State of airdrops — 2025 annual report

We collected the on-chain data on 87 major airdrops shipped in 2025. The findings do not match the narrative on Crypto Twitter.

Airdrops with more than 30% of supply going to the community had substantially worse 30-day price performance than those with 5–15%. The reason is straightforward: high-supply drops flood the market and the token cannot absorb it. This is not a moral statement, it is a supply-and-demand statement.

The single strongest predictor of positive post-launch performance was whether the team had a written policy on lockups and shared it with recipients before the drop. Transparency compounds.

Design the drop as a marketing budget, not as a governance transfer. Publish a clear vesting schedule for team and investor allocations. And do not use points systems as a proxy for merit — they consistently produce Sybil farming and no lasting community.