TL;DR
While NFTs have been out of the crypto spotlight, several PFP collections have been providing significant value to holders by providing ongoing access to token airdrops from various platforms, with potential profits so far reaching, in some cases, tens of thousands of dollars. Valuable collections include Milady Maker and Pudgy Penguins on Ethereum, Galactic Gecko Space Garage, Mad Lads and Tensorians on Solana, and, although it’s not a PFP collection, Runestone on Bitcoin is similarly notable.
Is it really possible to receive PFP passive income? If you listened to the general consensus about NFTs, you might think PFPs are not the optimal place to look for profits right now, but actually, there are several top collections that have been pulling in substantial amounts of income for holders.
How Do Holders Get PFP Passive Income?
Certain PFP collections have cultural status, and are in the wallets of collectors committed to crypto for the long term and who may–individually or as a community–have significant influence. It makes sense then for new crypto projects to allocate tokens to these kinds of holders through airdrops to wallets holding NFTs from suitable collections.
That in turn bolsters the reputation of NFT projects that are seen to be bringing in rewards, and a mutually beneficial loop develops. So that in mind, let’s take a look at the top profit-generating PFPs, and also think about where PFPs go from here. All the charts shown below, except that for Galactic Geckos, come from Big Floppa.
Galactic Gecko Space Garage
A true OG collection on Solana, Galactic Geckos date back to when Ethereum was the dominant NFT chain and so are perhaps not as widely known as other collections, but holders who’ve been staking these for a year or more have been the beneficiaries of a long list of token drops.
Having minted in September 2021, been bought out in early 2022, and then initiated staking in April 2023, anyone who sat tight and collected all the airdrops is now holding tokens worth over $5,000, or if they’d sold at each token’s ATH they’ve now got over double that amount in the bank.
What’s more, there’s another airdrop coming soon–for a token called YES, with a strong likelihood of further benefits to come after that.
Milady Maker
One of the most resilient collections around, oblivious to controversy, tapped into the sub-sub-cultural fringes, Miladies are PFPs for crypto people who don’t like PFPs, or they’re just eccentric collectibles, depending on how you look at it.
Either way, if you held a Milady since they launched back in 2021 (or just bought one later and forgot about it), you’d now be the recipient of airdrops worth an ATH value of almost $13,000, including tokens from Ethena Labs and ZKSync.
Pudgy Penguins
This project is one of the biggest hits of the post-bubble NFT sector, as it was bought out by entrepreneur Luca Netz and subsequently pivoted successfully into physical toys while maintaining a Web3 focus.
This has worked out well for holders, as–with Pudgies as an NFT focal point–they became eligible for multiple airdrops, including Layer Zero, Dymension and ZKSync. The combined ATH value of these drops comes to just under $29,000, with further airdrops lined up, including from RWA platform Mantra.
Mad Lads
Back over on Solana, the leading PFP collection is Mad Lads (whatever you think of celebrity memecoins, it’s notable that Iggy Azalea opted for a Mad Lad as her PFP when she launched the MOTHER token), and it’s been on an airdrop run, pulling in a huge number of allocations as a central hub in the Solana ecosystem.
This has meant participation in the some of the biggest airdrops–including Pyth Network, Wormhole and Dymension–and the total value of these tokens, up to now and at ATHs, comes to over $36,000.
Tensorians
Also on Solana, we’ve got Tensorians, the PFP collection connected to the Tensor NFT exchange. This is a newer drop launched in August 2023, and holders have received allocations from Dymension, Arcade, and from Solana memecoin WEN, which all adds up–at ATHs–to a value of over $8,000.
Additionally, holders were eligible to farm the Tensor platform’s TNSR token, but allocations would depend on their activity.
Runestone
It’s worth noting that PFPs aren’t the only kind of NFT that can offer airdrops to holders, and for an example of another style, there’s Runestone. This is an Ordinals collection on Bitcoin that was itself airdropped to wallets that had been early to participate in the Ordinals ecosystem.
Holders of Runestones have subsequently been airdropped two Runes tokens–DOG and LOBO–with the DOG allocation reaching an all-time high value (so far) of over $8,000, although in this case, the token came from within the Runestone project, not from a separate platform.
PFPs After the NFT Bubble
The heyday up to now for PFPs was 2021/22, when NFTs first burst onto center stage and then entered an enormous bubble phase. That bubble inevitably burst, and for illustration of that we can look at the floor price on Bored Apes: from 0.08 ETH on minting, to 153.7 ETH at peak, and down to 9.3 ETH right now.
But the thing about bubbles is that–if the tech is worthwhile–some projects will stick around and be worth holding on to. Looking back to the burst of the dot com bubble over twenty years ago, the web didn’t shut down, multiple companies survived, and new firms later emerged to repopulate the cleaned-out landscape.
And if there’s a parallel with NFTs, then some of the projects listed above fit into the survivor category while others are newcomers, but both kinds have provided clear value to holders, even while NFTs as a whole have been sidelined. And what’s more, adding to their uniqueness, PFPs have been doing this in a novel way that doesn’t map easily onto traditional business models.
