New Airdrops Meta: Staking

How Much You Could Get By Staking Right Assets?

Staking for Airdrops farming has become one of the hottest topics of 2024 so far. We've seen at least 4 major airdrops, 3 of which took place within the Cosmos ecosystem.

Here are some of the latest examples based on the minimum airdrop value:

• For staking 10 ATOM one could get $3000+ worth of TIA in current prices.
• For staking 1 TIA one could get $1000+ worth of DYM in current prices.
• For staking 100 OSMO one could get $2000+ worth of TIA in current prices.
• For staking 1 RON one could get $1000+ worth of PIXEL in current prices.

As we can see, the cost of these huge profits (especially if you fought tokens during the bear market) is barely worth $100. This strategy is one of the most profitable today.

Airdrop Farming in Cosmos Ecosystem

Cosmos Hub is the main ecosystem for airdrop farming. To encourage staking, networks launching on Cosmos distribute a portion of the tokens via airdrop to stakers of ATOM and other core ecosystem tokens, such as OSMO, TIA, etc. We've already covered Cosmos staking recently, but now we'll expand on that topic a bit more. 

Despite the fact that there can't be a predetermined number of tokens for staking of which there will be an airdrop from a new project, some conclusions can be drawn. The best criteria would be: 

• To understand the basic purpose of the project, the tokens of which you are staking;
• To know the number of wallets that stake these tokens;
• To know existing statistics on airdrops.

Stats on past airdrops and the approximate wallet rank from the table above can be viewed at Cosmosdrops.

Cosmos

Cosmos is a Layer 0 blockchain for running various Layer 1 chains using the Cosmos SDK toolkit. These Layer 1 chains are called Hubs, and Cosmos Hub is one of them. All the emerging Cosmos chains share Tendermint BFT, the Cosmos-based Proof-of-Stake consensus engine, to verify transactions. Thus, all of those chains in order to fully function require ATOM to be staked. Since staking is required and the ATOM token has no other utility, the airdrop incentive for staking ATOM will remain until chains continue to appear on Cosmos. Almost every project launching on Cosmos, has airdropped its token to ATOM stakers. Since recently, even liquid ATOM (mostly staked via Stader) stakers have started becoming eligible.

Celestia

Celestia is building a modular consensus and data availability network so that anyone can easily deploy their own blockchain with minimal overhead. So, basically, Celestia offers a cheaper way to create and operate any chain on top of it. Airdrop incentive for staking TIA remains until protocols continue to chose Celestia as data availability and consensus provider.  The minimum TIA staking criteria varies from project to project: to be eligible for Dymension airdrop, it was only 1 staked TIA; while for AltLayer airdrop it was 32 staked TIA.

Dymension

Dymension is a modular chain and toolkit that allows building RollApps with a user-friendly constructor. Most likely, those RollApps distribute a portion of tokens to DYM stakers because they require Dymension stakers in order to function.

Injective

Injective is a DeFi-focused blockchain with parallel execution. Injective has managed to develop and skyrocket its ecosystem at the end of 2023. There were no drops yet, but they are expected.

Osmosis

Osmosis is the main DeFi Hub within the Cosmos ecosystem, that offers liquidity exchange between Cosmos Hubs. The OSMO stakers are the second main recipients of airdrops inside Cosmos after the ATOM stakers. Both TIA and DYM were airdropped to OSMO stakers, for example.

Sei Network

Sei is a trading-focused blockchain with parallel execution. Sei aims to create a platform and SDK for trading applications, so those Apps likely distribute a portion of tokens to SEI stakers. 

Kujira

Kujira is another DeFi-oriented blockchain within Cosmos, that allows building Rust-based smart contracts.

Which Projects May Airdrop Coins To Cosmos Ecosystem Stakers?

There are a lot of projects building on top of Cosmos, and these 6 are probably some of the most popular. Berachain is one of the most anticipated blockchain launches of 2024, and it could definitely be a big event for ATOM stakers.  Note that there are even more projects using Celestia's and Dymension's services to build their blockchains and dApps. 

Other Blockchain Ecosystems

Cosmos Hubs are likely some of the most interesting staking investments for farming airdrops. However, there are more opportunities outside of Cosmos. Take note: newly launched projects are worth considering staking, as even more projects will be launched utilizing their services or features.

Solana

There have been no meaningful airdrops for staking SOL throughout Solana's existence, and none are forthcoming. The same cannot be said about Jupiter, the main DeFi hub of Solana.  

Jupiter Exchange

The JUP token was airdropped on January 31st, 2024 and already on February 29, holders of 1200+ JUP tokens became eligible for token airdrop from AARK Digital. Recently, the team has launched the Jupiter voting platform. According to the official information, all votes will receive incentives, which includes fees from future launchpad projects. There is no official information about airdrop incentives, but given that there's already airdrop precedent for holding, the airdrop for locking tokens and voting is a matter of time. Note, that unlocking tokens takes 30 days. Lock at least 501 JUP.

Pyth Network 

Pyth Network is a recently emerged Solana-based oracle. The first airdrop for PYTH stakers came from Nabla Finance, with the minimum eligibility criteria being 500 PYTH in staking. For the second airdrop from AARK Digital, only users with a stake of 1200+ PYTH were eligible. There is a clear trend towards increasing the minimum criteria. To farm airdrops through PYTH staking, it is important to participate in the DAO voting. 

Polygon

Staking MATIC and then POL occurs on the Ethereum Mainnet, which could become a significant barrier for many due to the gas prices, even after the Dencun update; on the other hand, it will cut off many airdrop hunters. Recently, Saga has airdropped its tokens for staking 300+ MATIC; only 26,000 wallets were eligible. Thus, it hardly makes sense to stake less than 300 tokens.

Polygon intends to create a so-called Aggregated Layer for blockchains, a unified liquidity space where various chains interact with each other via zk proofs. Presumably, once the migration from MATIC to POL is complete, the Polygon team will launch additional incentive programs for staking the brand-new token, as staking is a key aspect of existence. Potentially, POL stakers could receive token allocations from some protocols connected to this Aggregated Layer or zk-rollups launching with Polygon CDK.

StarkNet

Airdrop of STRK tokens has enriched many, but at the same time, it has left even more users dissatisfied and even enraged. Users criticized the selection criteria, the snapshot date, and the fact that many who indeed fit the criteria did not receive the airdrop. The wave of hatred rose so high that the Starknet team even redesigned the token vesting schedule for investors and promised more airdrops to users.

To retain leaving users, Starknet may introduce ecosystem airdrops for STRK staking, although there is no official information on this. Since Starknet is focusing on Account Abstraction and on-chain gaming, airdrops should be expected in those segments, if anything. Staking occurs on the Ethereum mainnet, one should stake at least 201 and preferably 1001+ STRK tokens, if anything.

Gaming Chains

Staking on gaming-focused blockchains is one of the most promising and only emerging areas for airdrop farming. The distribution of game tokens occurs primarily for playing these games, but if one has no time or desire to play, capturing a significant portion of these airdrops becomes more and more possible for staking. Furthermore, this is probably the less crowded way.

Ronin

Ronin is an Ethereum gaming-focused sidechain by the Axie Infinity team. So far, Ronin is one of the most successful gaming chains, based on daily active users. Recently, it hyped with the Pixels airdrop for staking RON. The criteria were:

• 183.34 PIXEL for 1 RON staked.
• 675.75 PIXEL for 55 RON staked.
• 2315.77 PIXEL for 684.64 RON staked.
• 3,955.11 PIXEL for 8317.4 RON staked. 

XAI

Xai is a recently launched gaming Layer 3 blockchain within Arbitrum Orbit. In late February, they added the XAI staking option. The ecosystem itself is still immature, though promising, and it's too early to draw conclusions. It makes sense to stake at least 101 XAI tokens, based on Pixels airdrop to RON stakers. 

The Bottom Line

In a bull market, few people will keep their funds in staking only for 10%+ per annum, when there are many more profitable ways to earn money in the market. Therefore, more and more PoS protocols will introduce additional incentives in the form of airdrops for their stakers, on which the functioning of the protocol depends. As success stories multiply, the number of people willing to stake will grow until the industry becomes overcrowded with them, as was the case with ICOs. It isn’t the case yet. 

With each new major airdrop, the minimum eligibility criteria increases while the reward drops. This is an obvious trend due to hype and increasing FOMO. This means that if one wants multiple accounts for airdrop farming, one should focus on quality rather than quantity. Two wallets with $5000 worth of coins each in different staked tokens will likely be better than 10 accounts with $1000 worth of coins each in different staked tokens, both in terms of risk/reward ratio and eligibility chance. The number of options for airdrop farming increases as well, so it makes sense to focus on already developed ecosystems. Also, most of the users like to stake rounded numbers of tokens because it's handy, so in order to increase the wallet rank, it makes sense to take the desired number of tokens plus one for staking (100+1, for example).