An airdrop is a distribution of tokens to wallets, typically free of charge, used to reward early users, campaign participants, or community members. In growth campaigns, airdrops often serve as the reward pool that participants earn a share of through their activity.
A project defines who qualifies, measures activity against that definition, then distributes tokens to qualifying wallets. Eligibility may rest on prior usage, on points earned during a campaign, or on holding a position at a given moment. Token distributions of this kind are described in the Ethereum Foundation glossary. Distribution follows a snapshot that freezes the qualifying set.
Airdrops put tokens in the hands of people with reason to use the product and a stake in its success, which bootstraps both distribution and governance participation. They also concentrate attention around a specific moment. The cost is that recipients who wanted only the tokens tend to sell, so design increasingly ties eligibility to verified activity rather than presence.
A reward pool is the budget a campaign commits to distributing. An airdrop is one way that budget reaches participants. The two get used interchangeably because campaign pools are frequently denominated in tokens and settled as an airdrop, but a pool can equally be paid in stablecoins.
Eligibility tightened. As platforms moved toward outcome-based rewards, airdrop criteria shifted from snapshot presence toward verified activity, with anti-Sybil checks deciding which wallets qualify at all.
The eligibility criteria, the snapshot date, and the vesting terms. Criteria decide whether the activity you can realistically do qualifies at all. The snapshot decides when effort stops counting. Vesting decides what the allocation is worth once received. Campaigns publishing all three upfront can be priced before you commit.
Tokens in an airdrop are typically distributed free of charge, but qualifying usually is not. Most airdrops now require activity, whether campaign participation, product usage, or holding a position through a snapshot. Recipients may also owe transaction fees to claim, depending on the chain.
Qualification depends on criteria the project sets in advance. Common bases are points earned during a campaign, verified product usage, on-chain activity, or holding a position at a snapshot. Projects increasingly apply anti-Sybil checks, so multiple fresh wallets tend to qualify for less than one established one.
After a snapshot freezes the qualifying set and final amounts are calculated. Distribution may follow immediately or run on a vesting schedule that releases tokens over time. Campaigns that publish both the snapshot date and the vesting terms upfront let participants judge what the reward is worth.
A TGE is the event at which a token is created and first distributed. An airdrop is a distribution method that may happen at a TGE or long after it. Growth campaigns frequently cluster around TGEs, which is why the two are often mentioned together.
