The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Crypto Airdrops
Good day, airdrop farmers and hunters!
Do you feel that those big airdrops have recently been avoiding you? Yeah, same here. Sure, I've had some luck with smaller, legit ones such as Plume and Grass, but have missed the big, huge ones. Also, I had high hopes for certain projects that had received massive funding and promised us so much, but in the end, failed to deliver.
In this article, I'm going to go through The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of recent airdrops and leave it up to you to decide which is which!
Movement
In addition to Berachain & Monad, Movement was one of the most highly anticipated new chains in late 2024. Movement had a free testnet program named Parthenon where users had to complete all sorts of tasks to earn points that would later count toward the airdrop, and guess what? They did.
Users then had a choice whether to claim on OKX, Ethereum mainnet or wait for the actual launch of Movement's native chain. If they chose the latter, they'd be rewarded for loyalty with a 1.25x multiplier.
I decided to stay loyal and wait for the Movement mainnet which was a huge mistake because the shit was about to hit he fan...
Soon after the launch of the token, its price went above $1.4, retraced, and went back up to reach $1.2. Since then, it's been nothing but downhill for $MOVE.
But that's not all. On May 2, 2025, Movement Labs suspended co-founder Rushi Manche following an internal investigation into suspicious market-making activities that led to a significant dump of $MOVE tokens. On top of that, Coinbase also de-listed the $MOVE token. The long-awaited airdrop for us loyal users was delayed, with no new date announced.
If the MoveDrop were to magically happen right now, the worth of my 1780.5 $MOVE tokens would be $400. If I had claimed 1424 MOVE on Eth mainnet and sold at the valuation of $1.2, I would have earned $1709...
Yes. Sometimes these things are a bit painful but the moral of the story is that in the crypto space, loyalty means shit. Always claim as soon as possible and sell at least 75% right away. Don't look back, you can never look back.
Mantra
If you think the Movement airdrop was the worst of them all, you'd be very, very wrong. You see, Movement can still deliver, the chain can still be a success, and MOVE price can still surge a lot if we get a good altseason at some point.
But when it comes to the worst, scammiest projects in this vast space, nothing compares to the Mantra chain. This hyped RWA project was on everyone's lips in 2024 after its $OM token had made an incredible run during harsh market conditions.
Within a year, $OM ran from $0.258 to over $9 per token.
Even though it was evident that the team, who allegedly happen to be the biggest token holders, artificially pumped the $OM price at the end of the year, no one probably could've imagined what would happen next....
But what about the airdrop?
Indeed, I took part in their testnet, which I thought was very underfarmed, and managed to be eligible for 339 $OM tokens. This amount would have been very good at the highest valuation if they had delivered the airdrop as promised. But no, it wasn't even close.
First, they postponed it, making some vague arguments that the market conditions weren't right and they had to think of their early investors, etc. In hindsight, this claim is pretty interesting as they later on would rug anyone who'd invested in $OM, but back to the airdrop and me "being an amazing Sherpa".
Finally, they released an update concerning the airdrop dates and surprise, surprise! We could only claim 10% of our allocation right away - the rest would be vested for years. Well... even 10% would be quite ok, I thought. Wrong again. These scumbags had hired "a third party company" to filter out any sybil activity which was obviously bull shit as most users were labelled as sybils and denied 100% of the airdrop they were eligible for.
So, after rugging their testnet users, these rats then continued to perform a much, much bigger rug pull and this time to $OM holders & stakers:
Incredible, right? ☝
Their CEO, JP Mullin, blamed forced liquidations on exchanges, but many are convinced it was the team that dumped $OM for good. After that, they said they were sorry and announced huge upcoming token burns that they were about to make, but I'm not sure those ever happened.
Mantra is an extreme example of a scam project that had multiple red flags flashing, but people chose to ignore the warnings. However, there's a good lesson here as well: when projects start to postpone airdrops, it should be a definite warning sign that tells us not to invest in the project and exit with everything.
Gladly I hadn't put any money into this crap but was only doing stupid testnet tasks. Still, I feel sorry for those who invested, staked, and had zero time to recover their funds. To be honest, I'm amazed these guys have not been jailed yet. Mantra bad? Ugly? Both, and more.
Hyperliquid
In the middle of all the scum, all the shit, there's a knight in a shining armour.
Hyperliquid is not only a great product, but they also delivered one of the biggest, fairest airdrops in crypto history. Unfortunately, I wasn't a part of it, but still, I have to admire teams who do the right thing and keep doing it. Here are some stats:
- Total Distributed - 310 million HYPE tokens, representing 31% of the total supply.
- Average Allocation - Approximately $45,000 per user at the time of distribution.
- No VC funding - Unlike many projects, Hyperliquid allocated no tokens to private investors, emphasising a community-first strategy.
While usually many projects allocate something like 5-20% of their total token supply to the token genesis event, Hyperliquid did this with a notable 31%, but that's not all. They still have 38.88% reserved for future rewards, indicating a second airdrop.
Is it Still Worth Farming?
The ancient airdrop farmers say yes.
In my opinion, Hyperliquid is probably the best farming option at the moment. The reason for this is that they've already delivered and are considered a trustworthy project. Also, since the first airdrop, the $HYPE price has performed extremely well, and all other metrics (such as TVL & daily fees) point upward, suggesting 2025 could be the year of Hyperliquid.
HyperEVM
Hyperliquid is an L1 blockchain as well as the best perp DEX there is. I have now concentrated almost all of my leverage trading on Hyperliquid to farm the potential airdrop, but besides that, the new HyperEVM offers even more opportunities to interact with the chain.
HyperEVM is the second layer of Hyperliquid, and while the focus of L1 is on trading, the HyperEVM has much more in store, such as NFTs, defi, etc. Switching assets between HL & EVM is easy and happens with just one click on Hyperliquid L1.
Interacting with apps on HyperEVM likely plays an important role in future airdrop considerations, so my next plan will be moving my activities over there. Since I've become somewhat of an LP geek, I've taken notice of HyperSwaps pretty good APRs.
HyperSwap also has a point program of its own, and if it manages to become one of the big DEXs on HyperEVM, this could lead to another good airdrop opportunity.
All in in all, when it comes to accumulating tokens, I've decided to focus on large-cap ones in which I see the most potential in: $SOL, $SUI and $HYPE. There's probably many airdrop opportunities on all of these L1s but at the moment, Hyperliquid seems like the best bet.
Conclusion
Maybe I went too hard on Movement since I did have an option to claim early and forfeit the extra gains. Just didn't take it. Also, it's not the entire team's fault if there's one bad apple in the basket, and like I said, they can still turn things around. So fingers crossed.
Mantra, on the other hand, was rotten to the core to begin with. Yes, there were signs we just chose to ignore, but that's how it is. Perhaps I'm wiser in the future and will not spend time with future terralunas and mantras.
As for the shining star on the crypto night sky, Hyperliquid is in the league of its own, setting an example of how things should be done and how projects should reward and respect their early, loyal users.
My advice for the future is to create some volume on Hyperliquid & HyperEVM. No matter what it is: staking, trading, buying NFTs, pooling, whatever. Quality projects tend to deliver.
Thank you for reading, and if you have any questions, leave a comment. I'd be more than happy to answer!
🔹 Hyperliquid - the best perp DEX out there. Trade, stake & farm the next big airdrop!
🔹 HyperSwap - Swap & provide liquidity on HyperEVM, earn points for the airdrop
🔹 LeoDex - multi-chain, multi-wallet dex for all of your swaps
🔹 Grass - $GRASS token launch surprised everyone, don't miss the second season!
Posted Using INLEO