At this point Ethereans are no strangers to airdrops with many five and sometimes six figure airdrops being distributed to users of certain Ethereum-based protocols. We’ve been spoiled with airdrops from our favorite protocols such as UNI, GTC and over the last 24 hours many of us were airdropped ENS tokens for simply having a .eth name - it really does pay to be an Etherean.

eric.eth @econoar

If you created an Ethereum wallet in 2018 and simply used some of the most popular apps, you probably have at least $50,000 in airdropped tokens at this point. That's amazing.

November 9th 2021

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Obviously we all love these airdrops and I’m particularly fond of the projects that do a time-weighted airdrop where the earlier you supported a project, the more tokens you get. The ENS distribution was particularly unique because it weighted how early you registered your ENS name, how long into the future you registered it (capped at 8 years), and if you had set the reverse record (which basically means its tied to your address). This worked to maximally reward those who have been long-time supporters of the project while also weeding out the domain squatters. It’s also worth noting that ENS did not have any investors so the token supply was split into a 25% airdrop, 25% early core contributors/team, and 50% to the treasury - a truly community-driven distribution.

On a related note, airdrops like this work to give power to the users of the protocol rather than any centralized institutions or mega-corps. By distributing the token to a wide base of 100’s of thousands of people and having a robust delegated voting system, a protocol can work towards truly global and decentralized governance. Uniswap, Gitcoin and ENS all have similar DAOs and governance structures where a large chunk of the token supply sits in a treasury that governance controls and there is a delegated, stake-weighted voting system in place. I was actually blown away by the quality of entities that came forward to be an ENS delegate with even Coinbase putting their hat in the ring - it certainly seems like ENS governance is going to be in good hands.

The thing I find particularly awesome about all of these airdrops is that they even exist at all. Could you imagine a traditional business doing something like this? I’m sure there are a few that have done something similar over the years, but for the most part when a traditional business goes public none of the actual users who made the product/service successful are rewarded in any meaningful way. How cool would it have been if all the early Uber drivers and passengers were rewarded with some Uber shares? This is exactly what Ethereum and the web3 movement enables - true ownership of decentralized protocols and the ability to easily reward early users (with on-chain verifiable data) - the old world is no match for this.

I’m sure there are plenty more airdrops coming our way over the coming months & years and I know many of you are already “farming” for these airdrops before the protocol team has even confirmed that they will have a token. Though those who watch my videos will know that I’ve been saying for a long time that I expect basically every crypto-related project to have a token so it’s probably prudent to farm for as many of them as you can.

After all, it’s worth putting in a little effort to get a potentially life-changing airdrop!

Have a great day everyone,
Anthony Sassano

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All information presented above is for educational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice.