Retrodrops are not the easiest money in crypto.

Search for retrodrops

It's time to move on to the most discussed topic of this winter — RETRODROPS.: what is it, how to find opportunities, analyze projects in this area and finally start collecting all kinds of drops.

What Are Retroactive Airdrops and Why Do Projects Conduct Them?

Let’s not dwell too much on the concept, as many of you are already familiar with retroactive activities.

Simply, put a retroactive airdrop (or "retrodrop") is the free distribution of a project’s tokens to its community in exchange for various actions (often participation in activities) during the early stages. In other words, great projects never forget their “early adopters,” rewarding them for supporting the project at its inception.

For someone who missed the era of major airdrops, a very logical question might arise:
“Why would a project give away tokens for free?”
Well, there are several explanations for this:

1. Attracting Attention and Creating Hype

This is perhaps the most straightforward reason.

To give a concrete example: at the time of its approaching TGE (Token Generation Event), the Aptos project had around 30,000 mentions on Twitter. However, after distributing a retrodrop to over 100,000 people, the number of mentions skyrocketed to hundreds of thousands, increasing daily and creating a FOMO effect among Twitter degens.
Not a bad boost in a short time, right?

For a project, attention is crucial. It provides additional liquidity and serves as proof to investors that the project they funded is truly valuable and appreciated by the community. Large-scale projects with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in investments often allocate significant budgets for retroactive airdrops because the hype around the TGE is a key indicator of a project’s potential.

2. Legal Issues

The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) can literally bury a project if they find legal violations. One of the most common issues for which the SEC has targeted projects is treating a token as a security.

To avoid this risk, major projects are increasingly shying away from token sales in favor of retrodrops or other reward mechanisms.
For instance, Aptos did not conduct a public token sale due to these concerns. However, tokens still needed to be distributed to the community. As a result, alongside rewards for participation in incentivized testnets, they decided to retroactively allocate a few percent of the total supply to those who completed KYC on their platform, minted a special NFT, or linked their email/Discord.

This allowed them to sidestep a critical issue because, no matter how impressive a project is, the SEC has the power to shut it down entirely.

3. Demonstrating Goodwill

Every self-respecting project values its community and allocates tens of millions to various airdrops.

When designing tokenomics in the early stages of development, teams typically allocate a few percent to reward their early supporters, earning a good reputation within the community. In today’s environment, a major project that doesn’t value its "early birds" is immediately hit with FUD from all sides, killing interest in using the product.

The Co-founder of Biconomy summed it up perfectly in response to critics:
“It’s inappropriate to spread FUD when a project has changed the lives of thousands of people through its retrodrop.”

How Much Could You Earn by Participating in Retroactive Airdrops?

I’m not one to create or fuel FOMO, but it’s impossible to overlook these figures, as many newcomers can’t even imagine the kind of money alpha retro-hunters have earned.

Let’s imagine a character — let’s call him Vasya. He started with a small deposit and spent two years fully focused on finding retroactive activities. Of course, it’s impossible to catch every project, but the most successful cases — and those where "anyone could participate" — allowed Vasya to grow his deposit to at least a six-figure amount through the following projects:

2021

— Ens Domains (≈1k-15k$)

— DYDX (≈5k-100k$)

— Biconomy (≈8k-25k$)

— Paraswap (≈5k-15k$)

— Notional Finance (≈7k-30k$)

2022

— Project Galaxy (≈500-6k$)

— Goldfinch (≈1k-12k$)

— Optimism (≈1k-7k$)

— Hashflow (≈500-20k$)

— Aptos (≈1k-3k$)

It's Important to Note

The minimum and maximum earnings vary for each person since not everyone sells at the same price — some even choose to hold their tokens. Additionally, the calculations are based on participating with one account. In cases of multi-accounting during such events, you can easily estimate the potential profits yourself.

In Summary

The ten projects mentioned above were recalled within a minute. Over the course of two years, there were significantly more retroactive airdrops. In some cases, the payouts were relatively modest (up to $500), while in others — particularly the most fortunate cases — the minimum drop amount started from $20,000.

What Are the Main Criteria Projects Use for Retroactive Airdrops?

We’ve brushed up on the basics and gotten a dose of top-tier FOMO. Now let’s discuss the criteria: what they might include and what guides the team when developing a plan for distributing tokens for retroactive activities.

• "Activity" of Your Wallet — Many projects base their airdrop distribution on a fairly simple yet often overlooked parameter: activity across various EVM networks.
• Contributions at the Very Early Stages of Project Development — This can include straightforward actions like boosting a Discord server, performing swaps in alpha versions of testnets, filling out feedback forms, or participating in community calls.
• Amount of Activity in a Specific Project — Optimism set this trend with their "Repeat OP Users" criterion, which requires performing activities a certain number of times over different periods before the snapshot.
• Engagement in the Ecosystem — For L1 blockchains and L2 solutions, an important criterion is interacting with various dApps, demonstrating yourself as a genuinely active user rather than a typical retrodrop hunter, whose behavior can easily be identified.
• Number of Users — Think of Paraswap and their extensive research, where they revealed that out of over 1,300,000 users, they excluded abusers, leaving only 20,000 wallets eligible for the airdrop. By the way, I highly recommend reading their research in full — I’m sure you’ll find it quite insightful.

Not a Specific Criterion, But Worth Mentioning: The Project’s Importance to the Crypto Ecosystem as a Whole — Take two examples: DeFi projects and blockchains. Naturally, blockchains carry much more significance. As a result, such projects often allocate a significant portion of their tokenomics to the community (e.g., Aptos and Sui allocated over 50% of their total token supply). This creates numerous opportunities to participate in various activities and events.

How I Search for and Analyze Projects for Potential Retroactive Airdrops?

There are many methods for searching for retroactive projects in the market right now, and I want to share with you some of the techniques I personally use.

An example of how many projects try to mislead us: for those who didn’t get it, after some time, Paraswap did indeed distribute a very nice airdrop.

Now, I’ll introduce you to some tools that play an indispensable role in my research.

Dune

I give the top spot to this gem — I literally can’t find better words to describe it. This is where you can find information that helps you understand the actual number of users, their volumes, the most popular actions, and everything that could be important when analyzing retroactive activities you’re planning. Later on, I’ll show a specific example of project research where this tool was used.

Crypto Aggregators of CIS Channels

The aggregators I use have already been mentioned in this article. Let me briefly explain how I use them.

First, I want to thank the people who run their channels and do a lot of work to uncover interesting moves and possible actions that could lead to a drop in one project or another. My tactic is incredibly simple — I type in the relevant keyword in the Telegram search, and magic happens — dozens of posts from different researchers who have sifted through tons of information: social networks, documentation, official project chats, and they bring the information to their followers on a silver platter.

In my case, I quickly skim through the posts and see what the key focus is for various influencers, what moves they recommend their followers make to get a retrodrop. The main thing left to do is to digest this information and go a little further than what’s described in the typical post.

Here, I mean that when studying such information, you should try to find some subtle point that’s not mentioned in most posts and guides, thus increasing your potential multiplier/chances for the retrodrop. Personally, if I see that many places suggest making 10 transactions, I do 20, thereby outperforming most people.

VC Investment Aggregators

These data help track where investors' money is flowing, allowing you to get in on a project at an early stage (sometimes, projects closing a round don't even have social networks — possible gems in the early stages). I use the following sources:

Twitter

The last but not least tool I use is Twitter, which helps me learn what foreign influencers think about a particular event. I think there's no need to teach you how to use it, but I’ll briefly explain how I use Twitter:

• Type in the topic that interests me (e.g., "project_name" airdrop strategy).
• Check out the most popular tweets on this topic, then do the same with the “Recent” category.
• Recall the previous point and try to outdo the influencer and their audience by making just a few more contributions than they recommend.
• Profit.

You may have expected to see dozens of unnecessary, “super important” links and sources, but trust me, the tools I’ve mentioned are more than enough to analyze most projects and develop your own strategy for working with different activities.

Let’s put project analysis into practice.

Beginners have gained the basics, and I hope veterans have picked up something new. Now, I’ll show you how I analyze a project. Keep in mind, every project requires its own approach, but there are some clichés that apply universally.

Let’s look at one of my favorites and one of the most anticipated events, which I hope will bring us joy in 2023 — the full-fledged launch of zkSync. For context, my main research on this project was conducted way back in September 2021, but it remains on the radar, with many still hunting for its retrodrop.

Now it’s time to revisit the project in its current state. Despite the long wait, no token has been launched yet, which has attracted a massive number of retro-hunters. Let’s dive in!

The first step is to visit the official website, where the scale and quality of VC (venture capital) backing the project immediately stand out.

$458,000,000 invested into the project. Just take a moment to process those numbers...

Not long ago, the zkSync team updated their website, and it looks amazing—everything is neatly organized. Clearly, the team isn’t just spending money on Lambos!

Next, we head over to Dune → search for our project’s name and explore the most popular dashboards. One metric that immediately caught my attention was the number and volume of transfers made via the official bridge.

It’s easy to spot the alpha here—if you want to outperform 70%+ of users, you’ll need to make a deposit via the official bridge of more than 0.1 ETH. Think about it—this single parameter alone could exclude nearly half a million people.

Dune has already helped us identify a potential parameter. Next, we can search for guides, either on aggregators or Twitter, to gather as much information as possible on available activities within the network. Afterward, we analyze them. Below is what I personally identified and carried out on my accounts:

1. Gitcoin Donations:
   The projects are closely connected since zkSync supports donation payments. During every round, I donated small amounts (<$5) to various projects.
2. Using the Mainnet dApp – ZigZag Exchange:
   Here, I focused on generating small trading volumes with numerous transactions. It’s better to space these out over a few weeks rather than completing them all at once. This approach makes you look like an “active” user to the project. Yes, it sounds a bit odd to keep swapping back and forth, but that’s DeFi for you—especially since no other exciting dApps are yet available in the mainnet.
3. Minting NFTs:
   This feature is available on the main wallet page of zkSync, and it might not be there by chance. Therefore, minting a few NFTs is advisable (which I did).
4. Deposits and Withdrawals:
   Making a deposit larger than 0.1 ETH (ideally >0.5 ETH to outperform >90% of users) is a smart move. Additionally, making deposits and withdrawals at different times, with intervals of a few weeks, is also recommended.
5. Maintaining Balances on L1 and L2:
   It’s a wise idea to hold a small balance on both layers. I started following this parameter after Paraswap included a wallet balance as one of its criteria for identifying “active users.” It may sound odd, but since the project implemented this, it’s worth considering.
6. Testing in 2021:
   While it’s too late now, back in late 2021, testing Unisync (a Uniswap fork) and Curve in zkSync’s testnet was popular. These activities were frequently mentioned in the project’s official Twitter and Discord channels. Subscribing back then would have easily allowed you to complete these tasks.
7. Community Quiz (Q3 2021):
   The project held a quiz where participants had to fill out a form to receive a POAP if they answered all questions correctly. At the time, fewer than 25,000 people participated, which could serve as a solid “early adopter” indicator for the project. While the chances are slim, if you genuinely believe in the project and its potential airdrop, you should strive to participate in as many activities as possible.

Additional Activities (DYOR):

While I don’t strongly believe in these as multipliers for retro drops, taking part in them on multiple accounts likely won’t hurt:

• Participating in Crew3 quests;
• Minting Citizen IDs from the Tevaera game and being active there;
• Earning easily accessible Discord roles.

All the information presented here was sourced from public resources by simply searching "zkSync airdrop". This highlights a crucial insight: to stand out from the typical retro-drop hunter, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Instead, consistently maintain activity—regularly execute transactions, interact on both L1 and L2, support projects on Gitcoin, and stay vigilant on all official resources. This ensures you won’t miss critical, time-limited events (e.g., the Unisync testnet, which was restricted by time).

A Hidden Gem of Insight

One of the most compelling "alphas" I stumbled upon in 2021 (purely by chance while searching "zkSync alpha" on Twitter) was a screenshot answering a fascinating question posed to a team member.

2/3 of tokens allocated to the retro-drop??? 😱

While this could very well change (we are in crypto, after all), these sorts of "signals" can act as a catalyst, compelling you to dive deep into the project. Interestingly, early-stage projects often let slip more than they intend to. Whether it’s team members responding candidly to questions or making accidental disclosures in social posts, such clues can be invaluable for those paying attention—especially when a project is still in its infancy. Trust me, monitoring such interactions is far from a waste of time.

On this high note, the research comes to an end. Should you still be interacting with zkSync today? That’s a rhetorical question, as none of us can be certain whether the snapshot has already been taken. Any engagement with the project from scratch at this point is at your own risk. As always, Do Your Own Research (DYOR)!

Important Criteria for Selecting Projects:

So, I usually look at the following parameters:

• Funds and investment volumes — how can we go without our favorite VCs? They often serve as a clear indicator that can play a key role in the development of a project.

To begin with, the basics — a project with $1,000,000 and tier-10 funds can almost never distribute a large drop and accommodate many participants.

I only participate in projects backed by major American VCs that invest tens of millions of dollars in the product. It's all very simple — such projects are often willing to "bribe" their audience by distributing generous retro drops.

BUT, you always need to know the line, as there are cases when a project with $10m raised distributes to the community much more than a project with $100m. That’s why you should never evaluate activity based on a single parameter. Once, I was really frustrated when people started idolizing funds, considering them the sole parameter of a project's success. This led to a controversial post, “Crypto Funds or How They’re Trying to Deceive You,” questioning the invented "fact" that you should only look at the funds while disregarding the concept, team, community, and other details.

• Experience — I couldn’t leave this parameter out since it’s thanks to experience that it takes me only a few minutes to estimate the chances of a retro drop.

As mentioned earlier, the sooner you start researching projects on your own and studying past success/failure stories, the broader your understanding will become of what to pay attention to. Therefore, I highly recommend all newcomers study previous retro drops: coin distribution methods, abuser filtering techniques, and key multipliers. Over time, with each attempt, you’ll gain experience, which will significantly reduce the time spent on research in the future.

• Unjustified hype — this is especially relevant nowadays. After recent FOMO stories about drops from Aptos and Hashflow, people seem to see the possibility of a retro drop in absolutely every project, flooding them with thousands of accounts, often receiving nothing in return but useless POAPs, OATs, and similar junk.

I try to avoid such stories if I realize that a project simply cannot accommodate tens or hundreds of thousands of participants. It’s fairly easy to determine: typically, everyone fits in only when the project has a very large use case (e.g., blockchains, L2 networks) that have raised tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and are creating a product for significant "mass adoption" rather than a narrow audience.

• The team’s attitude toward the community — this point is more relevant if you decide to participate in a particular activity.

To evaluate it, you just need to study the project’s social networks — usually Twitter or Discord. In the first social network, you can track (through posts on the official account or those of its founders) how they respond to community questions and what kind of posts they share. Very often, you can spot hints in various tweets that will help you understand the direction to take.

To earn over $8,000, it would have been enough to simply read the official post on Biconomy's Twitter and make one transaction.

In Discord, you would first need to find team members on the server and then browse through their messages. Sometimes, in conversations, they might let slip some extra information, giving you a hint on what to focus on.

• Intuition or a gut feeling — this is what can help you catch your life-changing opportunity with just one project. This parameter is closely tied to your experience because guessing a project where you can end up earning big money is very hard by chance alone.

I always tell everyone that I don’t need to participate in dozens or hundreds of projects a year, as it’s enough for me to “guess” just 2–3 ideas to outperform those chasing quantity over quality.

Don’t spread yourself too thin. If you’re experienced enough and ready to take the risk of missing out and ending up with nothing — take the risk and look for that gem that will pay off all the previous stories tenfold. “No risk, no champagne” is the perfect phrase to reflect these thoughts.

The strategy of doing many activities but not at the highest quality also has its place; it’s just that I prefer to fully immerse myself in a few projects, knowing every detail, constantly convincing and motivating myself that I’ve chosen the right one.

That concludes the list of parameters; study them and maybe add them to your personal research, because the more parameters and aspects you review, the more accurately and deeply you’ll be able to analyze a project.

Which retro drops I’m betting on

It’s time to put my skin in the game and do something I don’t really enjoy — make public predictions. In any case, it will be interesting to test my luck with forecasts, as over time, we’ll be able to revisit this material and compare what worked and what didn’t.

Whether you rush to participate in activities now or not — it’s up to each person. I can’t guarantee anything; I just want to show you which projects I’m betting on. So, as they say, Do Your Own Research + Not Financial Advice.

List of my GEMS:

zkSync | Arbitrum | LayerZero | StarkNet |
MetaMask (ConsenSys) | Sui | Aptos* |
Optimism* | Aztec | Scroll | Golden |

*the project has a token, but there’s hope for new rounds of drops.

All of these projects perfectly fit my criteria, and therefore, they are actively being worked on by me. I hope this isn’t a waste of time!

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