Crypto Academy Season 3 Week 3: Homework Post for @wahyunahrul: Airdrop Giveaways in Cryptocurrency | by @kayduke

Hello mates. Another week of wonderful and insightful lecture, thanks to @wahyunahrul. This is my submission for the homework task on Airdrops.

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1. What do you think about Airdrop in Cryptocurrency?

Airdrop in cryptocurrency or a blockchain network is a promotional tool employed to distribute or deposit free cryptocurrencies to current or potential users. Airdrops are normally done for new crypto projects for purposes of marketing, rewarding users and gaining popularity in the blockchain community. Participation in an airdrop is relatively simple. In some instance you just have to sign up then you receive the free tokens. Others will require you to perform some simple tasks normally promoting the cryptocurrency on social media platforms to earn the coins or tokens.
The first airdrop in cryptocurrency history is the distribution of Auroracoin to citizens of Iceland in March 2014 where citizens were given 31.8 AUR free for just entering their permanent resident ID in the country. Over 50% of total Auroracoins were distributed in this airdrop but shortly after, Auroracoin lost its entire market cap making the project a failure.

2. How can we know about an Airdrop event so that we can participate?

There are a number of means we can have knowledge about an ongoing Airdrop event. We can be told by a friend, see an ad on the internet or receive direct messages from crypto related websites we have visited. Before participating in any airdrop event, we must be careful and look out for its credibility because most of them tend to be spams and fraud.
One of the legit websites to find notice about Airdrop events is Coinmarketcap. I will take you through how to find Airdrop events from this site.

• Follow the link Coinmarketcap and hit the 3 lines symbol at the top right.
  
  

  Screenshot from Coinmarketcap

• Hit the arrow next to calendar and select Free Airdrops

Screenshot from coinmarketcap

• You see a list of expired Airdrop event, Ongoing and Upcoming events

Screenshot from coinmarketcap

Select any and participate.

3. Where are Airdrop events often held?

Airdrop events usually take place on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Telegram among others. The organizers believing in the power of social media, leave notices on the various social media platforms and their websites on how to participate in the Airdrop event.
Airdrop events are also held on Crypto Exchanges and they usually have less risk of being a spam or fraud compared to Airdrops on social media.

4. Are all Airdrop events free from scams? Otherwise, how can we avoid the scam?

Are all Airdrop events free from scams? Certainly not. In some cases, people participate in Airdrop giveaways and realize they are scam activities designed to ascertain very important details eg. the private key or account information of users. Note that, legitimate airdrops would have a working website, finished whitepaper with high quality and would not ask for private keys to accounts.
For the reasons of being exposed to fraud and scam, participants are to take note of some important issues.

• Before even participating in an airdrop, you should make some investigations about the crypto.
• You should find out what the purpose for the creation of the project is and the future prospects for the coins or tokens.
• Look out for the profile of the developers and check their track records with Cryptocurrency. Find answers to questions like their experiences with Cryptocurrencies, if they have past fraud related issues among others.
• You should also read the rules and regulations or what the developers or organizers require from the participants. There are a lot of details you can obtain from here and with your own analysis you can identify if the project is a scam or not.
• Exercise caution in your daily dealings on the internet and don’t fall for any scam.

5. Have you ever participated in a cryptocurrency Airdrop event?

I have come across a number of Airdrop events on the internet and social media platforms but personally I have not actively participated in any but I will highlight one of such initiatives. I will talk about the DIA Airdrop event that happened in June.

Screenshot from crypto.com

The event was hosted by crypto.com, a platform that supports DIA and it was to distribute DIA tokens to users in a form of rewarding long term holders of the token.
To be eligible, participants were to be users of the crypto.com App and held the DIA token between September 25,2020 and December 25, 2020.
Allocation of the free tokens was done with a distribution mechanism where your average DIA token holdings determines the number of free tokens you get.

6. Give and explain an example of an Airdrop event that has passed and the Airdrop was successful. Then give one more example that has proven to be a fraud.

Successful Crypto Airdrop Event

In June 2017, the cryptocurrency Stellar, distributed about some $1000 XLM tokens per BTC to each Bitcoin holder and that was about 19% of their total token supply. Again, in November 2018, they distributed about $125,000,000 XLM tokens; one of the biggest airdrop events to ever happen.

Fraudulent Crypto Airdrop Event

A typical example of airdrop fraud is the CORBIT case.

Screenshot from bitcointalk.com

The general idea for the airdrop event was to reward participants who sign up to the Telegram and Twitter channels of CORBIT some 60 coins which was worth around $6. The organizers were able to amass over 80,000 new users in less than a week only for them to realize a scam, because the whitepaper was not finished and information about the developers were missing.

7. Look for an example of ongoing Airdrop events, make an analysis that prove that the Airdrop of your choice is good.

From a number of ongoing Airdrop currently on coinmarketcap.com, there is this one by ElonDoge where about 5,800,000,000,000 EDOGE tokens is to be distributed to 1000 participants.

screenshot from coinmarketcap

Each participant is expected to perform some simple tasks generally aimed at promoting the token on various social media platforms and get over $20,000 worth of EDOGE token in return.
Why ElonDoge’s Airdrop is a good choice is firstly the status and credibility of the developer and leader Elon Musk. In addition, the EDOGE token has been in the trends recently and with higher prospects of doing well in the near future. A visit to EDOGE’s website shows it is working and the interface well designed.

screenshot from edoge.io

On social media it has over 12,000 followers on Twitter and over 10,000 users on Telegram at the time of doing this work.

8. Explain the steps to participate in the Airdrop of your choice.

To participate in the EDoge Airdrop event, the whole task to perform as a participant is aimed at promoting tge token on the vatious social media platforms.

Here are the clear instructions for participants:

The first step is to add EDoge to your watchlist on Coinmarketcap.com

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Go to Twitter and follow CoinmarketCap

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Follow Edoge on Twitter

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Join CoinmarketCap Telegram channel

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Join Edoge Telegram Channel

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Retweet this Tweet by Edoge on Twitter and tag 3 friends

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Fill in this space with the necessary details to enter the event and hit join Airdrop

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If successful, this is what you see

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Conclusion

Airdrops are marketing tools used to promote cryptocurrencies especially for new crypto projects. Because they are free and to earn the tokens, you only have to perform some few simple tasks, you see a huge number of people participating. Scammers sometimes want to use Airdrops as avenues to do their crimes by asking for the private keys of participants among other important details so beware and cautious when participating in such events.

Thanks to @wahyunahrul for this one. Hoping to be one of the lucky 1000 winners in the Edoge Airdrop event by help of this homework task I participated in. Waiting for the next lecture.