I’ve seen this play out in almost every network launch: you throw an airdrop, people rush in, stake some tokens, maybe spin up a node, and then quietly disappear once the free money dries up. The trick isn’t in getting people to show up—it’s in making them stay.

With @WalletConnect and $WCT , incentives aren’t just about hype. They’re about turning casual participants into long-term operators who actually keep the pipes running. That’s a big difference, because plumbing that fails once and users don’t come back.

Why Airdrops Even Happen

Airdrops spread tokens into more hands. Done right, they get stake into the wallets of real users, developers, and operators who are invested in the network’s future. They also kickstart governance—suddenly, decisions aren’t just company-driven, they’re in the hands of a community.

But here’s the danger: if all you do is toss free tokens to farmers, you’re just buying temporary attention. It looks great on Twitter, it doesn’t build an operator set you can rely on.

What Good Incentives Look Like


In a network like #WalletConnect ’s relay layer, real incentives have to match real work. That means:


  • Transparent reward formulas that everyone can verify, not backroom spreadsheets.



  • Predictable epochs so operators know when and how they’ll be paid.


  • Public dashboards that show throughput, latency, uptime, and who actually earned what.


  • Payouts tied to service—things like keeping relays online, reducing latency, and hitting reliability targets.



And importantly, rewards should cover the real-world cost of running solid infra. Not overblown, not undercooked—just enough to make it worth showing up every day.



My Take


I’ve got a simple rule for airdrops and incentives: throw candy and you’ll get kids, pay for work and you’ll get adults. If $WCT wants to be more than hype, the rewards need to survive in bear traffic—when volumes dip, headlines fade, and only the committed remain.


That’s the real test. If operators still stick around when the easy money isn’t flowing, then you’ve got a foundation. If they vanish as soon as emissions slow, it was just another stunt.


WalletConnect doesn’t need more noise. It needs operators and voters who treat this like infrastructure, not a lottery ticket. Incentives are the bridge from bootstrap to durable growth—the question is which side $WCT decides to land on.