i was reflecting on the "golden era" of airdrops (roughly 2019–2022), the landscape was fundamentally different.
That's right. There were a lot of legit projects at that time, and some of the tokens were actually worth something.
I was interested in airdrops around that time too. I used to take part in projects that started with testnets, and sometimes I ended up getting an airdrop when they rewarded early users and contributors. Some of them paid really well.
Most of these airdrops are gone now. There may still be some legit projects giving real airdrops, but they are rare and take a lot of time to research.
If you don't do that research, you can end up with tokens that are worth nothing or fall for a phishing scam, like the ones that are still being promoted on the forum and social media.