my life a bit more difficult, so now airdrops are looking better by the minute.
I'm a Linux user, and very paranoid (you can say "careful"  ;)), so malware is not (much) a concern, and paying fees is just impossible for me, even if I wanted to.
In any case I hate going in blindly, which is why I'm asking. Thanks again. :)

Literally any job right now is better than claiming airdrops. Done are the days that projects just give out tokens that end up actually being worth something. Airdrops today has moved to giving tokens to users of certain protocols; which is a lot better if you ask me(far less spamming everywhere).

Those days are gone where some airdrops would give you a profit but it's hard to find one nowadays and it's not worth to waste your time. Better find a job than risking and wasting some time to catch a good tokens yet the chances are too slim that you would get in return.

Those kyc thing is a big no for since airdrop in the first place doesn't have value because of what the devs are doing. They require something from the users who accepted the token which is most likely I found as a scam/spam asking for a payment before you could withdraw.

Like the topic of this thread states, Airdrop as its theme.

Airdrops are basically tokens that are just dumped on your account or wallet following some little task you must have done for a startup project. In most case scenarios, this Airdrops comes without any value but promises which are 1 out of a 100 cases fulfilled (mind you, there isn't a statistics in place to prove this but just an assumption based on what is mostly observed).
In very few cases might an Airdrop come up to fulfill the promises on it or add woke value to it bit then, the possibility of everything crumbling right back to the dirt is always at the corner.

Though, it never comes without the some risk as, it could turn out to be some phishy site, phishing for your privacy details like, ID, through kyc and some other verifications that could result in getting your debit card details, email and password plus, at times you get linked to some platform on social media where your sent a bug through some link to click.

In most cases, airdrops aren't worth the stress as, they often change there smart contract and you've got your be upto date on all info about the token or project. So, you could save yourself the stress and look out for shits that aren't free!

Airdrops can be during an ICO as an advertisement or campaign reward.
Airdrops can be a compensation for loyalty.
Airdrop can be harmless.
Airdrop can be harmful.
Airdrop can be a waste of time.
Airdrop can make your dream come true.
Remember: I hear some merits were Airdroped.
As long as crypto exists Airdrops will exist.
If you want to be an Airdrop expert. Get a new system with new emails for that purpose. You never can tell what 5yrs will hold for you.

As a matter of fact, 99% of the time taking part in airdrops is just a waste of your time and effort, so you are better off doing anything else as opposed to participating in airdrops. "Airdrops," as we know them today, aren't exactly airdrops anymore, as most of them require you to perform certain tasks to qualify. Those days when airdrops used to be worthwhile and free are long gone. These days, they are often advertised as free money, but are really just a way to get you hooked on the project and to promote it on social media.

I will like to share my little knowledge I have about Airdrop.
Airdrop is a cryptocurrency method used as a means of advertising or sharing some information as well as introducing the coin to the entire crypto world, also its a means given out the new token as a means of Giveaways also a reward to the hardwork by the Airdrop participants. Some Airdrop are really good and from a very strong team that are realy ready to make the project real. Moreover, some Airdrops are scam and if care is not taken, some scammers get some details to scam imdeviduals.

Yep those actually make sense, as you are rewarding those that are actually using your platform. Due several quality airdrops like Uniswap and ENS, people nowadays started to using just about anything, like doing 2-3 trades on any shitty dex just in case they decide to do an airdrop. I have couple of friends (that have higher six figure number in crypto) but still doing those, in hope that another Uniswap-like airdrop will happen.

They are not worth it if you're just someone who hunts them and signs up and waiting for the airdrop. Because projects that have this type of rule are probably not going to succeed.

But with those airdrops that are giving to their users that have actually used the platform that they promote and part of their utility, maybe, there's some worth on it. I've seen some come and go and those who made a decent amount just with airdrops.

I think only every 1000th airdrop is worth something a little more significant, I mean it can cover the exchange fee and get you some money. everything else is just a waste of time.
I find on Coinmarketcap a lot of active airdrops, and also added on an almost daily basis. I think it's the easiest thing for you to do, register on there and participate in all airdrops on there. After a month or two, you will know much more about airdrops based on your personal experience.

If this is about airdrops right now, I will say:
- It is few airdrops that are worthy and also legit.
- Most of them are shits, scams, and also not-legit airdrops.
Moreover many of new airdrops are only used to promote new shit projects by offering some few tokens as the rewards. We can see so many airdrop programs moreover in telegram channels.
But one more, be careful and selective to choose or join airdrops. Never continue if they ask you to send any money or coins into their wallet in order to claim the reward and others.
Moreover, they commonly will ask for KYC, be careful and I will prefer not to do YC for airdrops only.
Only few airdrop that is from promising new good project or existing project that will worth the rewards.

A close friend of mine won in an airdrop then when "airdrops" were not so everywhere like they are now, that was how i first heard about airdrops. I have never tried it, but right now, it is everywhere and there are too many airdrop hunters and fake airdrops. you may be lucky, if you try out some airdrops, who knows? but don't get your hopes too high.

The entire community is divided in terms of whether airdrop has some worth or not primarily because we have seen both of the extremes. There are a handful of airdrop tokens that really soared in price value but there are also countless of airdrop tokens that remain garbage from the beginning until their death.

So what would you rather do now? How would you react in the face of such data?

It would help to know that there are many airdrops happening literally every single day. If you care to participate in each one of them, I guess you'll have your day full. And that does not even include the time to take a more detailed look at the each of the project that conducts the airdrop. And that's necessary if you really want to sift all of them. After all, with airdrops you are looking for a needle in a haystack. You'd either spend all your day joining all of them or spend all your day taking time to scrutinize which one has potential and which one is pure trash. Either way, you could be completely wasting your time.

The first thing you need to know is there's no more airdrops, but it's a bounties.

A real airdrops all you need is creating account on their sites or write your address to receive the coins, no more than that.

While now they're ask you to retweet, like, shills, using his service (trade or review) etc etc it's pretty much a bounties. In bounties they can scam you or they can paid you, but most of them are worthless... only 1-3/100 are legit project.

The problem is that what you see today is no longer "airdrop" they are just calling it that!
An airdrop used to be exactly what the name suggested, a new project was created and in order to let people easily start using that cryptocurrency the developers or anyone who had some of that coin gave some away for free with no strings attached.

Nowadays what they call an "airdrop" is a job that you have to do which is almost always advertising their project all over the internet and then they pay you for that job with a useless garbage they created out of thin air for free!

In either case "airdrop" has never been an investment method or a way to make money. Not in early days nor now.

I would never say airdrops are bad. There have been a few that I personally participated and have earned a good amount too. But, most of them were back in 2018-19. Nowadays most airdrop are just scams or are shit tokens. It does not mean that good ones do not exist. They do exist but they are not free. You need to do more than just join telegram and follow social medias of the project. You have to perform actions like bringing in new users through the referral system or invest a little in that project and earn free rewards. Always remember before joining any such airdrops you need to do your own research about the project.

Currently, only those that distribute projects among their early users can be called really profitable airdrop. You have obviously heard about such airdrops that were distributed by Uniswap, 1inch and ParaSwap, the profit from which was estimated in thousands of dollars. And this list is not exhaustive, since there have been many such airdrops and there will be many more in the future.

Well, I actually just heard about them on one of the courses I'm following on the computer, so I don't know the first thing about them.
Initially, it looks like a good way to make your coin known, but it's not a surprise that scammers and other criminals have noticed them. I guess (like with everything else) I'm gonna have to do a lot more research in the near future.

Thank you all for the replies. This gives me a lot to think about.  :)

You will learn a lot from the experience of others, but you should have the ability to do your own research in these cases. I also wouldn't say all airdrop are bad especially if it's done by a big project to increase more traction to their project. I haven't joined airdrop since 2018, but will never regret when some airdrop generate thousands of dollars for participant like Uniswap and others.

Airdrops are shitty nowadays, a lot of them are scam works and they are not profitable as they use to be. Most Airdrops end up not paying at all while few pay worthless tokens or tokens that are not listed on any exchange which usually end up being useless in your wallet. I don't think they are worth it because its difficult to find a reliable and profitable airdrop nowadays.

If not shitty as in scam, they're just going to attempt to phish you to their fake MEW page wanting you login your wallet in their page. I had that kind of scenario long time ago when I attempted to join one.
I guess it is better for it to be just nothing, rather than attempting to steal your wallet.

Today's airdrop is like giveaways. Project manager made a winner list to pay their airdrops. If you really wants to check your luck then try it. You can earn good if you work hard. Not every project can give you fat profit.
.
But you can try it.

Seriously am not really a airdrop fan am not really the type that's into airdrop but I believe lot's of people are still making money from airdrop but just know that not all airdrop will pay and currently issue of scam and wallet hack is really rampant now so lots of people are using airdrop to scam people now that's why you have to be very careful if you are participating in any airdrop.

I didn't stop people from joining or participating in free giveaways like airdrop but I never suggest it that is my opinion about the airdrop. It wasn't that mean that they are worthless and only a scam but I just want people to realize that they are wasting their time for them. Were already aware I think about these free giveaways and we don't have to be blind not now we got crazy for their offer as it is likely impossible that they gain market value over $0. If they care about their time, then they have to think about this.

Well to be honest with you, I have participated in claiming alot of airdrops; one of which was supposed to pay 100dollars as per referral and I had 15  ;D but......          The whole story turned bitter when I was in great anticipation of getting those few dollars to make up with, it didn't work?!
 So what I'll say bout airdrops is that these is relatively paying the token cloner instead of the promoters so if anyone is waiting on airdrops, well, probably you would have to wait for another century :)
Trojane ❣️

I can tell you which ones to avoid. Drops where,

- ... you have to compete tasks to get reward (they can't be called airdrops tbf)

- ... it depends on luck to get reward

- ... where you get $5-$10 worth of tokens

- ...where they say - you will get these much hundred $ of tokens. This value should not be taken literally as it's usually taken from their 'ico' price, which these tokens rarely reach.

Most 'drops' feature one of above things and you are better off them.

I do agree, back in the days are drops are really worth it and they are giving away real tokens with values and listed on DEX and CEX.
Airdrop nowdays is mushrooming and the shit projects are everywhere, sometimes they are just giving away shit tokens to hack our wallet if we trade it on swap platform.
And most legit airdrops has hard task to do such as refering many people and other things. So it's not really worth it anymore in the current years

Yes they worth it maybe before. But now only few got the airdrops with worth valuable. Yes there are some do giveaways but the prizes aren't that enticing anymore. Before you could get an airdrop worth more than thousand usd. But now it's quite impossible only when you are joining airdrops with require of interaction on their platform. Usually dex tokens are doing this, but the airdrop is usually unannounced and a surprise only.

Yea, people have now been trying to sybil projects using hundreds of wallets to farm the airdrops. Projects now have to become a lot more strict on choosing criteria on which addresses get to claim airdrops; like how ParaSwap did(though they overdid it).

Airdrop benefits vary from person to the person actually. It's because Airdrop isn't worthy to me, I don't have enough time to comply with their task. Most of the Airdrop project turns into scan means I have to lose my time. It's like a gamble, perhaps you might get some dust or might lose your time. I really don't have enough patience to do Airdrop.

But it would be worthy for them who have enough time to spend. Those aren't worried about losing time and they don't have any work to do. So they might get some dust from Airdrop. It doesn't matter who loves it or who hates it. It's a matter of time and patience. You have to think is Airdrop fit for you? Do you have enough time and do have any works?

Curious to what tasks do airdrops wanted you to do these days.
I won't bother checking it as I already had a bad experience long time ago when one project just attempted to bait me into their phishing site.
The tasks I remembered were only joining their TG and following their social media platforms.

Ethereum second-tier solutions are of greater interest than the new DEX. The service can serve as a good assistant for research https://l2beat.com, which I use when deciding to spend some ether, for the sake of a ghostly airdrop. But since I do this by choice, luck bypasses me.

Just leave it alone if the airdrop tokens you got needed payment like minereum wherr you have to pay to be able to send your minereum to sell or trade whatever you lioe but the truth is you won't be able to do that. In short, it is a scam attempt where they send you a lot of tooens then you must send a fee as explained earlier.

It doesn't make sense actually if that he needs to pay more for the fees moving to the exchange more than the token he has.
I really don't think how these airdrops are worth participating with. They are almost 100% worthless and scam things. Yeah, you may receive a 1mil token, that was really huge but the price is $0, not even listed to any exchanges, that seems useless.
But in the first place, we could think also who would like to give that? Who would like to give money freely? That is why we never have to expect airdrop to gain value but just only $0. 

I would ignore such tokens received out from nowhere, there are incidents that this token is meant as a smart contract scams/hacks. Once you want to send the tokens out, you will touch the smartcontract and will collect the balance of your wallet, and will be successful transfer once the address has enough balances for fee.

They're making it look like an illusion because we never did it with the right sense of humor; look what it's turning into....
Some nft's cloned out into a haphazard token are just supposed to be in the trash-can seriously ???
  Airdrops apparently we're just meant to be shared among the few who could properly promote it but even the few  WENT WITH 9 BASKETS EACH OF THEM  ;D it has now turned out the worst for anyone afterwards

Exactly. Airdrops are always some form of hype. Give away free tokens but you've to give your email address or complete tasks, and some of them require KYC documents as well.

Having joined so many a few years back, I think the most "profitable" one was merely worth like ten dollars after sale.

If that airdrop does not require KYC, that will not be a problem. But I will skip the KYC process because sending the document to other sides needs more attention because we do not want to see they will use the document for the wrong thing. Besides that, it is not worth giving our data to others because of some dollars. Many airdrops can provide us with profit in the long term but the difficulty is we do not know which airdrops can do that in the future so we need to search for the airdrops.

Generally, I am not against the idea of people making money by spreading awareness about the project in which they've invested their time and effort. At the end of the day, free markets, such as cryptocurrency one and similar, are all about being productive and being driven by economic incentives while pursuing your own selfish goals. Doing airdrops is just one of the means to achieve wealth and happiness. That is how I look at it. However, oftentimes people behind airdrops don't share the ideas I briefly mentioned above. Instead of being productive, instead of investing their time and effort in a project, they deceive other people to get a quick buck. For example, they use airdrops as an excuse to collect a lot of personal information of crypto users, which they later sell to scammers or use directly to scam. I have seen many times the airdrop forms asking for the user's private keys or a seed phrase. Many have fallen to this scam airdrops, lost their money along with their interest in cryptocurrency.

Even if we don't provide our KYC, our email addresses are a gold mine to them too. Pretty much we'd see spam and advertisement before/ after claiming the airdrops.

Consumers are always the product of free advertising.

joining airdrops and collecting them by paying some fees or connecting your wallet needs research about the project beforehand, getting scammed can be avoided if the team is anonymous or fake and partnerships too, I was lucky to get some airdrops that were worth it like seedify which is pretty big right now, so I would say if it doesn't bother you tweeting and retweeting ...etc you can try your luck maybe you can get actual good ones.

I do not have a problem with that because I do not use my main email for participating in the airdrops because they can scam me anytime. I use secondary email just to participate in the airdrops and even they know the nationality or can track from where I access their site like @ETFbitcoin said, I can hide it using TOR or use VPN. I am sure the email providers can handle the spam and advertisement and all we can do is just delete, unsubscribe or even block it from our email.

I did many airdrop in my crypto journey but most of them was fake and worthless. Yes, it is possible to make money by doing airdrop. For this you should follow legit airdrop group.

I guess that's why many crypto-related posts are now appearing from my dummy account in Facebook long time ago before I stopped trying them, lol. Not that it is really an issue for me due to it being a dummy account, but quite concerning considering that you mentioned in #1, from just sending only an email address.

People need to be very careful of airdrops, it was a reputable telegram group that i was introduced to many months ago about airdrops. But VIP fee is demanded for in ethereum before I knew it was definitely not a reputable group. If paid, I will be scammed. The groups can be reputable for novices and newbies until they are scammed. With what I have experienced about airdrops, they are not worth it at all.

If you find it quite concerning, you should know most website do these simply by visiting their website. I would recommend you to install uBlock Origin (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/ (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/)) which could reduce the data collection.

Deleting your search history, also your likes and followed page/person to avoid getting crypto related ads. Adblockers will also help from tracking your google search activities direct to facebook cookies or their ad algo.

Back then in late 2017 where I started participating on airdrops, it was the good ol’ days yes! I had one beautiful friend who is just working as a regular employee earning low-wage income and in just one airdrop she earned six figures in Philippine peso. I’ve never experienced that for airdrops, only for bounty programs.

Fast forward to today, I think we can only see a few quality airdrops like UNI and CAKE. For example in the FOX airdrop, we receive a good amount of FOX tokens if we have used Shapeshift before. ENS is also the same where a lot of users who have bought and minted the domain before are receiving huge rewards.

Then here comes snapshot airdrops like Aqua Network, where we are qualified to receive their airdrop if we have a history of trading in Stellar Dex before January 1, 2020 and now they’re having the biggest one for those who have bought and hold at least 500 XLM and 1 Aqua in their non-custodial wallets. And the list goes on! I think these kinds of premium airdrops are the best in my opinion.

I heard and read this extension couple of times. I just didn't plan to install it and went for AdBlock Plus instead for only blocking ads since it is like being mentioned more often.
As of writing this, reading from some people's comment between the two, they seem to recommend uBlock over the other. Thanks for this. :)

Keep in mind that the extension is called "uBlock Origin" not "uBlock", the later is from a developer who split from the original team and created their own extension. People always suggest the former to be the "better" option to use.

Any way we normal human beings can install this sh!t?  ???

Try reading the README.md file that shows up when you click on the link. There is an installation section (https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/blob/master/README.md#installation) that has direct links to where the extension can be downloaded from like the Firefox add-on website if you are using Firefox browser!

We should join airdrops frequently. It takes not much time & energy.This is the form of prize ,prizebond & Gift. There is no harm to try your luck. It is possible that your luck may work and you will be given airdrop. This year, In my family an airdrop was received. It was a good amount. This is the favour and kindness of the new bounty and coin who blessed this amount. So I say through the bitcoin talk forum that there is no harm to joining airdrop.

Done! Thank you. :)

I remember in past few years ago. Most of the airdrop are very worthy. Iam since from 2017 on that time there are many biggest and genuine airdrops. And easily earn 100$ to 200$ . Now many scammers project are spreading and hacked the wallet. So many fee airdrop are last come past year and they gave many free tokens that's is worth was ,2000$ . I think you did check the recently airdrop list like uniswap, 1inch , dydx , para swap . These have own native tokens and gave tokens in the community members just doing the simple tasks like swapped or provide liquidity.