3 Potential Airdrops From Platforms That Don't Suck

Since decentralized platforms can be profitable, many rely on airdrops instead of ICOs to introduce their tokens. I got a fat Arbitrum airdrop earlier in the year and lost most of it (ironically) on a rugpull on Arbitrum. I didn’t participate in the JITO airdrop, but it perked my ears to farming for airdrops like many of you reading this. 

There’s only one problem: Farming for airdrops is boring AF. I tried showing a friend how to do it, and the look of boredom on their face as we bridged, swapped, and bridged and swapped, was priceless. Now, platforms are gamifying the appearance of airdrops with points to remind us small fish of how poor we are. At least we plebs know where we stand when the tokens drop.

I checked out over a dozen platforms that ‘may’ offer an airdrop and found three that are pretty cool and worth checking out. So, if you’re sinking in despair on copycat apps, check these out. You may or may not get an airdrop, but at least you’ll interact with a cool dApp.

Airdrop Candidate #1: Parcl- https://app.parcl.co/lp
Chain: Solana
The wallet I used to interact: Phantom
Point System: Yes
Referrals: Yes- https://app.parcl.co/referrals…my referral code is ScottD

Have you ever dreamed of owning a waterfront mansion in Miami Beach or a luxury condo in New York or San Francisco? Perhaps only one thing keeps you from securing that property: money. Parcl gives you the feeling of investing in real estate with its price indexing in popular US property markets. 

Investors can trade on leverage and go long or short on property values in Miami Beach, Las Vegas, San Francisco, New York, Brooklyn, or Austin. You can trade with up to 10x leverage in either direction. If you are interested in how the platform works, the whitepaper discusses it with simple-to-follow formulas: https://docs.parcl.co/protocol-overview/risk-management-and-trading.

Or, I can save you the time and include some of the formulas right here:

I got lost after the triangle. If you don’t want to pay the funding rate or take the risk in leverage trading, you can also act as the bank by providing liquidity on the platform. It’s important to know that if you do provide liquidity, it is locked for 30 days. It’s unclear what the percentage yield is for liquidity (70% of platform fees), but it provides Parcl Points.

Parcl Points are issued based on providing liquidity or taking a position on a property market. This will likely play into potential airdrops. You can also get extra Parcl Points by using a referral code (mine is ScottD) or sharing a referral code with others. 

So far, the platform has $27 million in liquidity, so there may be something to this. Investing in an index tracking real property values is also neat. Perhaps, one day, Parcl will be used as a hedge by homeowners and investors who want to protect their profits. 

We already know there’s a market for degens in crypto, so why not add some in real estate?

Airdrop Candidate #2: Butter-https://butter.xyz/
Chain: Mantle
The wallet I used to interact: Metamask
Point System: Yes
Referrals: Yes…my referral link is https://butter.xyz/s/1DKXY4

At first glance, Butter seems like your typical run-of-the-mill Dex that you’ve seen hundreds of times before. And, for the swapping page, this is true. You can swap between nine tokens on the growing Mantle network. The good news is that gas is nearly zero for the interactions. By doing swaps, you get reward points and you also get fishing attempts. Fishing is an entertaining game where you win real rewards. 

In the example below, I won 2 MNT worth $1.20. Sometimes, you get rugged where you get 0 MNT, and I’ve gotten as many as 3 MNT. Today, I got four fishing attempts on two swaps and won 3 MNT (got two rugpulls). I’m not sure what determines how many fishing attempts you are awarded, and it seems to vary daily.

A pixelated fishing game isn’t the only draw to this platform. Additionally, it has a perps protocol allowing you to go long or short on three ETH NFTs: Bored Ape Yacht Club, Azuki, and Grapes. 

Like luxury real estate, I’d love to own a Bored Ape or even an Azuki. Now, I can go long or short and be involved in the Ethereum NFT market. For kicks, I went low-leverage long on Bored Apes. I’m not risking too much, but I may revisit this protocol if/when the NFT market gets hot again. 

Lile Parcl, I can see Bored Ape Yacht Club holders potentially hedging their NFTs on this platform. I’m not sure if it will be worth it due to the funding rate, but if things move quickly, hedging in the opposite direction of the market may make sense.

In four days of swapping and holding a low-valued leverage long on BAYC, I have amassed enough points to remain unranked. So, maybe if an airdrop happens, I won’t get rich. But at least I can go fishing and get some instant gratification in the meantime. 

At the time of writing, Butter has $5.7 million in TVL. If you don’t have funds on Mantle, you can bridge funds via Orbiter finance: https://www.orbiter.finance/. This is a fast bridge and may also be issuing an airdrop in the future.

Airdrop Candidate #3: Topaz-https://www.topaz.so/
Chain: Aptos
The wallet I used to interact: Petra
Point System: No
Referrals: No

LookRare and Blur were two of the biggest NFT platform airdrops from the past couple of years. I’m hoping that Topaz becomes the third platform to airdrop a token. Topaz is a marketplace for NFTs and APT20 tokens. The great thing is that transaction fees are low, and some NFT collections are affordable.

Volume and users are very high, and if the Aptos token accelerates, I can see NFT activity increasing on the platform. The novel feature of Topaz is that it allows users to create a liquidity pool that can buy and sell NFTs.

I gave this idea a shot with the Duckey Portals collection: https://www.topaz.so/collection/Duckey-APTOS-e0d69b64d5. I liked the art the Duckeys were selling for around $3-$8 worth of Aptos tokens. I loaded up on some and created an LP. Not knowing what I was doing, I quickly became the owner of a dozen more Duckey Aptos NFTs.

After the Aptos tokens in my pool were drained, I figured out better how it works. It’s pretty neat and allows LP providers to earn a percentage on each trade in their pool. I like the art and am fine with having a nice-sized Duckey collection. 

I got sucked into the platform for a few hours trying to understand the whole LP process. I also bought some other NFTs because a lot of the art is pretty cool.

Final Thoughts

To check out more potential airdrop candidates, you can check tokenless sites using https://defillama.com/airdrops or https://airdrops.io/. Most will be a waste of time, as I’m sure many people are farming them and finding ways to beat the system.

Getting a multi-hundred or multi-thousand dollar airdrop is worth it for many of us in crypto. I see it as an equalizer for the rugs, scams, and rotten devs many of us fall victim to in the crypto market.

If you have any fun, interesting, or novel platforms that may be issuing an airdrop, please share them in the comments. Please include the platform name and not a link, as nobody wants to be scammed. 

While I haven’t been paid to write this article, I may get benefits if you use the referral links mentioned. 

This information should not be taken as investment advice. Digital assets like crypto and NFTs involve risk, so you should always perform due diligence before investing.