➥ Airdrops have quietly gone from “free coins for being early” to a $40B+ InfoFi machine that pays for signal, not clicks
▸ 2014–2019: simple snapshots, forks, bounty tasks → total airdrops only ~$500M, most people didn’t even claim and dump rate was high.
▸ 2020–2024: $UNI, $ARB, $OP turned airdrops into governance + anti farming tools, with multi criteria scoring and AI / Sybil checks; total value jumps to $40B+, 2025 alone adds ~$15B.
▸ 2025: InfoFi shows up → airdrops now reward content, knowledge, and real engagement, not just “did you click swap once?”.
Concrete numbers:
▸ InfoFi sector TVL is $500M+ across Base / Solana, with 60%+ of activity on Base.
▸ Consistent posting and real engagement can earn $500–$2,000 per user vs old airdrops that often paid $50–$200.
▸ User retention jumps to 50%+, compared to 20-30% for traditional models.
4 projects in this paper show how the new meta works:
▸ @KaitoAI “InfoFi King” for crypto: $KAITO hit $200M mcap, ATH $2.88, with “yap to earn” campaigns where top users got 1k–10k tokens.
▸ @cookiedotfun data layer + MAF: stake $COOKIE (MCAP $45M) to farm partner airdrops or creation for SNAPS
• @Bantr_fun turns creator influence into “RIZZ points”; campaigns have paid out $500k+, with top creators taking 10–20% of each pool.
• @wallchain “authentic engagement” scores, daily AI checked rewards, 1,999 NFTs minted and an active X crowd (~142k followers, 1k+ DAU).
The catch:
> Leaderboards can be gamed (keyword spam, low quality posts), and some timelines turn into “SlopFi” as noise grows.
> Quality control + farming abuse are still open problems, even though most sentiment is 75–80% positive and people see real opportunity.
Going forward, the paper expects:
> 20–30% growth in “fairdrop” style airdrops by 2026, with multi-factor verification (identity + behavior + contribution) as standard, and L2 / DePIN taking ~60% of new drops.
Infofi isn’t “free money for using dapps” anymore it’s an information economy where attention, data, and good takes become programmable assets.
The real edge is shifting from “who farmed more wallets” to who creates the most trusted signal.
/acc the key question now isn’t “which airdrop is 10x?” but “where do you sit in the InfoFi stack ?”
Thank @Surf_Copilot for the numbering !!!
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