Bankless: Take stock of the top five hottest airdrop opportunities in the crypto field

Author: Jack Inabinet, Bankless; Translated by: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

When it comes to cryptocurrency’s hottest airdrop opportunities, hunters will find themselves trapped in an endless cycle, forced to constantly sow wallets with new tokens, constantly interact with the app, and wait patiently (sometimes forever) for their favorite farm to bear fruit…

Regulatory uncertainty has hindered many cryptocurrency companies from launching their own native tokens over the years; ironically, these situations provide the ideal growth conditions for nurturing the richest airdrops ever!

Under newly-elected President Donald Trump, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has put the brakes on many of its high-profile cryptocurrency enforcement actions. While the staff decisions in many cases have not been finalized, they collectively show that U.S. financial regulators are working to provide a set of rules for the issuance of digital assets.

Today, we will dive into five of the most mature airdrop opportunities in cryptocurrencies that may eventually emerge in a new era of regulatory certainty.

MetaMask

OG Ethereum Wallet MetaMask has been a leading "airdrop competitor" since the term was first proposed!

While uncertainty in crypto regulation has affected the ability of MetaMask to airdrop in the U.S., luckily, a recent agreement between MetaMask developer Consensys and SEC staff attempted to dismiss the SEC lawsuit that alleges MetaMask is an unregistered stock exchange awaiting committee approval. This development could herald a relief from regulatory tensions that could pave the way for MetaMask airdrops.

MetaMask may charge fees for using built-in account management features such as "Swap" and "Bridge", but these tools are still the best way to increase your potential MetaMask space.

pump.fun

Despite the slowdown in the deployment of new pump.fun pump.fun tokens in recent weeks, this memecoin launchpad remains one of the most profitable crypto apps in existence!

The pump.fun team appears to be interested in generating more revenue, and the recently leaked URL suggests that the platform will soon launch its own automated market makers (AMMs), which may allow it to earn bonded token exchange fees currently earned by Raydium.

To make clearer the regulatory application of crypto assets, the Securities and Exchange Commission's corporate finance department recently announced that memecoin with "limited or non-functional" is not considered a securities under federal law. This decision essentially legitimizes pump.fun's business model and may enable the platform to airdrop related tokens to early users in the future.

Marginfi

Marginfi, based on the Solana blockchain, emerged as a little-known peer-to- peer lending application in early 2023, but rose to fame in the second half of that year and became Solana’s top deposit opportunity as the airdrop boom swept the crypto industry!

The platform’s initial (and most popular) product is its over-solidated currency market agreement, allowing anyone to lend or borrow assets on Solana; since then, marginfi has expanded its lineup to include one-click leverage cycles, internal liquid staking tokens, staking support for native staking SOLs, and memecoin leveraged trading platform.

While marginfi remains a notable airdrop opponent in the Solana DeFi app, the platform has highlighted the launch of a points program over a year, indicating that it is actively counting early user interactions and may reward them with liquidity tokens in the future.

Bungee

Bungee Exchange is a bridge aggregator that supports token transfer and exchange between multiple popular EVM-compatible chains. The protocol aggregates multiple quotes for its users from different bridging providers, allowing them to choose the route that best suits their expense and time preferences.

Although few top crypto-bridged apps generate or airdrop native tokens at the time of writing, the regulatory relief promised by President Trump’s SEC may open the door to future Bungee-related airdrops.

OpenSea

OpenSea has repeatedly used grand announcements to preview upcoming platform updates – which often sparked airdrop speculation – but these hopes are shattered time and time again.

The recently launched OpenSea V2 introduces the XP points program, following the practices of rival NFT market Blur. While OpenSea does not promise XP will be converted into liquid tokens, the reward system seems ready to play a key role in any future airdrop allocation.

OpenSea is currently rewarding users who trade NFTs, including the platform loyalty reward multiplier. While ongoing interactions with previous OpenSea deployments will not grant XP, interactions with OpenSea before V2 release may be considered through retroactive points allocation.