2025 Airdrop Project Participants' Major Divergence: Why Do Some Give Up While Others Persist

On-chain airdrops have recently become a hot topic once again. Someone compiled a list of over 30 expected airdrop projects for 2025, covering ecosystems like Bitcoin(BTC), Solana(SOL), as well as multiple tracks such as DeFi, liquidity staking derivatives(LSD), Layer1, and more. But after reviewing this list, many people feel even more confused—these are projects I haven’t participated in.

Why More and More People Are Exiting

Since mid-2024, a wave of popular on-chain interaction projects officially launched airdrops, but the results were disappointing. Projects like Blast, MagicEden, Layerzero, Wormhole, Movement, etc., had great momentum but minimal returns, and some even resulted in “reverse profits.” This hit is quite real: some participants spent hundreds of thousands of dollars designing interactions,刷交易量和交易频率, ranking high but ultimately earning far less from airdrops than they invested.

The market has fallen into an awkward cycle. The first batch of users who tasted success in the first half of 2024—such as those who received airdrops like ENS, ARB, STRK, TIA, JUP—are genuine users, and they unexpectedly profited. But most of the later participants, who only joined to刷交易量 for airdrops, have become “data users,” with an imbalanced投入产出。

What’s the result? Many have chosen to give up. The “hive of airdrop farming” frenzy has completely cooled down. Only two types of people persist: one is experienced early users who have figured out their interaction strategies; the other is professional bloggers and institutions, who continuously share interaction projects and techniques on platforms like Twitter, treating on-chain operations as a profession, and have indeed gained good returns.

The Hidden Costs of On-Chain Interaction

Ordinary newcomers wanting to farm airdrops in Web3 face higher costs than expected. First is gas fees—each on-chain transaction costs money. Some projects require cross-chain interactions, accumulating significant gas costs. Second are risks—phishing sites, protocol vulnerabilities, project rug pulls—none of these are low-probability events. There’s also an invisible risk called “account scrutiny”: even if you complete all interactions diligently, your interaction pattern might be identified as “non-authentic user” and be excluded.

The most heartbreaking scenario is: after participating intermittently for months and giving up before the end, when the airdrop finally arrives, you check your wallet balance and see “You are not eligible.” These four words can crush a participant’s confidence.

From the project team’s perspective, airdrops are meant to reward early contributors to the ecosystem. Real usage generates transactions and fees; later, when the project matures, airdropping tokens back to these users creates a virtuous cycle. But the current situation is the opposite—many participants have no real needs and generate fake transaction records purely for airdrops.

Should You Farm Airdrops?

If you have some capital and risk tolerance, the answer is to participate selectively. But if you lack capital and want to build initial assets through airdrop farming, it is possible, just much longer and more uncertain.

A seasoned participant’s advice: If your initial capital is less than 100,000 RMB, consider using airdrop farming as a way to “hustle” and accumulate capital. But this requires strong execution—managing multiple accounts, participating in numerous tasks, accumulating points, and gaining on-chain operation experience. It’s a long-term, tedious process, during which you’ll often question whether your efforts are meaningful and uncertain about when it will pay off.

Sometimes, months of persistence only yield some on-chain experience and vague expectations for the future, not immediate wallet value increase. But the key mindset difference is: the worst outcome of airdrop farming is no profit, not loss. This is completely different from chasing memecoins or other high-risk trades.

Comparing Other Profit Paths

Chasing small memecoins(memecoin) and joining paid communities might seem to offer quicker gains, but risks are more extreme. A Web3 newcomer who just graduated and invested 10,000 yuan into various memecoins and paid communities ended up losing everything. The characteristic of memecoin projects is—without luck, they tend to zero out, and the investment becomes a total loss.

Contract trading is more exciting but also deadlier. The line between profit and loss depends on market movements—liquidation means losing all your capital. Trading 100 meme projects might yield a big gain if one skyrockets, but statistically, most people lose.

Spot trading is the safest but requires the most capital. For example, Bitcoin(BTC), currently around $98,000, would only make about 2,400 RMB profit on a 10,000 RMB investment with a 20% rise—lower multiple of gains. On the other hand, a token like SUI, which rose from $0.4 in early August to current $4.9, a 12x increase, turning 10,000 RMB into 120,000 RMB. The key is choosing the right target.

Opportunities for Perseverers

Engaging in on-chain interaction is indeed hard, and those who persist are rare. But from a probability perspective, perseverers are more likely to succeed. Because they leave genuine interaction traces on-chain, these can become strong credentials when projects distribute airdrops.

If you really decide to go down this airdrop farming route, prepare psychologically: first, need perseverance and sustained execution; second, have the financial capacity to sustain several months or even half a year without direct returns; third, accept the uncertainty.

While the 2025 airdrop project list looks tempting, its significance varies for different participants—an opportunity for seasoned players to select and bet; a long-term marathon for beginners; a high-risk gamble for speculators. Which path to choose depends on your honest assessment of your abilities and risk tolerance.