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Airdrops have grown to become one of the most widely used means of token distribution. As is however, they are certainly not without certain issues. For airdrops to remain a viable industry practice, there is a need to continue to improve upon the process by learning from past mistakes and refining past successes.
We categorize the types of airdrops into (1) Retroactive Airdrops and (2) Engagement Airdrops:
Retroactive Airdrops allocate token distributions without prior notification to users, based on their historical actions and activities. Their main intent is to retroactively reward users.
Engagement Airdrops notify the public of actions that can be taken to qualify for an upcoming token distribution. Their main intent is to bring new users and activity to their products.
Projects must consider which type of airdrop best serves them, often depending on their stage of product and community development.
Principles like transparency, community communication and involvement, and equitability are relevant to both types of airdrop, but might be applied in different manners.
As long as airdrops prove to be a productive activity for both projects and users, the industry should find itself incentivized to continue to invest into technologies that improve upon the airdrop process, such as on-chain monitoring and proof-of-humanity tools. As such tools become more widely used and available, unwanted airdrop farming activity should trend to zero.
Tokens are a brand new form of asset, and airdrops are an even newer form of asset distribution. While we can expect inefficiencies in the process as the market collectively determines ideal practices and allocations, we encourage users and project teams alike to remain acutely vigilant in their dealings with airdrops. The actions we take today will shape the future means of token distribution.
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