Everyone loves free crypto, right? Tokens falling from the sky that you can exchange for real cash. UNI, JUP, or HYPE have made a nice few thousand dollars. Unfortunately, currently, fake airdrops are often used as a way to steal your crypto.
🎪 Fake airdrops and their purpose
At first glance, they resemble official drops, but that's just an illusion. The goal is simple: to learn your seed phrase, take over your private key, or at least steal personal data. For this purpose, scammers impersonate well-known protocols, copy their websites, logos, and use very similar URLs.
The scam is based on triggering your greed. The old, good FOMO is at play here. $500 for free? It's a shame not to take advantage! And if this is already the 20th page you're browsing today, it's easy not to notice a typo in the address...
🔥Binance account with a lifetime 20% discount on fees! Check it out!🔥
So how to distinguish between real and fake airdrops? Here are some obvious signals:
🚨 No official announcements
Simple: if the drop is not mentioned on official channels, it doesn't exist at all. Real airdrops are always announced on the official website and social media. Really - always.
Checking the project's channels takes a few minutes. You just have to do it before taking advantage of the drop. And if you don’t know whether the website or X of the project is real - use those from Coingecko.
A large project never advertises an airdrop through unofficial channels. It's like Apple advertising a new iPhone on a fence. ;)
🌐 Strange URLs
Related to the previous point. To legitimize their "airdrop," scammers create fake websites or accounts on X. The difference lies in the details: an extra dot in the name, the letter "o" replaced with a zero, a typo like Binanee[dot]com. At one point, I almost fell for the domain uniswep[dot]com...
Fortunately, a website's URL resembles human DNA - so far, it has not been possible to replicate it 1:1. For greater security, it's worth copying a suspicious address into a notepad and increasing the font size. Any changes will become obvious.
Oh: and check if the domain uses HTTPS. Lack of SSL is a red flag the size of a billboard.
🔑 Request for a key or seed phrase
Do we even need to write about this? No legitimate project under any circumstances will ask you for your seed or private key. This is absolute basics, and it's strange that people still get tricked.
The seed is the key to your safe. Giving it to anyone means relinquishing full control over all your funds. There is no such thing as "one-time verification" - whoever has the seed or your private key has everything.
The justifications vary: account verification, confirmation of eligibility, wallet synchronization. It's all nonsense - airdrops are awarded to public blockchain addresses that can be checked without access to private keys.
A good practice is to have a separate crypto wallet with a minimal amount of funds dedicated to handling airdrops. Even if we fall victim to a scam, the losses will be minimal.
💰 Airdrop fees
A real airdrop is free by definition. Requesting a fee for its transfer is a signal that something is wrong. Creative scammers describe it as gas fees, activation fees, or protection against bots. Personally, I was touched by the message that I had to pay a fee because the protocol for security uses an expensive multisig wallet. ;)
Those who actually conduct airdrops usually bear the costs themselves. If a project can afford to distribute tokens worth millions of dollars, it can usually also cover the transaction fees. If you have to pay something, it’s not an airdrop, but at best a purchase, and at worst - a scam.
🎁 Tokens found themselves in the wallet
Scammers often create worthless tokens that automatically appear in users' wallets. Their names often contain the website address. While browsing the list of tokens in a wallet, we come across names like ClaimYourRewards-now[dot]xyz or GetFreeAirdrop[dot]com.
Entering the address in the browser redirects us to a fake site, promising golden mountains. All you have to do is connect your wallet and sign the transaction....
Of course, 99% of users won’t engage in any interaction. However, if the token reached 100,000 wallets, a thousand naive people will fall for it. That's how statistics work.
And here is a small part of the tokens from my Metamask wallet:
🚩 Other red flags
The topic is very broad and hard to describe in a few points. Other signals that should raise suspicion include:
- promises of high rewards for minimal activities like connecting a wallet or posting on X,
- language errors and poorly designed websites,
- time pressure (you only have 8 hours to make a decision!),
- warnings from MetaMask or Trust Wallet when trying to sign a transaction,
- any other element that seems even slightly suspicious to you.
⚠️ Breaking news - fake airdrop $XRP
We had the opportunity to observe an attempt at a large-scale fake airdrop in July 2025.
On account X pretending to be associated with Ripple, a deepfake appeared. It looked like an authentic video of the company's CEO speaking. He thanks the XRP community for their support during the legal battle with the SEC and then announces an airdrop of 100 million XRP.
Of course, you had to actively apply for tokens. Users were directed to fake websites that closely resembled the official Ripple portal. Connecting the wallet and authorizing the transaction resulted in the loss of funds.
The real CTO of Ripple, David Schwartz, quickly responded to the scam, stating unequivocally that it was a scam. We can only guess how many users actually fell for it.
That's how the world is arranged - where there is a chance to make a profit, scammers will always appear. Be careful, even overly so - it's better not to earn than to let yourself be robbed of money. And if you want to catch a real drop - go to the Binance Megadrop. There at least no one will ask for your private key.
