Crypto airdrop farming

The claim

“I found a way for anyone to make $1k-$10k/month. Even my 15-year-old cousin made $100k+ this way. All u need is a phone and a few minutes a day. Sounds like clickbait, but it’s real (though very time-sensitive)”

@nobrainflip, 15 July 2024, 327,837 views¹².

An airdrop is a crypto project giving new tokens (tradeable digital coins), free, to early users of its product. Airdrop farming is using new products on purpose to qualify, usually by earning points the project may later convert into tokens. Of our 3 tweets, only this one states an income; we did not check its figures¹. This page judges the scheme, not the people who tweeted.

The sums

The phone version. The two largest tap-to-earn games (free phone apps where users collect points) paid about $3 to $16 per player on average at launch, once, after months of play (our estimate; the top figure counts all players, not only claimants)^3696972.

The trading version. A “perp DEX” is an exchange run by software where people bet on crypto prices with borrowed money. One, Variational, has published a rule: 32% of its token supply goes to points holders at launch¹². One point costs roughly $42,000 to $75,000 of trading volume (our estimate)¹³¹⁶¹⁸. That assumes points follow volume, which Variational does not promise, and uses a press figure for weekly points and a statistics feed its documents do not link¹³¹⁶¹⁸.

So $1 million of trading earns about 13 to 24 points, worth about $470 to $1,400 if a point is worth $35 to $59 (our estimate)¹⁶¹⁸. No token exists yet, so that value is a guess¹². Against that, Variational keeps the spread, the gap between buying and selling prices: about $50 to $600¹⁴¹⁶¹⁹. For a competent trader doing a few million dollars of volume, a good result is a few thousand dollars, once, before trading results and tax (our estimate)¹⁶¹⁸¹⁹. Volume is not money put in: traders borrow, up to 50 times their own money on Arcus, another perp DEX⁷⁵.

What happens to most people who try

We found no data on what share of farmers end up ahead after fees and time.

In the most generous case, Hyperliquid in November 2024, about 94,000 wallets (accounts) received tokens³¹³⁴. The average was about 2,900 tokens but the median, the middle recipient, got 64.53, about $400 at $6.25, the median selling price (our sum)³²³³³⁴. The token counts come from press reports of one dashboard we did not open³³. The selling price, and a count that 86% of wallets sold everything, come from a company selling a crypto product, not independently checked³⁴.

Many who do the work get nothing: a news report says Linea removed about 40% of otherwise eligible addresses⁴⁷.

Most 2024 airdrop tokens then fell: Keyrock, a trading firm, found that of 62 airdrops “only 8 had positive returns after 90 days”, in a weak market⁴⁰. The three perp DEX tokens that have paid swung widely both ways: Hyperliquid stood at $84.25 on 10 October 2026, against $2.00 to $6.25 on its first day, while Aster stood 71% below its September 2025 high¹¹⁷⁰. Three cases are too few for a rate.

The upside

• Hyperliquid, from the same unopened dashboard. The tokens came with nothing to buy, “allocated in proportion to points earned at an early stage”³¹³². The top quarter of recipients got 379.9 tokens or more, about $2,400 at the typical selling price, and the top hundredth 58,318 or more, about $364,000 (our sums)³³³⁴.
• One person’s own statement. The founder of an airdrop information site told The Block he did about $300,000 of volume on Arbitrum, paid about $1,000 in fees and received a $15,000 airdrop⁴⁸. His costs on projects that paid nothing are not given; he estimated only 10% to 15% of projects give airdrops⁴⁸.

Five and six figures went to the top few percent³¹³³. Nothing we opened supports “$1k-$10k/month” for “anyone”.

What it takes to compete

The large results the rules still allow came from one real account trading heavily and early²²³³.

• Volume. One of our tweets shows $2.87 million of Arcus trading reaching rank 1,750 of more than 15,000 traders⁴²¹.
• Staying inside the rules. Arcus’s terms disqualify many-wallet farming, and hedged trades (opposite bets that cancel out) it judges are done mainly to farm points; points guarantee no token²².
• Paying the costs. Arcus charges traders who accept the price on offer $225 per $1 million during its test period, and $450 as standard²⁴. Of the 100 largest traders by volume on its 30-day leaderboard, 67 showed a negative result, with a middle result of about $1,950 lost; whether that is after fees is not stated²⁵.

To tell early (our judgement): has the project said points become tokens? What does each point cost you? Would you trade without the points?

Who else makes money from it

The trading venue is paid first: a tracker shows Arcus users, not only farmers, paid about $1.21 million in fees in 30 days, with no token announced²⁶. Promoters are paid through referrals: Arcus pays a referrer 10% of a referred trader’s fees, airdrop or not, and one of our three tweets ends with a referral link⁴²⁴.