The past 2022 was eventful for the crypto community. A bear market started from the Luna crash, which set the falling tone for the year. But that presented favorable opportunities to build projects. For ordinary users, experiencing these projects in depth is one of the best ways to participate. To attract engagement, more and more project owners have started to incentivize ordinary community participants and give out “airdrops” to reward those early adopters that contribute to the project.
Lucrative airdrops were seen in DYDX, ENS, and 1inch in 2021, and star projects like Optimism and Aptos in 2022. What are the best airdrops to watch in the crypto community in 2023?
1. Public Chain
Public chains, a key infrastructure of the blockchain industry, are playing an indispensable role. As public chains keep emerging, the competition gets cut-throat. But there are some promising investment opportunities. The following public chain projects that have not issued coins are what users have to be focusing on.
- Sui Network
Sui is a new Layer 1 public chain built with Move (Aptos, which gave out huge airdrop rewards to users last year, is also built with Move). Sui hopes to provide a next-generation smart contract platform with high throughput, low latency, and scalability for deploying large-scale applications.
The total supply of SUI, the native token, is capped at 10 billion, which will be allocated to the founding team, investors, and Sui Foundation and for public sales. It boasts a strong background and top investors. The development team Mysten Labs once served in Meta, the world’s leading social media, and Sui Network announced to conclude $300 million Series B funding in September 2022.
- Sei Network
Sei, the first Layer 1 blockchain optimized for DeFi, features a built-in order matching engine, frontrunning protection, and the fastest transactional finality of any chain (600ms) currently in market. The combination of these optimizations makes it possible for new types of financial products to emerge.
A $5 million funding round led by Multicoin Capital was completed in August 2022, and crypto asset trading platform MEXC launched $20 million ecosystem fund to support the development of key projects on Sei Network this January.
2. Layer 2 (L2)
Many Layer 2 projects were born to solve the congestion and expensive fees on the Ethereum mainnet. The total value locked (TVL) of Layer 2 is $4.23 billion, accounting for 17.8% of Ethereum’s TVL. As star Layer 2 project Optimism announced the distribution plan of its governance token OP in the first half of last year, many users became rich overnight. Which Layer 2 projects may distribute airdrops in 2023?
- zkSync
zkSync, launched by Matter Labs in 2019, is an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution built on ZK Rollup. zkSync 2.0 has launched its mainnet. Compared to Ethereum mainnet, EVM-compatible zkSync 2.0 boasts lower transaction fees.
The total funding for zkSync stood at $458 million, including well-known venture capitalists such as a16z, Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly. Last November, zkSync announced on Twitter that two thirds of the potential future tokens would be allocated to the zkSync ecosystem, which may include future airdrops.
- StarkNet
StarkNet is a permissionless, decentralized Layer 2 ZK-Rollup, intended to scale Ethereum through STARKs protocols. It offers higher throughput and lower fees while maintaining Ethereum’s decentralization, transparency, inclusiveness and security.
The project has officially announced its token proposal (explicit coin issuance). Raising $100 million in a Series D funding round in May 2022 at a valuation of $8 billion (almost five times that of Optimism), StarkNet has a big lead over other Ethereum scaling solutions.
- Arbitrum
Arbitrum, a Layer 2 solution using Optimistic rollup technology, released its mainnet Arbitrum One in September 2021. It inherits Ethereum’s security while greatly increasing the network capacity and reducing transaction costs. Among all Layer 2 projects, Arbitrum ranked first with its TVL of $2.25 billion. Along with a market share of over 50%, Arbitrum is highly competitive.
Among the major four Layer 2 projects, Optimism has issued airdrops, and zkSync and StarkNet confirmed to issue tokens. We believe Arbitrum’s token plan will come out in 2023, and all we have to do is get ready.
3. Domain Name
After the leading player Ethereum Name Service (ENS) went viral last year, other Web3 domain name projects for public chain started to embrace explosive growth.
- SPACE ID
SPACE ID is building a universal name service network that connects people, information, and assets across all blockchains and apps. It allows anyone to register a .bnb domain name to replace the traditional BNB chain address. Binance Labs led the seed round of SPACE ID, and the project now has nearly 337,000 registered accounts and 146,000 users.
- .bit
.bit is a blockchain-based, open source, decentralized cross-chain account system that provides a worldwide unique naming system with a .bit suffix that can be used in different scenarios, such as crypto transfer, domain name resolution, identity authentication, etc. It allows users to register and manage their .bit accounts with any public chain address or even email.
Backed up by a strong ecosystem, .bit raised $13 million in Series A funding last year. It now has nearly 287,000 registered accounts and 109,000 users.
4. Privacy
Growing transaction volume is boosting the demand for transaction privacy protection. On-chain privacy transactions have become indispensable, and more and more capitalists are taking a look at this area. Well-known player Sequoia Capital has already made a move.
- Aleo
Aleo is the first privacy public chain platform to offer fully private applications. By leveraging zero-knowledge cryptography (Zexe) to protect user data on the web, it offers users and application developers unbounded compute with absolute privacy.
This top privacy project raised a total of $298 million from both top blockchain VCs such as a16z and Coinbase and traditional VCs including SoftBank and Tiger Global.
- Tusima Network
Tusima is a zk-rollup-based Layer 2 privacy network that integrates zero-knowledge proof and multi-chain interoperability to protect the privacy of identity, balance and transaction content on blockchains. The project has gone live on Goerli Testnet in September 2022, and it aims to be Web3 privacy financial infrastructure.
5. Web3 Email
Web3 Email is reshaping the way the blockchain community communicates.
- Dmail
Dmail is the first mail application based on Web3.0 and Dfinity technology, which integrates NFT and distributed storage functions. Each Dmail domain name is an NFT and supports decentralized Email. It enables undifferentiated transmission of information between traditional mail and blockchain mail. At the same time, it can construct DID in Web3.
- Mail3
Mail3 is a brand new Web3 communication protocol that enables wallet-to-wallet communication and wallet-to-contract communication for projects and community members with boundless possibility and forward compatibility. It uses blockchain-based account and decentralized service to guarantee security, privacy, and self-sovereign, and helps users create a unique Web3 identity.
Advantages:
Compatible with multiple chains: Mail3 supports all public chain networks and all corresponding wallets and DIDs.
Permanent storage: Users’ encrypted data is permanently stored in the decentralized service.
Compatible with traditional services: Perfectly compatible with established email infrastructure such as Gmail and Outlook.
If you also want to get involved in blockchain projects at zero cost, you may follow the above-mentioned projects. There are many past examples showing that users qualified for airdrops are often rewarded beyond their expectations.
*Disclaimer: The content of this article does not constitute any investment advice.
