How to Profit From NFT Airdrops

TL;DR
Holding NFTs can provide access to airdrops, and there is a lot of NFT airdrop activity happening in the Bitcoin Ordinals ecosystem. We’ve also seen Pudgy Penguins holders receive airdrop tokens, and several other projects are in line for various kinds of rewards. NFTs play a role in the Berachain testnet, and as Blast approaches launch, there are NFT-related opportunities to access an incoming token drop.

If you’re looking for NFT airdrops, then there’s a lot happening at the moment, as we’ve seen holders of several big collections receiving valuable assets, while multiple projects utilize NFTs as parts of their reward schemes.

To get an idea of what’s on offer, let’s take a look at some projects that have rewarded NFT holders recently, and pick up on some potential new NFT airdrop routes that are open to participation right now.

Bitcoin Ordinals NFT Airdrops

Within the Bitcoin Ordinals space there’s a lot cooking, and airdrop rewards have become a central feature of what’s currently being built out.

Runes

Coming soon to Bitcoin, a protocol called Runes, developed by the creator of the Ordinals protocol–Casey Rodarmor–allows for fungible tokens (or runes) on Bitcoin, but be aware that these are not BRC-20 tokens. Where Runes will lead remains to be seen, but there is the potential for an entire ecosystem to be built out around the new protocol.

RSIC

In January, 21,000 RSIC inscriptions (inscription = NFT on Bitcoin) were airdropped to holders of selected Ordinals collections. RSICs, once activated, start to mine Runecoin–an incoming token on the Rune protocol–and there has been an explosion in RSIC demand, with the floor price now at 0.07 BTC.

What’s notable here is that just holding items from key collections in the Ordinals ecosystem was all that was needed to get an airdropped RSIC.

Rune Guardians

Like with RSICs, inscriptions from the Rune Guardians 10K collection were airdropped to holders of big name Ordinals collections (including RSIC, Ordinal Maxi Biz, Quantum Cats, NodeMonkes, Bitcoin Puppets, Pizza Ninjas, BTC DeGods, Ordinal Punks, and Bitcoin Whales.)

Rune Guardians inscriptions are currently trading from 0.007 BTC, and it appears that these airdropped items should bring a further airdrop of their own, as there are plans for an incoming rune token, to be launched at a later date.

Ethereum NFT Airdrops

Moving on from Ordinals to look at Ethereum, there’s no shortage of NFT airdrop activity on the leading NFT chain.

Pudgy Penguins

The Pudgy Penguins collection is a great example of the benefits that can come from simply having an NFT from a highly regarded project sitting in your wallet, as Pudgies holders this month received an allocation of the DYM token from Dymension.

What’s more, Pudgy Penguins holders are now also in line to receive an airdrop from NFT finance platform Arcade, but there’s more on that below.

L3E7

Gaming project L3E7 has already garnered a lot of hype, and it was recently revealed that holders of the project’s Worlds NFTs will receive future rewards including a token airdrop and a PFP airdrop, as well as whitelist spots for further mints, and inclusion in plans for a revenue share.

ERCC

Early Retired Cats Club (ERCC) is a South Korean project spanning PFPs, gaming and entertainment, produced in collaboration with Web3 gaming platform Intella X. Both ERCC and Intella X are expansive and worth exploring, but the major news this month was that ERCC holders will be eligible for a future Intella X token airdrop.

Further details are yet to be confirmed, but ERCC seems focused on utility for holders, and other benefits include revenue share from Web3 product sales.

Citizen Conflict

This in-development game is a third person shooter from gaming firm Qorpo, and it’s of note that Qorpo is developing an entire Web3 gaming ecosystem, with a marketplace, wallet and esports platform, and plans for a token, QORPO.

The Citizens Conflict game this month dropped its Citizen Zero NFT collection, which–according to details from Qorpo, will provide holders with an airdrop of the QORPO token. Additionally, Citizen Zero holders will have the opportunity to generate in-game tokens, which may then be exchangeable (through in-game loot boxes) for QORPO tokens.

Blastopians

Over on soon-to-launch new Layer1 Blast, future holders of the yet-to-mint Blastopians project have been promised a share of the Blast developer token airdrop. This will be earned through staking Blastopian PFPs, with a mint date expected at the end of February when the Blast mainnet launches.

Berachain NFT Airdrops

An incoming new EVM-compatible blockchain, Berachain is currently in testnet mode, and offers opportunities to gain eligibility for a future token airdrop. Having added the Berachain Artio public test network to MetaMask, you can acquire Bera token from the faucet, follow that up by swapping Bera for Honey (and other tokens), and then mint Red Envelope NFTs and other NFTs, and hold on to them in case of future rewards.

As this is a testnet, it costs you nothing and there’s plenty more to explore and use, but it can sometimes be glitchy, and keep in mind that there are no guarantees about what’s coming next, in terms of airdrops and NFT utility.

Ramen Finance

Building now on Berachain, Ramen Finance will be dropping a 7,500 item NFT collection–called Hungryberas–on February 21st. As Ramen Finance will have its own RAMEN token in future, it may be worth holding Hungryberas in order to qualify for any future airdrop (although again, nothing is confirmed.)

Arcade

NFT finance platform Arcade will next week be airdropping some of its token, ARCD, to holders of various NFT collections (Pudgy Penguins, Sappy Seals, Pixelmon, Bitcoin Puppets, NodeMonkes, RSIC, MadLads, and Tensorians), which underlines a key takeaway: the value in owning NFTs from collections which are leading the space.

Airdrops are sometimes uncertain in advance, but just by holding currently hot collections when the market is bullish and firing up, there’s the possibility of gaining access to unexpected rewards and opportunities.