Token sales and airdrops - the easiest money in the crypto

Public Sale (ICO, IDO)

Hope you’re not disappointed in crypto yet after trading and investing. Now, let’s move on to a related niche—sales.

What Are Sales?

In simple terms, sales (or token sales) are investments in a project before it starts trading on an exchange. There are many types—ICO, IDO, IEO, IFO, etc.—but they all serve the same purpose: selling tokens before their official listing.

Example: Coinlist ICOs

Two years ago, Coinlist was a hot platform for hosting ICOs of new crypto projects. Here’s how you could participate:

1. Register an account on Coinlist.
2. Complete verification.
3. Wait for a sale announcement.
4. Enter a lottery for a chance to buy tokens (yes, you had to win the right to invest).
5. If lucky, you could purchase tokens (usually between $500–$1,000 per account).
6. After 1–2 months, the project would launch on exchanges.
7. Sell your tokens for profit or loss.

In 2021, Coinlist was extremely profitable. Some projects 10x–20x investors’ money. Considering the $500–$1,000 investment cap, this resulted in massive gains.

To increase your chances, you needed 50–100 Coinlist accounts to secure at least one allocation.

Is Coinlist Still Relevant in 2024?

As of April 2024, not really. But there are plenty of other platforms still offering big returns. How do you find them? Research and community involvement (more on that below).

Current Popular Launchpads

• Ape Terminal
• DAO Maker
• Binance Launchpad
• ChainGPT

Why Are Sales Needed?

There are several reasons:

• For the project – 1) attract investment; 2) gain media exposure (free marketing).
• For investors (us) – to make multiples (X profits).
• For the launchpad (the platform hosting the sale) – to take a commission or allocation—they also want to profit.

Types of Sales

To understand this, let’s recall a project's lifecycle:

📌 Idea → Building → Fundraising → TGE (Token Generation Event)

Most public sales happen between the fundraising and TGE stages. Before public sales, projects raise money from big investors (VC funds, DAOs, syndicates, and guilds). These investors not only bring money but also connections, expertise, and marketing. They get the best price in rounds like Seed, Private, Series A/B, etc.

📌 But public sales are for regular people. The entry barrier is usually low.

Here are the main types of public sales:

• ICO (Initial Coin Offering) – Hosted on specialized platforms like Coinlist, Tokensoft.
• IDO (Initial DEX Offering) – Done fully on DeFi smart contracts (funds go into a smart contract, and tokens are received back).
• IEO (Initial Exchange Offering) – Hosted by CEXs (Binance, KuCoin, Bybit). Participation often requires holding the exchange's token.
• IFO, IGO, and others – Just fancy terms made up by projects. Example: IFO (Initial Farm Offering) on PancakeSwap.
• SHO (Strong Holder Offering) – DAO Maker’s sale format for those holding DAO tokens.

How to Participate in Sales?

You can’t just invest and wait for profit—you need effort. Projects won’t let you invest for free; they want something in return (engagement, marketing, or commitment).

How to get an allocation?

✅ Lottery – Fill out forms (like Coinlist’s system).
✅ Holding project tokens – e.g., on Binance Launchpad, the more BNB you hold, the bigger your allocation.
✅ Influencing – If you promote the project (Twitter, Telegram, YouTube, etc.), you may get an allocation.
✅ Being a VIP – Early-stage investing, advising projects, or having strong connections.

Each project has its own rules. But getting an allocation is just the first step—the real key is proper research to identify high-potential projects.

Which Sales to Participate In?

The most important metric here is the current market condition and whether sales are generally successful. If the market is strong and sales are yielding multiples (X profits), it's worth exploring new opportunities.

For example, in early 2021, when Bitcoin hit its all-time high (ATH), it was very hard to find a losing sale. Personally, I participated in Polkastarter IDOs and consistently made at least 10x profits. At that time, it didn't matter whether the project was good or not; profits were guaranteed!

Product

In reality, it doesn’t really matter what the project is about. Sometimes even the most useless projects can give multiples. What’s more important for the success of the sale are numbers (hype, marketing, low market cap, etc.). And, of course, the main thing is that it’s not an obvious scam.

The Team

In the beginning, it's hard to evaluate the team, but it's important to check if the team exists and whether they are anonymous. If you find that each team member is a standout, that's a plus. And if they are star figures who have worked at big companies, that's even better.

Initial Market Cap (MCAP)

Let’s break this down. It will be a bit tricky, but you’ll definitely get it.

Market Cap (MCAP) = the total value of the entire project at the moment.

MCAP = circulating token supply × token price.

For example, there’s a project called Highstreet. Its token price is $1.67 right now, and there are 40.68 million tokens in circulation. Multiply, and we get $67.79 million. This is its MCAP, meaning the total market value of the project at this moment.

Now, let’s look at Initial MCAP = the total value of the project at the time of its launch.

Initial MCAP = number of tokens at launch × token listing price.

The lower the Initial MCAP, the better for multiples. Let’s look at an example.

Let’s say there’s a project called VASYAPUPKIN, which has already been launched, and its MCAP is $10 million. There’s another project called andreypetrov, which is exactly the same as VASYAPUPKIN. Same team, quality, and hype. So, literally a project copy. And its Initial MCAP is $1 million.

Now, since these projects are so similar, most likely (it’s very important that I say “most likely,” but not “definitely”) andreypetrov will reach a $10 million MCAP, and early investors will make 10x. But if its Initial MCAP was $0.1 million, investors would have made 100x!

In short, the lower the Initial MCAP, the better.

Sometimes, people create things called Moonsheets, where projects are compared to similar ones to predict the potential multiples at launch.

Token Unlocks

Unlocking (vesting) is the process of unlocking tokens for investors. Unlock schedules are pre-determined when investing in a project. For example, at TGE (Token Generation Event), you may receive 25% of your tokens, and the remaining 75% will unlock linearly over the next 3 months.

Here’s a secret: sometimes tokens are not distributed immediately. So, make sure TGE unlock = 100%. However, sometimes the price is so favorable (e.g., 10 times cheaper than the listing price) that it’s worth waiting a couple of years. Imagine buying ETH at $100 (while it’s trading at $3,000) but receiving the tokens in 5 years. Personally, I would invest all my money in that deal.

Token Distribution

There’s a concept called tokenomics. Some tokens go to the project team, some to investors, and some to active participants. It’s important to consider all of these factors. However, in the early stages, you can ignore this since it’s unlikely you’ll understand all the nuances. With experience in sales, you’ll become more skilled at analyzing the situation. For example, in some projects, a token might be sold to the public for $10, even though half of the tokens were already sold to investors at $0.1. This means that investors already have 1,000x profits at the start of trading. In such cases, you should think twice about whether you’ll be exit liquidity (i.e., whether big investors will be cashing out on you).

Relevance of the Project

A project may be absolute trash, but other factors such as hype, memes, etc., could keep it going. For instance, there was a time when artificial intelligence was a huge trend. And under this trend, AI-related IDOs were the only ones that delivered multiples.

Airdrop

This niche made quite a buzz last year. The reason for this was the airdrop from Arbitrum, which allowed around 600,000 wallets to receive $1,000 each. All you had to do was make 2-3 transactions over a couple of months, spending just $1-2. After that, thousands, even tens of thousands of people rushed to create farms for airdrops and testnets. Now, let’s break down what this actually is.

Airdrop (drop or retro-drop — it’s the same thing) is a conditionally free distribution of tokens for some action with a project. Usually, tokens are given out unexpectedly for “loyalty” to the project.

Sounds a bit suspicious, doesn’t it? Then here are some examples of profits from retro-drops.

• Uniswap – DEX on the Ethereum network. For just one transaction, they gave each user 400 UNI tokens. At the time of the trading launch, that was about $2,000.
• Aptos – Layer-1 blockchain. For creating a free NFT, they distributed 150 APT tokens (around $1,000).
• Wormhole – Inter-network protocol for bridges. For an account with 10-20 transactions, totaling around $50,000, they gave out 1,000 W tokens (around $1,500). The cost for such an account was up to $5.

And this is just 50 large and medium projects... Sounds like a fairy tale, right? But there’s always a “but”... We’ll get to that later.

Why do we need airdrops?

Let’s look at it from the other side. Suppose you're a project. Why would you give something away when it’s much more profitable to sell tokens (remember sales like ICOs, IDOs, etc.)? All the funds (except for platform fees) raised from sales go straight to the team’s pockets. So, why bother with airdrops? I’ve highlighted 4 reasons for this:

1. Legal Issues. There’s some information suggesting that public sales are banned in certain parts of America. And, in principle, this information is correct. The SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) can classify a token as a security for certain violations. Because of this, large projects opt out of sales in favor of airdrops.
2. How do they make a profit if they’re giving away tokens for free to the community? The answer is simple: as a team, they officially own a portion of the tokens. Plus, rumors say some of the wallets that received airdrops may actually belong to the team. How true this is, I don’t know, but I believe it’s close to the truth. Tokens are essentially just wrappers that hold no intrinsic value until the community adds value after listing.
3. Feeding the Community. Everyone is so invested in retro-hunting (the race for airdrops) that if a project doesn’t drop something, the community will get upset and FUD (spread negative information to lower the project’s value).
4. Hype. Sometimes a successful airdrop can significantly boost a project’s media presence and coverage, which will benefit it in the long run. This worked very well for projects like Arbitrum and Blur.
5. The Market. The final reason is the market itself. In a bad market, almost no one will invest in sales. People love wet dreams and want to earn thousands of dollars from just a few transactions. It’s like a new form of casino.

In short, there are more reasons, but these are enough for a basic understanding of why these mysterious airdrops exist.

How do I get airdrops?

The answer is simple and obvious — you just need to use the project. Now, let’s highlight the main actions that can earn you an airdrop:

1. Transactions. Just keep using the project, make transactions. It’s really not that complicated. It depends on the project. Sometimes it’s about buying a token, other times about creating or buying an NFT, transferring funds through a bridge, or staking (holding) a coin — it varies.

For airdrops, the following criteria are usually considered:

• Number of transactions
• Turnover volume (for example, 10 transactions of 100 USDT each = 1,000 USD volume)
• Active months/weeks/days
• Testnets and quests. Sometimes a project releases tasks where you need to use their platform. Not many projects give airdrops for completing quests, but... you’ll be doing the transactions that may earn you an airdrop in the future.

1. Active participation in the project’s life. Sometimes a project may recruit testers through a form. There could also be calls where participants are rewarded. You can become a project ambassador and much more. For example, recently, some of my friends received 10,000 STRK tokens (~$25,000) for filling out a form from Starknet.
2. Following social media. Sometimes joining their Discord, Twitter, etc., can earn you an airdrop, but it happens less frequently.
3. Referral programs. Recently, many projects attract users through referral programs.
4. Being an early adopter. The earlier you join the project, the more you may receive.
5. Collecting commemorative NFTs. Some projects give away “badges” that may become significant later on.

Once again, pretty much any interaction with the project can potentially trigger an airdrop. Each project is free to set its own criteria.

What projects to turn around?

To put it briefly, you should focus on projects where:

1. The token is not yet available.
2. There’s a significant investor and solid backing from good funds.
3. There’s little competition. This doesn’t always work, though. Sometimes a project can still be worth engaging with even if it has millions of users.

All of these factors need to come together. For example, a project like LayerZero with an investment of $300 million (which is a lot) isn’t the best to engage with right now, as it already has nearly 5 million users. On the other hand, a smaller project with an investment of $3 million (which is relatively modest) could still be worthwhile if it only has, say, 100 active participants.

There is one thing...

It seems so simple: do some actions and get your long-awaited airdrop. But there are some catches:

1. Transaction Fees. Transactions within the project aren’t always free. There are many cases where people ended up spending $30-50 (or even more) per account, but didn’t receive an airdrop.
2. Criteria. You might simply not meet the criteria. For example, you made 20 transactions within 3 months, but to get the minimum airdrop, you needed to make 50 transactions within 12 months. No one will refund your transaction fees.
3. The Razor. Even if you meet the criteria, you might get "shaved" as a cheater. For example, you used multiple wallets that were linked to each other by transactions, or performed identical actions that are easy to spot on the blockchain. Airdrop competition has become so fierce recently that "getting shaved" is a real fear.
4. Not All Projects Need a Token. You might be working on a project, only to find out later that its business model doesn’t actually require a token.

Project scroll cycle

It’s crucial to understand how a typical and successful project cycle works:

1. Find the project.
2. Actively engage with the project, for example, over the course of 6 months.
3. The project takes a snapshot (a record of all active users in the network).
4. About a month later, the project announces the airdrop. Only those who were part of the snapshot will receive the airdrop. If you start engaging with the project after the snapshot, you won’t receive anything.
5. The criteria for receiving the airdrop are announced.
6. You check if your account meets the criteria.
7. If you qualify, you can claim your tokens.
8. Transfer them to an exchange.
9. Sell them.

Pay close attention to steps 1, 2, and 3. The project always takes the snapshot unexpectedly. So, you might start engaging with a project, but end up doing so after the snapshot. This would result in a waste of money and time. You could also start engaging before the snapshot but still miss out on the airdrop if the criteria require, for example, 3 active months, and you only had 2.

Each project is unique, but this cycle roughly covers the whole process.

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