Airdrop points programmes explained

A snapshot is taken quietly and read once. A points programme is public and continuous: you can watch your score move, which is precisely the point. Visible progress keeps people using the product.

The trade off is that a published scoreboard invites optimisation. Teams respond by not publishing the conversion rate, and often not the full formula, so the score is visible but its value is not.

• Capital and how long it stayed. Blast accrued on the size and duration of a deposit, which is what turned its pre mainnet months into a deposit race.
• Trading volume over time. Hyperliquid ran two seasons across more than a year before distributing 31 per cent of supply.
• Holding a productive asset. Jito simply required holding JitoSOL, which earned staking and MEV yield while you held it.
• Referrals and ecosystem use. Several programmes routed a share through applications, letting teams direct rewards to their own users.

Points are not a promise. They are a number a team publishes and retains discretion over. A programme can change its formula, extend indefinitely, or convert at a rate that makes months of activity worth very little.

Capital committed to a points programme also carries real cost: it is exposed to smart contract risk, and it is not earning elsewhere. Blast drew billions in deposits months before the chain was usable, and whether that was a good trade depends entirely on what that capital would otherwise have earned during the lock up.

• Is the product worth using anyway? The programmes that paid best rewarded activity people had reason to do regardless.
• Is the team funded? A token has to arrive for points to convert, and that takes runway.
• Is the formula disclosed at all? Full opacity means you are estimating both your score and its worth.
• What is the opportunity cost? Capital parked for a year at zero yield has a real price, whatever the allocation turns out to be.

See completed airdrops for what past programmes actually paid.