How should one obtain airdrops in 2025? Here are the insights from six wool pulling experts.
Reposted: Mars Finance, Daisy
Over the past month or two, Meme's popularity has plummeted, with leading AI projects averaging a drop of over 90% from their peaks. Daily trading volumes and graduation rates on pump.fun have significantly declined, and other chains besides Solana have not effectively taken on traffic to revive the Meme track.
On the other hand, several star projects like Berachain, Story, Myshell have completed token issuance and airdrops, with some rejoicing and others dismayed, but it also proves that the wool pulling (interaction airdrop) track still holds opportunities.
We cannot judge whether Meme will revive in 2025, so what tracks are still worth participating in for retail investors? As a previously low-threshold, high-ceiling wool pulling opportunity, it might be one of the important opportunities.
In order of connection, the interviewees on this occasion were: Wool Pulling Pomelo (@adolyb2), Big Gambler (@y95277777), Watermelon (@CryptoMelon365), Ice Cream War God (@Hy78516012), Dreaming of becoming a scientist (@Btc_Crush), Crypto Dog (@JiamigouCn), @Byteplus_Pro.
Core insights sorted
The wool pulling track still presents opportunities, but competition is intensifying, and the threshold is rising.
Interviewed individuals generally judge that the airdrop track will still be profitable in 2025, but it requires more refined and professional operations. The traditional 'multiple low-quality accounts' model is gradually becoming ineffective, as the prevalence of studios and scripts forces retail investors to shift towards strategic interactions (such as improving single account quality and simulating real user behavior).
Counter-witch technology and cost control become key
Project parties have upgraded their counter-witch methods (like clustering algorithms and multi-chain interaction verification). The interviewees emphasize the need to combine automation tools with manual operations, and improve address quality and scoring weights through multi-chain and mainnet interaction records. At the same time, precise cost calculations are needed to maintain stable growth.
Layer 1, testnets, or emerging opportunity points
Most people believe that Layer 1 (like Monad, Sahara AI) and testnet projects are more promising due to their high certainty in token issuance and controllable costs. Layer 2 suffers from address saturation, uncertain token issuance, and high interaction costs, reducing the chances of critical opportunities.
What is the scale of the wool pulling team? Is it individual or studio?
Wool Pulling Pomelo: Both studios and individuals are involved; the studio is a partnership and responsible for writing (interaction) scripts. Basically, the scripts I write for the studio can also be used for my own operations.
Big Gambler: A couple
Watermelon: With my girlfriend
Ice Cream War God: Personal
Dreaming of becoming a scientist: Personal, gradually transitioning from manual to semi-automated
Crypto Dog: Wool Pulling Studio
What has been your biggest gain since participating in wool pulling, and in what year and project?
Wool Pulling Pomelo
The studio's highest earnings are from MOVE, with nearly 200,000 accounts pulled, but I personally didn't get much. My personal earnings should be from three projects: ARB in early 2023, NOSTR at the end of 2023, and STRK in early 2024, each earning around 30,000 to 35,000 U.
Big Gambler
In 2024, Hyperliquid had a cost of less than 500 U, and it’s inconvenient to disclose specific returns. I sold off quite a bit, but my wife still holds most of it, as there are also NFTs awaiting distribution, leading to a lot of future returns.
Watermelon
I officially entered the industry in 2022 with Galxe and then in 2023 obtained returns above a7 on multiple projects like Arbitrum, Starknet, ZKsync.
Ice Cream War God
Officially entered the circle in November 2023, and in 2024, Pirate S1 had 50 accounts each earning 1,000 U.
Dreaming of becoming a scientist
The airdrops in April and June of 2024 really allowed me to turn my situation around. Although I'm an individual player, at the end of last year, I often engaged in inscriptions and NFTs, and ended up airdropping 4 RUNESTONE and 20 PIZZA, resulting in about tens of thousands of U in hand. It felt like money was falling from the sky, as if heaven suddenly realized I was quite poor and decided to give me a subsidy. When I was involved with NFTs, I never imagined I would be airdropped due to a bunch of junk images, so as long as you stay in the circle and do good, don’t worry about the future.
Crypto Dog
I often mention in my blog: I once earned enough from airdrops to boast for a lifetime, and before many studios entered the scene, airdrops were always a 'small investment for big returns' opportunity. For example, Uniswap, dYdX, ampl, lowb in 2021 and earlier were super airdrops for me and a feast for participants. dYdX would basically airdrop to anyone who interacted; it was particularly amazing. I saw dYdX's ad and deposited 200 U to boost trading volume, and after the airdrop, I sold all the coins and bought my girlfriend a hatchback Civic. ampl is a stablecoin project with a very interesting gameplay; when I left 0.3 U of ampl in my wallet, it later airdropped me 140,000 RMB worth of forth. lowb, as a meme coin, had a standard community issuance model; as long as you posted your address under lowb's official Twitter, they would airdrop you. I threw in a lot of coins, and later I earned 800,000 RMB from this project.
However, in 2024, many excellent projects emerged, like Jito, Wormhole, ALT, Ethena, Manta Pacific, BounceBit, UniSat, ListaDAO; most of these projects involve 0-cost staking or low-cost interactions, with single accounts earning around 600-1,000 U/account (most projects can accept multiple accounts, and Manta's low-quality accounts even have higher yield rates). There are also lower-yielding projects like Blast. An alternative project zkFair burned USDC with single accounts, yielding several thousand U after token issuance (provided it’s sold at the right time).
How will the wool pulling returns be in 2024? Will it be impacted by Solana Meme and reduce airdrop activities, joining Meme's PVP?
Wool Pulling Pomelo
Earnings are positive. I haven't been impacted much by PVP, and after playing for a while and exhausting my SOL, I stopped. I feel I'm not suitable for PVP. Besides pulling wool, I also enjoy mining/arbitrage, which has brought me considerable returns (though there have been losses, like becoming liquidity that others arbitraged out of, but overall it's still positive).
Big Gambler
Wool pulling in 2024 has been a great success. I am paying attention to the SOL Meme market, but I personally do not consider all-day chain sweeping; a healthy body is far more important than money.
Watermelon
The overall earnings in 2024 are not as good as in 2023, but we have still achieved a lot (like ZKsync, etc.). The key issue is that 2024 is not particularly focused on the testnet, and I didn't expect Movement not to check for witches (this changed subsequent judgments and participation; the testnet is a clearly defined and controllable cost, with a stable profit-loss ratio), while Linea occupied a lot of funds but has not issued tokens.
Having participated in Meme but not heavily invested, I prefer the wool pulling model. Because once assets accumulate in wool pulling, it's challenging to go back to being poor, while other methods carry significantly higher risks. As long as wool pulling effectively calculates costs related to water, public chain gas, etc., it can maintain a continuously growing state.
Ice Cream War God
Since I entered the space at the end of 2023, I have benefited from Zeus (about 200 U per account), using Wen provided by Jupiter (about 50 U per account), Pirate S1 (about 1,000 U per account), Pirate S2 (200-500 U per account), and I didn't do much with Bear Chain, as there were too many addresses, so I selectively gave up. In between, there were also some small airdrops, like filling out forms for SQD (20 U per account), Lingo (100 U per account), Kip (50-100 U per account), Nodepay (my own public script, about 50 U per account), etc. Overall, I feel I was quite lucky, but I didn’t pull any major wool, like MOVE and VANA, which allowed many people to earn on a single project.
I feel I haven't been affected much. I rarely engage in PVP, and I've diamond-handed a few coins, which have yielded decent returns. I entered scihub, rif, uro, etc., at the bottom, which are all verified by chat records in the TG group, and I've guided group friends through 50x and 100x.
Dreaming of becoming a scientist
Earnings are decent; I haven't struck it rich yet, but I did make some money from inscriptions. Overall, 2024 is still yielding positive results, but it's not as enjoyable as before; the competition is fiercer. The PENGU wave provided a bit of a meal ticket for my friends, resulting in a small profit. While wool pulling, my mindset is starting to break; it feels like I'm working on a construction site every day.
I am still in the phase of losing money and paying tuition on SOL. Despite staying up late every day for PVP, I still don’t have a stable money-making strategy. I need to work hard to refine it; over time, making money is just a matter of time. Wool pulling is indeed too tiring; I spend more time researching memes and new projects. After all, a meme can be equivalent to a lifetime's salary in just five minutes, but I still need to learn and think more.
Crypto Dog
Our team has always been walking on two legs, that is, the Meme + Airdrop model. We started building on-chain monitoring and automated ordering systems when the inscription wave began. Since we are not the type of PVP accounts that 'call people to lift the cart,' we rarely mention on social accounts how much we earn from memes, ensuring a balanced profit and loss.
What are your expectations for 2025? Where will opportunities appear?
Wool Pulling Pomelo
I believe there will be considerable profit potential in wool pulling in 2025, but opportunities will be rare, and only a portion of people will be able to seize them. For example, KOLs are currently wool pulling YAP, and retail investors only have the chance to catch the tail end. Other similar projects like Plume have also made people wealthy, but these involve scripts brushing hundreds or thousands of accounts. Only with occurrences like MOVE can one say retail investors have a chance to benefit, and it requires being very diligent and disciplined to achieve that. It seems the bull market is about to end, and opportunities will be fewer. I'm not sure where opportunities will arise; my predictions are usually inaccurate, but I know they likely won't appear in staking, which is more suited for investment strategies.
Big Gambler
In 2025, wool pulling will still have considerable profits. Various public chain projects and new Perps agreements are emerging, and old public chains are also undergoing 2.0 reconstruction (Sonic was formerly Fantom) and are conducting point airdrop activities. The Sonic DeFi ecosystem is very robust, and with AC's backing, I am very optimistic about Sonic at this stage of the year.
Watermelon
I believe 2025 will be better because wool pulling is an industry meant for VCs. As long as VCs exist, there will invariably be a demand for data brushing and a need to distribute tokens (issue coins). Opportunities will emerge in Layer 1, testnets, and other projects with controllable costs. Layer 1 issues tokens upon launch, while Layer 2 does not necessarily do so. Moreover, there are now many addresses on Layer 2, making it challenging to earn significant returns. All-star projects have particularly high costs and face the problem of being difficult to strike big (interactions costing dozens to hundreds of U should not involve waiting to invest tens of thousands of U into projects with unclear prospects). Testnets and other Galxe activities allow for clarity in calculating water costs and other basic costs, with clear returns and high input-output ratio.
Ice Cream War God
I believe so. Wool pulling and zero-cost pulling remain the best ways for retail investors with small funds to participate, as I personally dislike staking. I think the opportunities still lie on public chains, looking forward to the upcoming Monad testnet.
Dreaming of becoming a scientist
Yes, but the threshold is getting higher, making it harder for retail investors. The era of simply pulling a few times to earn big money is over. Now project parties are becoming more sophisticated, and witch defenses are stricter than when I was in school. However, I believe that in '25, money can still be made through 'strategic wool pulling,' not just multiple accounts, but researching interactions and on-chain identities, acting as a 'high-quality user.' In short, the wool is still there, but it’s getting harder to harvest.
Crypto Dog
Before answering this question, let's first look at a set of authoritative data:
(1) A report released by Electric Capital on cryptocurrency developers shows that the number of new developers contributing code to cryptocurrency communities is on the rise. During the 2017-2018 bull market, more than 40,000 new developers contributed code to communities or projects; from 2021-2022, a total of over 100,000 developers entered the community.
(2) Statista data shows that in 2023, global spending on blockchain solutions is expected to grow to $15.9 billion, creating huge demand for Web3 developers. In the U.S., it is expected that by 2030, software development jobs will grow by 22%, with demand for Web3 developers increasing by 400%.
(3) According to Hired data, the average salary for developers is between $150,000 to $175,000, which is 20-30% higher than traditional software developers. Web3 developers are ranked alongside AI developers in the top tier of tech development.
The above is a direct quote from a report, and it can be easily searched.
Whether it's the demand reflected in the supply side of the labor market or the fair competition between excellent independent developers and tech giants at the same starting line. It's predictable that there will be endless new concepts emerging, and the birth of each revolutionary idea could potentially create a massive wealth effect.
With so many DApps coming out, a massive number of users are needed. Ethereum users number only about 10 million, accounting for 0.2% of the total internet user base. Even if TON manages to convert 1% of Telegram users, Web3 still remains niche.
In a limited user market environment, the rise in the number of DApps means a sharp increase in the user conversion costs for project parties. In Web2, the cost to convert a user for an app is around 100 RMB; in Web3, there is no need to pay acquisition costs to intermediary platforms but rather to offer tokens directly to users. This is also why almost all Web3 projects reserve a significant portion of tokens for the community after 2021 – to better cold start the project. One can say that the development of Web3 relies heavily on community support, and the attitude of project parties towards the community determines the distribution of tokens; most projects will adopt community incentive methods for cold start in the future.
If there are opportunities in '25, do retail investors still have chances and value to participate? Or can only professional players/studios earn profits through stable witch defense technology/programmatic, automated means?
Wool Pulling Pomelo
There are opportunities and value, but the difficulty will be great. Wool pulling like arb op strk feels like it's reached its limit and has almost been scripted. Now is the era of refined wool pulling; one must find their own advantages to effectively pull wool, such as being good at writing scripts, discovering projects, or having strong execution capabilities. Of course, if you just want to earn a little money, it shouldn't be too difficult, but if you want to earn more, you'll have to find ways.
Big Gambler
Currently, I believe the wool pulling environment will pursue more refinement. Batch wool pulling is costly, and once targeted by witches, the losses can be severe. Refined wool pulling not only prevents witch hunting but also far exceeds low-quality accounts in terms of airdrop weight.
Watermelon
Counter-witch and automation techniques are essential, and basic tools like fingerprint browsers (e.g., Ads) are also necessary. Project parties often use clustering algorithms to check for witches (see details in (Review: Why I was witch-hunted by Linea for 1 million LXP)). An important experience is to recommend incorporating manual operations into automated interactions, while also focusing on multi-chain interactions; an address with mainnet interaction records will perform much better than others.
Ice Cream War God
Retail investors must participate; leaving professional players aside, the professionalism of studios varies greatly. Retail investors who want to share in the gains must put in extra effort, do more, and spread their eggs across many baskets; they will eventually seize an opportunity. Participating in multiple accounts in a project at once has already exceeded the income of an ordinary job.
Dreaming of becoming a scientist
Retail investors still have opportunities, but they need to be smarter and can't just wool pull blindly. Don't think about getting 100 accounts to compete against witch defenses; it's better to research the project logic and create 'high-quality accounts.' Now studios have hundreds or thousands of accounts, and ordinary people can't compete. However, studios often pursue quantity, leading to average quality; retail investors can instead focus on refinement, such as:
Use a clean wallet, paired with a real social account, to enhance account weight.
Preemptively ambush some potential projects; you don't necessarily have to compete with studios for the hottest spots.
Participating in high-quality DeFi and NFT ecosystems not only involves interaction but also engaging in real gameplay for greater future returns.
Crypto Dog
There is still profit potential in airdrops, but different groups need to develop different strategies. I categorize airdrop groups into several tiers:
(I) Have funds, no time, no skills
When I say I have funds, I don't mean users need to have hundreds of thousands or millions of RMB. Users with such amounts but no time can directly participate in DeFi or exchange Launchpool activities. Those who know how to operate can still earn an annualized return of 10-35%.
When I say I have funds, I mean I can take out within 100,000 RMB, but I have a stable job. If I want to pull airdrops after work, I can participate in 'trading airdrops,' such as DEX trading volume; if it's a derivatives project, I can hedge with two accounts or two platforms to achieve low loss, like Blue, or previous projects like Uniswap, Jupiter, dYdX, 1INCH...
(II) A group with plenty of time but little capital and no technical skills.
For instance, if disposable funds are 10,000, this is a common amount for many users entering the space, but for cryptocurrency, it's quite small, around 1,500 U. If pulling airdrops with multiple accounts, you can only play one round, and after one round, the gas fees will be fully consumed.
So the first phase relies on execution capability; here I classify testnet airdrops and wool pulling game NFTs together as the '0-cost wealth phase.' You need to engage heavily in testnets, Odyssey, and 0-cost games and NFTs to get the ball rolling. I have written tutorials with much content on this, all of which can be referred to.
Can you share the wool pulling projects you plan to participate in or are currently participating in for 2025?
Wool Pulling Pomelo: Sahara, Monad, sxt (@SpaceandTimeDB)
Big Gambler: Eclipse cattle farming (@EclipseFND), Variational on-chain contracts (@variational_io), Meteora LP, Polymarket betting
Watermelon: Monad, Layer 2 ink by Kraken (@inkonchain), Succinct (@SuccinctLabs), Sahara (@SaharaLabsAI), and other testnet projects
Ice Cream War God: Monad must participate. Additionally, I'm also involved in projects like Linera, Sahara AI, Abstract, Eclipse, Yala Network, etc., along with some niche projects, which I will share on my Twitter.
Crypto Dog: Airdrop projects that like to speak ambiguously usually deter participants. This is worse than gambling; at least poker can increase your odds through strategy or teamwork, and baccarat can yield returns based on periodic patterns. Projects that can't clearly articulate their community incentives don't know where the potential returns lie; interacting with such projects is both time-consuming and wasteful of funds. I think this user is very correct and fits well with the current environment.
There are currently many things to do. I have the most accounts deployed for testnet airdrops. The projects I am currently deploying include:
Walrus Protocol, Monad, Eclipse, Sahara AI, Lens Protocol, Mind Network, MegaETH, Initia, Grass, Teaprotocol, Fragmetric, Abstract, Meteora, Silencio, AethirCloud, Natix, DAWN
Other shared content
Wool Pulling Pomelo: I actually feel that many methods can also be classified as wool pulling, like some opportunities with very short windows, such as arc 20's atom, Binance wallet's bid, or even trump. Or like grinding for NFT to get project party white lists or community identities. One can choose the direction of wool pulling based on their strengths and interests. I feel the best approach to wool pulling is to walk on two legs; sometimes, long periods without earnings can really make one want to give up.
Watermelon: Meme is PVP, earning money from the other party's pocket. Wool pulling is PVE, aimed at VCs; users within the circle are friendly and willing to share with each other. I suggest new entrants actively interact, communicate, and learn.