Most often, airdrops are received by early users of certain cryptocurrency projects. For example, lending protocols like Kamino distributed KMNO tokens to those who actively interacted with the platform during the so-called point farming seasons.

At times, you don’t have to do anything at all to participate in the distribution. For example, at the beginning of 2024 we received many new meme tokens in the Solana network worth hundreds of dollars, as we pre-ordered the Solana Seeker cryptocurrency smartphone. And these users can be easily found in the blockchain, as the project representatives sent them unique non-transferable NFTs shortly after they paid for the device.

Giving away free money

So, here are five of the biggest giveaways of 2024.

Contents

  • 1 Hyperliquid’s $10.84 billion airdrop
  • 2 Starknet’s $3.09 billion giveaway
  • 3 Pudgy Penguins’ Airdrop at 3.064 billion
  • 4 Notcoin: $2.274 billion
  • 5 Jupiter’s JUP token giveaway: $2 billion

Hyperliquid’s Airdrop at $10.84 billion

The first place went to the representatives of Hyper Foundation with a big gap. They generously rewarded Hyperliquid Network users in November by giving away tokens called HYPE.

Users of the tier one network, optimised for active interaction with DeFi platforms, received 31 million HYPE, originally valued at $1.6 billion. This airdrop became one of the most valuable in history. Still, a few weeks later, the capitalisation of these tokens rose to 10.8 billion, as the hype around the project was particularly strong in the last days of December.

Changes in the value of HYPE cryptocurrency

The network’s flagship application is the decentralised exchange (DEX) Hyperliquid, which offers trading of open-ended futures with leverage of up to 50x. Since its launch, the exchange has attracted more than 312,000 users, and this figure is increasing sharply and steadily.

Starknet’s 3.09 billion Starknet giveaway

According to Decrypt’s sources, the Starknet project launched its mainnet in 2021. However, it wasn’t until three years later that airdrop of STRK native tokens was conducted, with the equivalent of 700 million tokens transferred to investors.

STRK cryptocurrency value changes

Last month, Starknet launched the first phase of steaking. In addition, it became the first tier 2 network that allows users to receive rewards for participating in the transaction validation process, meaning they are directly involved in what happens within it.

Pudgy Penguins Airdrop at 3.064 billion

The Pudgy Penguins NFT collection with a market capitalisation of over $500 million has become one of the most prominent in the Efirium ecosystem. This project proved to be particularly popular after the release of toys in the form of the respective characters in Walmart and Target shop chains.

In mid-December, the project went live on the Solana network along with the PENGU token, which should strengthen fans’ connection to the brand. About half of the maximum offering of 88.88 billion PENGU was given to members of the Pudgy Penguins community, other communities and holders of FTT, i.e. the native token of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX.

Pudgy Penguins NFT Collection Characters


The PENGU token giveaway came to us as well. The dollar equivalent of the accrued tokens at three addresses was $850, with the asset's exchange rate increasing in the end.

Apparently, the crypto was obtained for active interaction with the Solana network. Therefore, for the future we can recommend to conduct transactions more often and familiarise yourself with different platforms.

Accrual of airdrop token PENGU to one of our wallets

Notcoin: 2.274 billion dollars

The Notcoin token contributed immensely to the promotion of The Open Network (TON) last year, attracting masses of players on the Telegram mini-app. While the much-anticipated airdrop didn’t come without problems, it ended up being the token’s biggest gaming launch in 2024.

Changes in the value of the Notcoin cryptocurrency

After the launch of the Notcoin token in May, around 80.2 billion NOTs were distributed among players. The asset also appeared almost immediately on major crypto exchanges like Binance, which only fuelled its capitalisation growth.

Since then, the tap-and-play model has become extremely popular in the industry. On the wave of hype, the Hamster Kombat project was later launched, which gained 300 million players in the summer before its own airdrop. However, the amounts accrued were not large, and in addition, the HMSTR exchange rate dropped precipitously after the giveaway.

Therefore, since then, the number of those willing to interact with the so-called tapalaks has become much smaller. As practice shows, most often the effort and time spent in games are not worth it.

Jupiter’s JUP token giveaway: $2 billion.

Rounding out the top five biggest airdrops of 2024 is an aggregator of decentralised exchanges based on the Solana network called Jupiter. Its developers gave away 1 billion JUP tokens in January 2024.

Jupiter representatives have pledged to issue another 3 billion JUPs to be distributed this January, and the initiative was approved in recent weeks.

Jupiter’s JUP token value change over the year

The first Jupiter community conference, called Catstanbul, will be held in Istanbul from 25-26 January. The name refers to the anonymous founder of the project under the pseudonym Meow.

Jupiter remains one of the largest DeFi projects based on the Solana network, having managed a trading volume of over $2 trillion in transactions.


We also got an aidrop of JUP, but for a small amount. There were 200 tokens in total, which initially translated to somewhere around $120.

Among other projects that gave away free tokens in 2024, there were no less than four airdrops that were worth over $1 billion at their peak – Movement, ZKsync, Eigenlayer and Wormhole.


Airdrops are one of the most important parts of the popularisation of cryptocurrencies, because basically everyone wants to get free coins. Therefore, the main recommendation for accruing tokens in the future is a more active use of various popular platforms in the selected network. Most likely, in this way you will definitely be able to claim at least some meme tokens.
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