What are airdrops, how are recipients chosen, and why do projects use them?

Airdrops are free token distributions a project sends to wallets to reward early users or bootstrap a network. I remember my first one: I’d been hopping around a new DeFi beta, using their dApp and providing a little liquidity. A few months later they did a snapshot and, boom, some of us qualified for free tokens just for being in the right place at the right time.

Recipients are chosen in various ways. Sometimes it’s a simple snapshot of everyone who held or interacted with the token by a certain date. Other times you have to complete tasks, sign up, link a wallet, provide liquidity, stake, vote in governance, or join a whitelist. Some projects randomize from eligible addresses to reward both casual and active users; others require you to claim within a window or pay a tiny gas fee.

Why do projects do it? To kickstart adoption, bootstrap liquidity, decentralize ownership, and create buzz. It’s cheap marketing that can pay off if the token gains traction, and it gives early supporters a stake in the project's future.

I first got into airdrops when a DeFi project I backed handed out tokens to early users. They looked at on-chain activity, whitelists, or sometimes random winners. Some asked you to hold a token or complete simple tasks. Projects do it to reward loyal users, bootstrap liquidity, and spread word through early supporters.