Farm or be Farmed?

Crypto projects are well known for issuing their digital tokens and then distributing a portion of these tokens to their potential users for free upon launch. This is known as an airdrop and has made a lot of crypto folks rich. You need to know about the project early (alpha) and stick around long enough until launch.

Eventually, people became more sophisticated in finding these lucrative opportunities which led to the rise of airdrop hunting & farming. Airdrop farmers/hunters don't need to be interested in the project, they only need to meet the requirements to be eligible for the airdrop, this is the game.

For obvious reasons, this game is always not ideal for projects issuing airdrops. Projects must think strategically about how to gain the most out of their airdrops; how to farm the farmer? Initially, this was a way to reward loyal early users, but now it's a playing ground for sophisticated players. People, who are dedicated to finding upcoming projects, and hunting them down, to farm, some even with hoards of bots.

It's an infinite game, one that will persist as long as the concept of airdrops exists. Airdrops are a great way to bring attention to your crypto project. But you must clearly understand what you want to gain from it. From the point of view of the hunter/farmer, it's just another way to gain easy money. The question then is, what do you want from them in return?

Hunting Projects

Airdrop hunting has to do with all the activities performed to find projects with potential juicy airdrops. Using various tools like;

1. Zealy
2. Galxe
3. DefiLama
4. Airdrops.io
5. Nansen
6. DappRadar
7. X

These are just a few of the popular ones. There are hunters who have developed sophisticated proprietary tools just for the business of finding juicy projects early (alphas). Applying varying skills and tricks to their trade, people are impressive when it comes to maxing out economic opportunities.

The premise; since it's a norm for projects to give airdrops, then all one needs to do is to find new upcoming projects early in their development stage. This makes you an OG of that project, increasing your chances and share of the eventual airdrop.

To be a successful hunter you need to be attentive to the timeline, and always be in places of chatter, that is, places where you can always get to know about upcoming projects

Farming Projects

The farming process is about performing all the activities needed to be eligible for airdrop. You hunt to find projects with potential airdrop and you farm to be eligible for the airdrop when it's ready.

Projects have different eligibility criteria ranging from simply acquiring points to showing proof that you belong to a group of people. For instance, showing proof that you have contributed to some relevant open-source projects, have held BTC in your wallet for a certain amount of time, or have performed transactions on their testnet.

Simply acquiring points (points farming) usually involves completing tasks in return for points. These points are then later converted to the project's token at a ratio upon disbursement of the airdrop. Some popular tasks include;

• Daily check-ins to the app/community of the project to claim daily points.
• Refer people to earn points.
• Using the testnet version of the project to earn points.
• Meme contests, video contests, and other media contests to earn points.
• Follow and join social media handles on X and Telegram to earn points.
• Like and retweet X posts to earn points.

The tasks here can range from mild to crazy so be prepared to do the most. Beware some players use automated agents at this stage. The situation is not hopeless as projects are constantly figuring out new ways to fish out these bots. It is a push-and-pull situation between projects and bots farmers though, sometimes bots win, and sometimes projects win.

Showing proof of belonging to a group is the other broad way that airdrops happen. For instance, an airdrop that targets web3 open-source developers would require you to show some proof to your GitHub account before you can claim. Or an airdrop that requires that you have made some transactions on the project testnet over a given period.

To be a successful farmer one must be patient and attentive to detail. You need to be patient since airdrops do take a while to materialize, ranging from months to years. Also, be attentive to the eligibility requirement as wrongly following instructions and missing airdrops have been a source of bitter farmers in the past.

Hunting the Hunters and Farming the Farmers

It is clear then that projects must consider their airdrop strategy before launching it. An airdrop program's goal might differ for each project, but in general, you want to maximize the value it brings to your project and community. You must understand that there will always be airdrop hunters/farmers, sometimes even more than potential customers.

Hunters/Farmers have one goal; maximize gains with minimal effort. Projects must design mechanisms with the right balance of rewards and punishments to extract value from these participants. Most importantly, you must see them as potential customers who came for the airdrop but could stay for the project.

No matter what you do, make sure a huge part of gaining points is from using the product.

Consider these points when building a strategy for your airdrop farming.

1. Understand the purpose for which you want to run the airdrop program. Is the goal to acquire more users or to build a lasting community? This would greatly impact the rest of your strategy.
2. Ensure that the eligibility requirement is complex enough to ward off bots but still highly doable by humans. Ensure that these tasks need to be performed frequently to amount to anything substantial. This will ensure consistent and loyal users will benefit more.
3. Consider tactics that will eliminate or reduce bot participation. You do want to eventually airdrop to humans. Of course, the bots are owned and controlled by humans, but you want to be fair and not have most of your rewards given to a few people.
4. Consider designing long-term incentives that would keep even farmers on your project after airdrop. Introduce concepts like staking and governance use cases like voting on project direction that could potentially entice hunters to stay.

For a project, your goal is to farm the farmers. Try to get as much as reasonably possible value from hunters without being offensive. You must maintain a balance as a simple mistake in your airdrop strategy could spell the end of your project. If you are too easy to farm, you will attract bots and lose loyal community members. Similarly, if you are too difficult to farm, you might ward off the potential virality that comes with airdrops.