Cryptocurrency AirDrop--How a large number of tokens are transferred to your wallet for free

When Soul woke up on Christmas day, there was a nice surprise. There wasn't a surprising gift in the Christmas stocking. An unexpected notification was displayed on the smartphone. A new cryptocurrency was issued, and Soul was eligible to receive a portion of it for free.

This may sound like a scam. It's as ridiculous as the story of an email from someone claiming to be a Nigerian prince. A man in his thirties who is investing as a hobby, Soul who wanted to be anonymous pressed the "receive" button and paid the transaction fee, and a token worth 2000 dollars (about 230,000 yen) was transferred to the wallet. ..

In the mysterious world of cryptocurrencies, this is an event called AirDrop, probably not as rare as you might think.

Many traditional companies go public and raise money by offering stock to the general public. Organizations operating on Web3 (the Internet with integrated blockchain) raise funds by issuing tokens that people can buy and sell on exchanges. Issuing such tokens may be accompanied by airdrops. Specifically, a large number of tokens are transferred to the wallet of a person who has used the tool provided by the organization on Web3. For example, it might be easy to think of Adobe as offering 100 shares to everyone who has used Photoshop in the last 12 months to go public and raise awareness.

"Airdrop can be thought of as a customer acquisition cost." That's what Alex Gedevani of research firm Delphi Digital says. Airdrop is useful in two ways. First, it functions as marketing. Nothing is more interesting than the expectation of getting money for free. Second, it has become a rule for blockchain apps to carry out airdrops when tokens are issued. As a result, speculators who know that profitable airdrops may be implemented in the future are trying out new apps.

"I'm really looking forward to Web3," said Soul, who has been investing as a hobby since 2020. "Airdrop motivates us to try anything."

It was an organization called OpenDAO that carried out the airdrop on Christmas day. Anyone who has bought or sold on the large NFT marketplace "OpenSea" will receive an OpenDAO "$ SOS" token. As of January 12, about 300,000 wallets have received airdrops (unusual for airdrops, OpenDAO is not officially affiliated with OpenSea. OpenDAO's purpose is different from OpenSea. Supporting traders in a way that is irrelevant to the content of this article).