Crypto Airdrops: Verified Claims & Honest Labels

SolPump — 'Earn Free SOL Every Hour'

Casino dressed as an airdrop

Advertised in banner slots on airdrop aggregators. The 'hourly airdrop' requires wagering at least 0.001 SOL every hour — it's a crash-game casino funnel aimed at people searching for free crypto. Earning should never require betting.

Minotaurus — '$100,000 USDT giveaway'

Presale lottery

A paid sponsored listing where 'entering the giveaway' means buying at least $50 of presale tokens, with more tickets the more you spend and a draw date of 'TBA'. Presale-plus-raffle is a classic rug structure.

Exchange 'prediction' campaigns labeled as airdrops

KYC + deposit bait

Some aggregators rank exchange betting campaigns among the 'hottest airdrops'. They require full KYC and deposits, and the 'reward' is just the settlement of bets you can lose. Not an airdrop by any definition.

Zoth zOPAL points

Deposit farming on a previously-hacked protocol

Requires depositing USDC/USDT into a vault for an unconfirmed token — on a protocol that was exploited for roughly $8.4M in March 2025. We won't list deposit-to-farm programs, and certainly not this one.

The deposit-to-'earn airdrop' cluster

If step 1 is 'deposit stablecoins', it's an investment, not an airdrop

A rotating cast of pre-deposit campaigns (real teams included) market vault deposits as 'airdrops'. Whatever the team quality, they carry smart-contract and peg risk and are not free. Our blanket rule: we don't list anything whose first step is depositing money.

Dead official domains, re-registered by phishers

Old project domain expires → scammer buys it → fake claim page

When a project moves domains, its old one can be re-registered and turned into a phishing claim site. Example: Pear Protocol's old pearprotocol.io is dead — the canonical site is pear.garden. Always confirm the current domain from the project's pinned X post before connecting a wallet.

Name-collision airdrops (two projects, one name)

A real project shares a name with an unrelated token

Searching a project name can land you on the wrong one. Example: a testnet 'UpOnly' lives at uponly.space, while uponly.com is a different, unrelated token (UPO). Match the exact domain from the official account — don't trust the name alone.

'Claim' pages for projects that have no token

A real product with no token gets fake claim/presale sites

Legitimate apps that have never announced a token attract fake 'claim' and 'presale' pages. Matchday (a licensed football game) and Mantle have both been impersonated this way. If the real project hasn't announced a token, every 'claim it now' page is a scam.

Paid 'anti-bot' registration fees

A real airdrop charges a small fee just to register

Some legitimate teams gate airdrop registration behind a 'randomized anti-Sybil fee' — a few dollars in USDC or the native coin, paid up front. Even when the team is real and the fee is partially refundable, this is still money out of your pocket to enter, so it fails our zero-investment rule and we don't list it. Warden Protocol's WARD registration worked this way (a ~3–3.50 USDC fee); a genuinely free airdrop never asks you to pay to sign up.

Sweepstakes banners dressed as per-user airdrops

'$250 each' is a 100-winner raffle, not your allocation

Aggregator banners like '100 winners, $250 each' are promotional sweepstakes, not a token allocation everyone receives — and the entry action is often 'activate membership' engagement-bait. A headline dollar value attached to a giveaway is not what you'll earn.

'Degen Score' retroactive claims that reward trading

A 'free' loot/claim whose eligibility is your past leverage and memecoin trading

Some game and 'loot chest' airdrops compute your allocation from a score built on past Solana memecoin, perps, options, and prediction-market (Polymarket) trading. Checking eligibility is free, but the only way to have scored is to have taken real trading risk over the prior year — so it rewards gambling, dressed as free participation. We don't count trading-weighted retroactive drops as free. Cambria's Loot Chests (Degen Score / Chad Score) are a current example.

'Airdrops' where your allocation is multiplied by your token balance

You must buy the token to receive the token

A growing format scores you on free activity — posting, quests, referrals — and then multiplies that score by your average balance of the project's own token across the campaign. A big score with an empty wallet pays nothing, so the only way to earn is to buy in first, and balances are time-averaged so buying early costs the most. That is an investment with a marketing layer, not an airdrop, and it fails our zero-investment rule outright. HoodTracker's Genesis Campaign works exactly this way: X activity points multiplied by your average $HDTX balance.

Casino and sportsbook XP leaderboards

'Wager $50 to qualify' is gambling with an airdrop label

Gambling platforms increasingly run token campaigns where XP comes from casino play and sportsbook bets, with a minimum cumulative wager to qualify and a leaderboard deciding your share. The headline is a real token allocation; the entry ticket is money you can simply lose before any snapshot. MINT's Season 1 ($125,000 of $MNTD, $50 minimum wagered) is a current example. We don't list anything whose qualifying activity is placing bets — the house edge is the opposite of free.

Claim flows that ask you to connect an AI assistant

'Paste this connector URL into ChatGPT or Claude to reveal your allocation'

A new claim pattern asks you to add a connector (an MCP server URL) to ChatGPT or Claude, grant OAuth, link a social account, and then 'reveal' a token or USDC allocation. MoonPay's PayBox faucet ran a legitimate version of this — which is precisely the problem: it teaches people to paste connector URLs into their AI assistant and approve OAuth for a service wired to a wallet and payment cards. A copycat connector inherits whatever permissions you grant and can act on your accounts through the assistant. Treat any connector URL in an airdrop flow as untrusted, install connectors only from a company's own verified domain, and never grant one wallet or payment access to collect a giveaway.

Aggregator 'visit' links that inject referral codes

The outbound 'CLAIM' button appends someone else's ref code

Clicking 'CLAIM' or 'VISIT' on an airdrop aggregator often routes through a redirect that appends a referral parameter (e.g. ?ref=… or ?code=…), quietly crediting the aggregator or a stranger for your signup — and sometimes skewing your own referral rewards. It's not always malicious, but it's not neutral either. Strip everything after '?' and navigate from the project's own domain, which is exactly why every entry here lists the bare canonical URL.

Free testnets that quietly become real-money points programs

The faucet closes, the XP stays — but now it's earned by paying trading fees

A testnet that genuinely costs nothing can graduate to mainnet and keep the same points brand while changing what earns them. Ekiden's perps testnet handed out free test USDC; on mainnet (September 2026) XP is earned per dollar of taker fees paid and per dollar of leveraged position held, access needs an invite code, and more invite codes unlock per $1,000 of your own volume. Kash's play-money prediction testnet became a real-USDC market whose XP, streaks, and weekly pool reward settled calls of $10 or more. Neither is a scam — but neither is free any more. We removed both from the hub, and you should re-check the rules every time a project you farm announces mainnet.

'Back the team' crowdfunding for founding-user rewards

A free devnet points program with a donate-to-unlock-rewards page next to it

Some projects pair a free test-funds points campaign with a crowdfunding page that promises 'founding-trader rewards' to people who fund the mainnet launch. Once rewards depend on how much you chip in, the free leaderboard is a funnel, and your contribution is an unsecured, unregistered bet on a pre-launch startup. Morfi, a Solana opinion-market devnet, runs its points campaign alongside a 'Help us reach mainnet' page that asks users to back the team and unlock founding-trader rewards. We don't list programs where paying the team improves your allocation.