Airdrop season is in full swing, with apps, protocols, and other projects seizing upon signs of an impending bear market to finally drop their tokens—and potentially reward millions of crypto users in the process.
What exactly is an airdrop, though? When it comes to crypto tokens, an airdrop is typically a way for a project to reward its early users and contributors by giving them a share of a newly launched token, all while spreading the tokens far and wide for decentralized governance.
When it comes to blockchain networks and tokens primed specifically for gaming, there are some pretty compelling airdrops on the horizon in the months ahead. Here’s a look at what’s coming for gamers—there may still be time to get involved and score some tokens ahead.
Saga Protocol
Saga is a new blockchain network designed primarily for gaming, so it makes sense that the way users could potentially earn a share of the airdrop was by playing games. Following “play-to-airdrop” campaigns across several games running on testnet, as well as other networks, the SAGA airdrop launched on March 6.
Nearly 200,000 unique wallets are eligible for the drop, with play-to-airdrop winners alongside people who staked the respective native currencies of Avalanche, Cosmos, Celestia, and Ethereum scaler Polygon in certain timeframes as detailed in the official eligibility guide.
Notcoin
Notcoin is a gaming project that runs on messaging app Telegram, and it has racked up over 26 million players who are frantically tapping a shiny coin to mine trillions of Notcoin.
What’s the point? Well, it’s not a real crypto token yet—but Notcoin plans to mint the token on The Open Network (TON) in the next few weeks and offer tokens to players based on the virtual coins they mined in the game. Don’t ease up, though: The project has started purging Notcoins earned from inactive accounts that haven’t been used in 30 days at a rate of 5% per day.
On March 7, Notcoin launched pre-market trading for coins in large quantities, including 10 million and 100 million Notcoin. Users’ coins can be turned into NFT vouchers that can be traded and later redeemed for NOT, letting traders speculate on the potential value of the upcoming token.
Nifty Island
Launched in open beta in January, Nifty Island is a sandbox-style game that mashes up the feel of Animal Crossing, Roblox, and Fortnite’s Creative mode, letting you customize your own island and play with other users. And it offers a play-to-airdrop campaign with many different ways to potentially earn ISLAND tokens.
According to a tweet thread, Nifty Island will award users points based on factors like how much they play, how many players they refer into the game, and which other NFT assets they own in connected wallets. It’s unclear when the token drop will happen, but people are flooding in to get a potential share of the ISLAND launch ahead.
Nyan Heroes
Solana hero shooter Nyan Heroes, which features cats piloting giant mech suits, is set to launch its early access version in the near future and debut a play-to-airdrop campaign alongside it. Details are still to come, but the Overwatch-like shooter—which is listed in the Epic Games Store—will award NYN tokens to early players. Owners of Nyan Heroes NFTs will be eligible for even greater token rewards.
Apeiron
Along with Pixels, here’s another game running on Axie Infinity’s Ronin chain that’s doing an airdrop campaign. Apeiron is billed as a glossy mash-up of classic god games (like Populous) and card-battling “roguelite” experiences, delivering an experience that’s sure to require careful strategy.
In January, Apeiron revealed a play-to-airdrop campaign that will reward players of the Epic Games Store battle demo with points towards the future ANIMA token drop, along with incentives for completing other actions or owning certain NFTs. Click here for more details.
BloodLoop
BloodLoop, an Overwatch-esque 5v5 hero shooter running on Avalanche, debuted its play-to-airdrop campaign on March 4. Over the course of three months, players will be able to test out the game and potentially earn a share of millions of BLS tokens via weekly competitions.
You’ll have to play some amount of the game, though, as BloodLoop’s Twitter account says you’ll need to complete quests on a “battle pass” to unlock airdrop eligibility. Over 100,000 players have reportedly signed up already, making this a potentially buzzy one to watch.
Shuffle
Crypto casino Shuffle is planning three airdrop waves for its SHFL token on Ethereum, in an effort to reward users from its first year of operation. The online platform, which supports Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other coins, planned to kickstart the drop during the first week of March, but will debut a token sale via a liquidity bootstrapping pool first on March 10. Shuffle says 28% of its token supply will go to airdrops.
AI Arena
AI Arena, a game that pairs Super Smash Bros-style brawling with artificial intelligence smarts, is launching a play-to-airdrop campaign with 40 million NRN tokens up for grabs. Another 40 million tokens will be allocated for the game’s NRN prize boxes. The game challenges players to train AI combatants that fight automatically on their behalf. The play-to-airdrop drive is underway with the token launch expected in a couple months, the developers told Decrypt.
WUFFI
The WAX blockchain has been promoting the upcoming airdrop for a “gaming meme coin” called WUFFI, albeit with the token name WUF, which will apparently start on WAX and then expand to Solana at some point.
WUF took a snapshot of eligible holders on January 31 ahead of an eventual first airdrop wave, but no timing has been confirmed for the actual drop. Numerous WAX games and apps have pledged to support the incoming token.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
Editor’s note: This story was originally published on December 27, 2023 and was last updated with new info on March 8.
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