Crypto Airdrops in 2025: From Mercenary Users to Loyal Engagement

In 2025, cryptocurrency airdrops are experiencing a significant evolution, moving away from the mass sell-offs of the early days of crypto activation campaigns toward more strategic, user-focused models.

Recent airdrop announcements have garnered some attention from communities. Lagrange Labs, for example, launched a three-season Turing Roulette game where participants had to guess whether they were speaking with an AI bot or a real person. They then collected points and could only register for the $LA token airdrop following their participation in the game.

🤖 Introducing Turing Roulette 👤

AI is here. Do you really know who … or what … you’re talking to? Play now, win points, and PROVE IT.
👉 https://t.co/XJCHRV6UiG pic.twitter.com/ZrrunXixEJ

— LAGRANGE (@lagrangedev) April 3, 2025

Other projects included Peiro, which relaunched its $PEIRO token with a tiered airdrop and $1 million charity mission, and Zircuit, which joined Binance Alpha for its airdrop and trading competition.

How have airdrop crypto strategies evolved, and how is the industry targeting Sybil attacks and airdrop farmers?

Table of Contents Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. From Mercenaries to Engagement: The Evolution of Airdropping
3. An Imbalance of Speculation
4. Navigating a Fine Line: Airdrops As Loyalty Programs?
5. Measuring Impact & Cultivating Stickiness
6. The Future of Airdrops: Identity, Personalization & Continuous Growth
7. The Bottom Line
8. FAQs
9. References

Show Full Guide

Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. From Mercenaries to Engagement: The Evolution of Airdropping
3. An Imbalance of Speculation
Show Full Guide
4. Navigating a Fine Line: Airdrops As Loyalty Programs?
5. Measuring Impact & Cultivating Stickiness
6. The Future of Airdrops: Identity, Personalization & Continuous Growth
7. The Bottom Line
8. FAQs
9. References

From Mercenaries to Engagement: The Evolution of Airdropping

The very first crypto airdrop was organized by Auroracoin in 2014, an Icelandic blockchain that distributed tokens to the country’s citizens. While the project has fizzled out over the years, it managed to lay down the groundwork for what would become one of the most common user acquisition tools in the cryptocurrency industry – airdropping.

However, the notion of giving away free cryptocurrency to attract a larger community to an emerging Web3 project did not take off until much later.

Martin Derka, the co-founder of Zircuit, told Techopedia that earlier on, and especially during the ICO boom, airdrops were largely avoided due to regulatory concerns, specifically affected by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) view of them as security offerings.

Derka added that airdrops were “kind of dead” up until the DeFi spring of 2021, when they started to actively appear in the space as key “incentivization tools for liquidity, but also for generally participating in the protocols.”

It was also during this period that the significant financial potential of airdrops became apparent, and people quickly realized that they could get rich off airdrops, raising a new phenomenon in the industry – airdrop farmers.

Dan Hughes, the CTO and founder of Radix, added that the industry is witnessing a “whole subculture” where people are chasing airdrops due to the notion that one could earn an entire salary from them.

Hughes told Techopedia:

“Airdrops are useful, but I think you have to be very careful as a project on how you deploy them, what incentives are around them, how they are cashed in… It’s not like it used to be where you could do an airdrop in bull season and anybody could take it and dump it because there was such a strong velocity of uptrend it would just get swallowed anyway. But I think this cycle is very different.”

An Imbalance of Speculation

Radix’s Hughes, however, has also highlighted a critical challenge facing the industry: an overwhelming imbalance leaning heavily towards speculation.

He observed that while ten years ago, a strong core of tech-passionate individuals driven by the philosophical underpinnings of Bitcoin (BTC) and trustless, permissionless systems provided a counterweight to speculators, this dynamic has shifted dramatically.

He said:

“The industry has this massive imbalance of speculation. The problem with that is if you manage to attract from outside of crypto, and speculators saturate the market, chances are that retail users could have a bad experience because they are at the mercy of these speculators.”

This is why more projects are turning towards airdropping new tokens through incentives that are focusing on engagement over speculation, Tobin Kuo, the founder and CEO of Seraph, said. These efforts are crucial for improving a project’s standing and cryptocurrency ranking in a competitive market.

Kuo told Techopedia:

“Strategic models like ours reward real interest and activity, aligning user behavior with project goals, building lasting communities, and ensuring value flows to those genuinely invested in our game.”

Navigating a Fine Line: Airdrops As Loyalty Programs?

The shift towards more strategic airdrops aims to address the challenges posed by pervasive speculation, with some viewing them as almost evolving into loyalty programs.

Radix’s Hughes, for example, believes that incentivizing specific, tangible activities on a network, such as swaps and trading NFTs, can help “dampen the effect of having a purely speculative market.” He added that airdrops could be turning into something that is loyalty-adjacent, providing incentives for users to perform actions that create value on the network.

Zircuit’s Derka, on the other hand, argued that current airdrops could be failing as loyalty programs, especially when compared to more Web2-native programs, such as those of airlines or hotels.

According to Derka, true loyalty programs must continue to foster engagement, whereas airdrops typically have an end date.

Derka told Techopedia:

“Airdrops are an incentive for the user to try something new and a project’s way to thank the users for that. If some users stick around, that’s awesome! But these users won’t get an airdrop anymore, so I wouldn’t call it loyalty.”

Measuring Impact & Cultivating Stickiness

Despite differing views on whether current airdrop programs could be classified as loyalty-adjacent incentives, experts noted that airdrops will most likely never go away.

Radix’s Hughes shared that their airdrop was inspired by the one conducted by Sonic Labs, which was distributed only to participants who engaged with its testnet and ecosystem, clearly encouraging user engagement that could lead to stickiness over farming.

Zircuit’s Derka admitted that measuring success can be challenging, especially for airdrops conducted on centralized platforms where direct visibility into user behavior post-claim is limited.

He attributed this to Zircuit’s EigenLayer airdrop, which was distributed to 300,000 addresses across various exchanges, where direct user activity tracking was difficult.

Echoing the sentiment of successful strategic designs, Seraph’s Kuo shared positive results from their recent Binance Alpha airdrop. He said:

“Seraph’s Binance Alpha airdrop saw over 150,000 claims in 24 hours, with no point deductions. Our $1.61 M+ distributed value and ~30% re-engagement rate post-claim show that thoughtfully designed airdrops can be really effective.”

He emphasized that such strategic models reward “real interest and activity, aligning user behavior with project goals.”

The Future of Airdrops: Identity, Personalization & Continuous Growth

Looking ahead, experts anticipate a continued evolution in airdrop design. Radix’s Hughes believes that while traditional airdrops will persist as an effective way to get people’s attention, existing chains will move towards dynamic campaigns that align with current market trends, acting as a “flavor of the day.”

Zircuit’s Derka expressed a desire for airdrops to further emphasize Sybil resistance and combat overfarming, acknowledging that this remains an unsolved industry problem despite advancements.

“I think the next evolution of airdrops will be that real valuable airdrops will be connected to identities.” Derka cited projects that are making verifiable identities usable and noted that the industry must make airdrops “more valuable and exciting.”

Seraph’s Kuo predicted that airdrops will “continue to evolve into loyalty systems, closer to product-led growth than promotions.” He said:

“As on-chain data improves, we’ll see more personalized drops, quest-based mechanics, and long-term staking or gameplay integration.”

The Bottom Line

Crypto airdrops have rapidly evolved, moving past simple giveaways toward strategic, user-focused models.

Driven by the need to combat airdrop farming and address the industry’s speculative imbalance, projects are innovating with gamified engagement, tiered rewards, and exchange partnerships.

While questions remain about their efficacy for keeping users involved in a project beyond the airdrop date, experts agree airdrops remain crucial for user acquisition. The future points towards enhanced Sybil resistance, integration with real-world identities, personalized mechanics, and continuous, product-led growth to cultivate genuinely invested communities, proving that airdrops will persist, albeit in increasingly sophisticated forms.

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