10 Ways To Become A Better Airdrop Farmer
Optimizations = enjoy your life more by doing less work
1/ You can’t farm everything
Coming to this realization will lead to less stress and FOMO in your farming ventures.
If you were to go to an airdrop aggregation website like https://defi.oneclick.fi/airdrops/explore?page=1 you can see there are 385 different airdrops that you can currently try to farm.
This aggregator (and the inspiration for this post) is by Cruzcontrol, you can and should check out his twitter here
It is nearly impossible to try and farm everything unless you have unlimited time and capital, which no one has. Airdrop influencers will make you feel you need to farm everything by creating content on every type of farm in existence because they are incentivized to, as it gets engagement and grows their following.
2/ Prioritize high conviction plays
The greatest value of a tracker like the one previously mentioned is getting an aggregated view of the key metrics of each project.
For example there are several metrics such as difficulty, cost, funding etc.
If you want to simplify things, the “Tier” statistic provides an aggregated metric that is a combination of multiple other metrics such as:
narratives, funding, capital cost to farm, level of dilution (over or under farmed), compound/lego opportunity (farming multiple projects at once)
This makes it easier on yourself as projects with a higher tier ranking (good funding, narrative, lower difficulty, ect) provide an indication of good places to start.
3/ Budget your time and capital
Your resources, whether you're a small fry or a big fish, are finite. You might have plenty of time but lack capital, or vice versa, or perhaps both. If your budget is tight, focus on opportunities that don't require you to farm or lock up a large amount of liquidity, such as participating in incentivized testnets or more “active” farms like trading on perp DEXs or farming various L2 chains.
For those with more capital but less time you may be better suited to more “passive farms” where you provide liquidity to high potential tokenless projects.
Don’t listen to those people that argue that airdrop farming is only for beginners or those with limited funds. Airdrops arguably offer the best risk-adjusted returns in the Web3 space and there are various farms you can interact with depending on the amount of disposable capital or time you have to utilize.
Generally airdrop farms fall into 2 primary categories:
“Active farms”: Projects that demand consistent engagement and interactions - Ie generating volume and engaging with social campaigns. These are generally best suited for low portfolio/capital farmers that have more time at their disposal.
“Passive/Liquidity mining farms”: For those with capital but a limited amount of time, deposit liquidity and passively earn points for airdrops.
4/ Look for compound plays wherever possible
You may have also heard of this being referred to as “airdrop legos” or “airdrop building blocks.”
Finding ways to compound your farming interactions to hit multiple tokenless projects at once. This allows you to be more cost and time efficient.
Here are some examples:
using @Orbiter_Finance on tokenless L2s such as ZKsync, Scroll and Linea will get you “O points” while increasing your on-chain footprint on those chains
Farming @OrderlyNetwork by routing trades through @HyperliquidX or @LogX_trade or Woofi (use code “insightful” to save 30% on trading fees)
@JumperExchange or Bungee + LayerZero (selecting Stargate as your route)
Ambient + Scroll
Maverick + ZkSync/Base
Syncswap + Linea/Scroll/ZkSync
Gravita or GRVT + zkSync
Using various LSTs from tokenless protocols such as Magpie, @KelpDAO, EtherFi, Swell, or Puffer and LP on a Defi application like Pendle to maximize yield. Or deposit onto new L2s with rewards like Mode, Karak, Blast, & Zircuit
These strategies earn points for the LST you're using + Eigenlayer points + points from the protocol and/or L2 you are depositing on.
5/ Beware of Scams
Due to the thrill and urgency surrounding airdrop claims, scammers persistently attempt to exploit the situation by sharing links to counterfeit websites that closely mimic the authentic ones.
Always be on high alert when clicking links and use wallets such as @Rabby_io
(ref: INSIGHTFUL) which provides better protection than MetaMask or an extension tool like Pocket Universe. These screen and flag potentially malicious transactions while also converting them into a readable form.
6/ Understand how to properly multi account/Don’t get flagged as a Sybil
I’ve written extensively on how to properly multi account in this thread here
Increasingly, some participants in the airdrop ecosystem are turning to bots and other quality-of-life tools to automate farming across multiple wallets.
In response some protocols (such as Linea) are implementing measures to distinguish genuine users from non-human entities, often by requiring Proof of Humanity (PoH).
The following criteria are some ways that you can establish a higher “quality” wallet in the eyes of these proof of humanity protocols
Donations made via Gitcoin
A Gitcoin passport with over 20 points
Possessing a Galxe passport
Holding a Galxe Web3 ID
Possessing a DeBank Web3 ID
Attestation from Trusta Labs
In my opinion and experience these “proof of humanity mechanisms” are ineffective and a cash grab. They don’t meaningfully reduce the amount of high quality sybils in an ecosystem for a variety of reasons:
High quality sybils can easily buy KYC for 5$+ through gray markets on Telegram.to get around ID verification. The perceived potential reward is high enough for this to pay off for sophisticated bot farms.
Eg: Linea tried to implement proof of humanity and there were over 800k “verified” KYC users participating in their Galxe questIncentives are misaligned between parties. These 3rd party tools are incentivized to market their product as effective “anti sybil tools” to projects. They often require a fee to mint their respective NFT or ID (which can expire after a period of time). While the fees may only be $5-10, when this is expanded across 100k+ users it creates a massive revenue generation for essentially zero operation cost. More revenue from a large, phantom user base is better for the provider than a smaller stream from a real user base.
Low quality sybils that would get filtered out from PoH could also be filtered out using standard criteria and interaction thresholds (X amount of volume, unique days/months, unique contract, total txns , etc)
Aside from the PoH debate The long-term advantages of maintaining a high-quality wallet should not be underestimated.
As cryptocurrency gains more mainstream adoption, the value of such wallets will only increase. Ultimately, airdrops serve as marketing tools, channeling financial incentives toward their target audience, namely high-quality users wallets.
I truly believe you should treat your high quality wallets like assets and protect them accordingly, you don’t want to waste all the time and capital you have put towards building out an organic high quality wallet only to have it taken from you from some scammer because you downloaded a malicious file or interacted with a malicious contract.
7/ Manage your Risk
As with everything there is always risks and airdrop farming is no different
The inherent nature that comes with this niche is that you are mostly interacting with new protocols that are not battle hardened.
This could subject you to a variety of risks: -
Smart contract risks
Third party risks
Rug Pulls
Oracle price feed risks
Always farm with money you can / afford to lose, DYOR and be mentally prepared for the worst.
There is also opportunity and capital cost/risk which isn’t talked about as much. You should view every airdrop you farm as a trade, assessing the amount of time and capital cost required and the expected ROI associated with it.
Eg. If you deposited 2k $USDC into Kamino you would have been waiting 6 months and made less than $50 in tokens.
Conversely you could have used that same money and put it into a variety of alts or majors like Solana and made significantly more money.
Again, opportunity costs are a much bigger consideration in an overall bull market.
8/ Consistency is key
Consistency sets you apart in all aspects of life, and the same principle applies here.
After identifying your high-conviction farming targets outlined earlier, establish a routine that you can adhere to on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
Regardless of market fluctuations, your mood, or how busy your day is, sticking to a routine until it becomes a habit makes the process easier.
Stay committed and trust the process, most people give up after 1-2 months. This consistency will elevate you to the top percentile of farmers, ensuring you reap the rewards you deserve.
You should use a spreadsheet to track your progress as this will save you a lot of time cumulatively in the future
Here is one by Shady Oak to get you started
9/ Go beyond the average
If you merely follow the crowd, your performance will be average at best. Instead, try to think like the project founders. What strategies would you employ to attract high-quality wallets and maintain a loyal fan base?
Distinguish yourself by embracing more challenging tasks that many shy away from. This could involve executing transactions on the Mainnet that incur high gas fees, deploying smart contracts that demand critical thinking, or operating nodes requiring a paid VPS subscription.
10/ Better health = increase your longevity
You're almost guaranteed to either completely or barely miss an airdrop at some point. You will be forced to cope with all the “win” posts gloating on Twitter from everyone who cooked while you didn’t.
One method I try to practice to avoid “future cope” is to always have at least 1 wallet interact or exposed to an airdrop project I think is worth farming. Even if it's super annoying to farm like the Linea engagement farm campaigns or the grinding XP and fees like Orderly.
Thankfully there is always ample opportunity in the Web3 space. It is just a matter of finding them before the majority and it becomes a consensus play.
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