The Biggest & Wildest Airdrops of 2024
Between 2020 and 2023, over $21bn was sent out in crypto airdrops.
In 2020, Uniswap (UNI) shared over $6.4bn with their community, ten times more than any other project in that calendar year.
In 2021, dYdX airdropped $2.01bn, Ethereum Name Service ($ENS) distributed $1.88bn, and Internet Computer ($ICP) was not far behind at $1.73bn.
Apecoin ($APE) was 2022’s biggest airdropper at $3.54bn, however, it was Bonk ($BONK) that really captured the market’s imagination with its transformative effect on the Solana Saga phones, meme coins, and the airdropping space.
In 2023, it was Arbitrum’s turn to wear the crown, airdropping $1.96bn to claimants.
Now, let’s cast our attention to 2024.
5 Biggest Crypto Airdrops: 2024
So, who held the biggest and wildest airdrop of 2024?
Whose airdropping strategy was as generous and masterful, as it was adept at capturing mindshare?
As some of the airdrops are still active, the complete picture for their results may not be available.
Considering this, we’ve based the following ranking on our own subjective formula that considers the airdrop’s dollar value, hype, innovation, engagement, “wild factor”, room for error, and more.
Continue reading to find our 5 biggest crypto airdrops of 2024, as well as some honorable mentions.
5. EigenLayer - The Kings of Restaking ($EIGEN)
Some may feel that EigenLayer was the biggest crypto airdrop of 2024, based on how much noise it made, so it’s a powerful project to start off this list.
EigenLayer has been at the heart of the liquid staking trend that has captured the imagination of many DeFi enthusiasts in 2024.
The liquid staking space has grown from a little over $100m TVL to over $15bn TVL, in just one year. EigenLayer deserves credit for that, especially considering that $12bn of that TVL came just from ETH deposits on their popular platform.
Airdrops from EigenLayer were designed to open up opportunities for developers to build new AVSs with $EIGEN staking, securing their services for different use cases. Since the most popular and successful tools built on EigenLayer have over $3bn in cumulative TVL, this is highly attractive.
EigenLayer were faultless throughout the airdrop process, which is rare (as you’ll see with the following airdrop stories).
There were no mistakes or controversies, and the airdrops and unlocks have served their ecosystem as they should, achieving growth and opportunity, instead of immediate massive sell-offs and greed. Perhaps this is because an established and respected protocol backed the token.
At the time of the first airdrop, $EIGEN were valued at around $4.00 each, with 112m tokens distributed for a total of around $450m in giveaways. Generous!
Verdict: Success.
4. ZKsync’s Billion-Dollar Giveaway - ($ZK)
On-chain data suggests that the average value of the ZKsync airdrop was an impressive $1,799, so, how did this come about?
On June 17th, ZKsync launched their highly anticipated token, airdropping 3.6 billion $ZK to around 695,000 eligible wallets. With a market cap of around $1bn at launch, onlookers knew this would be exciting.
Unfortunately, the airdrop was flawed from the start.
Vocal critics argued that the organizers heavily favored internal partners and ecosystem projects over ordinary users, questioning whether the airdrop was random or selective.
These rumors didn’t go down well with the community, so, after a slight price increase at launch, $ZK then started to plummet.
Sell-offs, combined with an overall market downturn, saw the market cap fall to and stabilize at around $650m.
Before the airdrop, users on the perpetuals platform “Aevo” believed that $ZK would launch at around $0.63.
However, at the time of the airdrop, $ZK tokens were just $0.27, before collapsing to $0.09. They made a surprising recovery back to $0.27, before a new wave of sell-offs began, bringing the price to under $0.18.
Unfortunately, the chain is losing users month-on-month.
Verdict: Fail.
3. StarkWare’s “Starknet” Airdrop - ($STRK)
Third on our list of the biggest crypto airdrops of 2024, we have Starknet, whose $STRK coin was announced on Feb 14th and airdropped a week later on Feb 20th.
The Starknet Foundation announced that over 900m STRK tokens were earmarked for airdrops, with a claiming period lasting 4 months, from Feb 20th to June 20th. By the end, it is thought that around 500m tokens were claimed, leaving 400m for future drops.
At $2.7 per STRK, the airdrop was theoretically worth $1.4bn. However, there’s more to the story.
Firstly, who were the claimants, and why were they getting rewarded?
This quote from the CEO of StarkWare explains more:
“The main goal of Provisions was to allocate STRK tokens to a broad set of individuals, real people, who will operate the system and contribute to its security and governance, contributing to its decentralized nature.”
You can read the reflections on the airdrop and comments addressing the negativity of its apparent failure from Eli Ben-Sasson, the CEO and Co-Founder of StarkWare, Starknet’s parent company.
Separate on-chain research found conflicting information, revealing that only ~40% of people actually claimed their eligible STRK, while only 1.1% eventually held on to it. This means that basically everyone dumped. This is why the token price is down more than 80% since the airdrop, from $2.70 to $0.48 (at the time of writing).
It was also found that “the token was created in November 2022, but the original one-year vesting period was delayed until April of this year” (source).
This is dishonest and makes many people in the DeFi space suspicious.
Verdict: Fail.
2. $PENGU, from Pudgy Penguins
Many readers will be familiar with the Pudgy Penguins brand and their NFTs. Fewer, however, will know that on December 17, 2024, they released a $PENGU meme coin, airdropping around 50% of the circulating supply to holders of different Pudgy NFT collections, as well as OG Solana and Ethereum users.
After releasing the tokens, Dune analytics showed that only 85% of claimants had secured their airdrop.
Qualifying individuals only have 88 days to complete their claim, which could be worth thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars at this point.
The considerable hype around the airdrop caused the $PENGU token price to climb, bringing the value of the airdrop to around $1.3bn!
This surpasses $BONK as the biggest meme coin airdrop of all time, with many believing that $PENGU will continue to climb throughout the bull market.
Data suggests that the average $PENGU airdrop is worth around $2,000, making this an incredibly generous distribution from the NFT and toy brand.
($HYPE) - The Biggest Crypto Airdrop of 2024 (and All Time!)
Hyperliquid is “the blockchain to house all finance” in their own words, but we’d describe it as a well designed decentralized exchange with a popular native token - $HYPE. Launched on November 29, $HYPE’s price climbed from around $3.3 to more than $32 in less than one month.
This token success has made Hyperliquid’s airdrop the most generous of all time, and the biggest crypto airdrop of 2024, by far.
Let’s go back a few steps…
Early in 2024, Hyperliquid began a points campaign, asking users to take different actions to support the DEX’s future ambitions.
In May, 2024, the campaign ended, and all of those points sat there for about 6 months, gathering dust, or so it seemed.
On the 2nd of November, however, time for action had come, and the team airdropped 31% of the coin’s supply to points holders!
That 31% was not the end of their airdrops. The core team has also set aside another 23.8% of the total supply for future core contributors.
$HYPE was distributed via airdrop when the price hit $3.90, and with 300m tokens being shared, the total value of the airdrop was about $1.17bn.
Within 12 hours, however, the token was up by 63%, trading at $6.16. It has continued to grow ever since, and now, at the time of writing, the airdrop could be worth a staggering $10bn.
Not only has $HYPE surpassed Uniswap’s $UNI token as the biggest airdrop of all time, it also looks set to become a top 10 cryptocurrency by total market cap.
All we can say is - congratulations to those who found this opportunity, engaged, and can now reap the rewards.
You’ve got to be in it to win it.
Verdict: Success.
Honors List: 2024 Crypto Airdrops
Some projects didn’t quite make our top 5, but they still had big and wild airdrops in 2024, here are our honorable mentions.
LayerZero ($ZRO) - This cutting-edge cross-chain interoperability platform airdropped its native token, $ZRO, on June 20th. A total of 1.28m wallets were eligible for claims, with LayerZero doing additional work to stop aggressive bots and airdrop farmers from getting hold of the token. At the time of writing, the airdrop's value appears to be approximately $452 million (based on claimants and the current price); however, its launch value was around $375 million.
Verdict: Success.
Jupiter Exchange ($JUP) - Jupiter may not have caught all the headlines, but its 2024 airdrop is starting to look like one of the most generous reward handouts of the year. With $JUP currently trading on DEXs at around $0.81, and around 966m tokens having been claimed, the airdrop looks to be worth over $800m. Verdict: Success.
Dymension ($DYM) - This “RollApps” blockchain network launched its mainnet and airdropped over $390m in $DYM tokens at the same time. This constituted around 7% of the entire supply, or 700m tokens, and could have gone to over a million wallets across different blockchains and projects, based on different qualifying factors. Unfortunately, only about half of the eligible wallets ever claimed their share. This airdrop was still one of the biggest in Q1.
Verdict: Success.
Hamster Kombat ($HMSTR) - Last, but not least, how can we forget Hamster Kombat. One of several Telegram mini-apps that inspired a huge non-crypto audience, they were a big Web3 trend in 2024. Unfortunately, the mainly non-crypto user base is what killed the $HMSTR token after it was airdropped on September 26th. It crashed by almost 70%. Since people just played for money, an airdrop was just seen as a bonus to cash out immediately. Since then, over 10 million people have stopped playing with these cute, yet violent creatures.
Verdict: Fail.
Looking Forward to Airdrops in 2025
Whether you’re a reader educating yourself on airdrops, or an active DeFi user searching for missed claims, this has been a wild year for the space. Looking to 2025, it’s set to be no different.
We will see if anything can launch with the same ferocity and scale as projects like Hyperliquid did in 2024 and Uniswap a few years back.
Multi-billion-dollar giveaways are extraordinary, but may become commonplace with the wealth of inflows and investments in the blockchain industry.