Airdropped Airdrops! - a Practical Guide to Airdrops (what you really need to know).

A Practical Guide to Airdrops is brought to you by http://bit.ly/Airdropped_AIRDROPS so please take a moment to check it out.

A. What are Airdrops?

Airdrops are free allocations of cryptocurrency tokens to people, based on multifarious methodologies. They can include a range of delivery strategies:
a. Merely requiring you to submit an email address / ETH address
b. Requiring registration to their website / whitelist
c. Requiring you to follow them on various social media platforms
d. Requiring you to not only follow them but also complete basic social media tasks such as Retweeting on Twitter, Upvoting on Reddit and Clapping on Medium.
e. Some require additional tasks such as downloading their App or Wallet
f. There is a slightly separate means of distributing (and acquiring) free tokens called a Bounty. This is really a subcategory of Airdrops, where you are required to perform very similar types of tasks but over a longer period of time – generally the length of the ICO (Initial Coin Offering).

B. Is this a Scam (aka. What’s in it for them?)

No, Airdrops themselves are not a scam (though there are many scams out there). They serve a very necessary purpose for new Cryptocurrencies:

a. Utilization
Cryptotokens (and indeed blockchains, Apps and anything else) have no value if nobody id using them. And as we all know, nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd! So new Cryptos need to get a critical mass of participation on their website for the tokens / platforms to gain value.

b. Liquidity
An increased number of sold tokens doesn’t always mean increased liquidity of the token. It is quite possible that one can end up with the “Wall Street” syndrome, where most of a tokens crypto-wealth is held in the hands of a very small number of individuals. With a new cryptocurrency this can reduce liquidity in terms of making it hard to trade or utilize. The advantage of Airdrops / Bounties and indeed some of the sale structures utilized by Cryptocurrencies is that at least a percentage of the tokens is distributed among a wide range of people.

c. Philanthropy
I am a bit of a sceptic, but I nevertheless do feel that there are many developers out there who do hold genuine ideals of disrupting the status quo of wealth inequality. This philosophical stance does flow into many of the blockchain voting systems, and some of the Tokens out there are trying to allocate at least a percentage of tokens based on philanthropy, as well as a different type of wealth – the labor of love!

d. Marketing
Perhaps the most important factor connected to being able to reward crypto-enthusiasts with free tokens is the free marketing that comes out of Airdrops & Bounty campaigns. Many companies would rather pay “marketing money” in the form of tokens to a range of individuals who then not only provide the marketing but have an active stake in getting the Token to succeed. Any of you who have read a bit about blockchains will instantly see the similarity to many of the block validation mechanisms.

C. What do I need to start participating in Airdrops / Bounties?

I am going to (somewhat arbitrarily) divide this into three categories, absolute essentials, important for many airdrops, and a few less common requirements.

a. Absolute Essentials

i. An ERC20 compatible, non-Exchange, Ethereum address (Wallet).
This is not the place for a description of the various wallets, but it is enough to say that most (not all) tokens are on the Ethereum blockchain so you will definitely need one of these. My strong recommendation in MyEtherWallet (MEW) as you cannot use a wallet on an exchange, and MEW is one of the safer wallets and is also a requirement for certain Airdrops. Please secure this address within MetaMask or something similar. Also, store your Private Key and Keyphrase somewhere very, very secure and NEVER give it to ANYONE! I suggest that you read a few articles on the risks associated with crypto wallets.
ii. Telegram account
iii. Twitter account
iv. Facebook account

b. Also Important

v. Additional crypto wallets. You can only store Ethereum and ERC20 compliant tokens in your Ethereum Wallet. Other tokens that operate on other blockchains will require separate Wallets. Some of the more common ones include Waves, Stellar and Neo.
vi. Medium
vii. Reddit
viii. BitcoinTalk
ix. Linked-in
x. Youtube
xi. Instagram
xii. Steemit

c. Occasionally Required

xiii. Github
xiv. Product hunt
xv. Altcoinstalks
xvi. VK.com
xvii. Discord
xviii. Stack Overflow

What I also strongly recommend is an ORGANIZED spreadsheet to keep track of all the Airdrops and Bounties that you subscribe to.

D. Where do I find Airdrops / Bounties?

Luckily there are a large number of people promoting them, and you can run a search on Google / Twitter / Facebook / Telegram / Steemit etcetera. Some are better updated than others, and so I recommend that you explore a few of them. The quality of the data provided varies quite drastically. Most come with upsides and downsides:
a. Some are literally scams to try to get you to disclose your Private keys (NEVER DO. EVER!)
b. Some are infrequently updated
c. Some have a fair number of Airdrops but of a low quality (monetary value)
d. Others don’t even give you an indication of what the dollar value (as opposed to number of tokens) actually is
e. Some just provide a list copied from somewhere else

Over time you will work out which of these Airdrop lists works best for you.

E. Airdropped Airdrops!

This is the bit where I do a few lines of self-promotion. I started promoting airdrops on my Twitter account (@emile_du_toit). Then, after a number of queries to have a comprehensive list of them one spreadsheet, I created my own Google Spreadsheet http://bit.ly/Airdropped_AIRDROPS
It isn’t anything fancy but what it does contain is the following:

a. Most of the current, relatively high value or high potential airdrops all in one place, categorized by the date I first signed up for them

b. A guarantee that I have signed up myself so the airdrop definitely works, and to the best of my knowledge is not a scam.

c. I provide detailed data on that you need to do in order to complete the airdrop, as well as any special considerations

d. I include both the number of tokens as well as the $ value of these tokens (where one is available).

e. I try to provide warnings if one has limited capacity or if it is filling up really quickly

f. Also, the airdrops are color coded by $ value, partly so you can get a quick overview of which to sign up for first, and partly to make the sheet less dreary 😉

Please take a look at http://bit.ly/Airdropped_AIRDROPS and see if it might be helpful to you.

I wish all you crpyto-enthusiasts out there the best of luck!

Emile