Soul woke up on Christmas Day to a pleasant surprise.

It wasn’t an unexpected gift in his Christmas stocking, but rather an unlikely alert on his phone.

A newcryptocurrencyhad launched, and he was eligible to claim some for free.

It sounds like a scam, no more sophisticated than an email from an alleged Nigerian prince.

But it wasn’t.

They’re not as rare as you may think.

Many traditional companies raise funds by going public and offering stocks to the public.

Some of these token launches are accompanied by airdrops.

Their utility is twofold.

First, they act as marketing.

Nothing captures attention like the prospect of free money.

Second, it’s become etiquette thatblockchainapps will do an airdrop when they list a token.

“Airdrops incentivize you to dip your toes into everything.”

The company behind the Christmas Day airdrop is called OpenDAO.

As of Jan. 12, some 300,000 wallets have claimed the airdrop.

(Unusually for an airdrop, OpenDAO isn’t officially associated with OpenSea.

The more money people had spent on OpenSea, the bigger the airdrop they were eligible to receive.

Anyone who claimed the airdrop would see aSpotify Wrapped-style infographicdetailing their NFT trading data from 2021.

Soul had spent $25,000 on NFTs via OpenSea, which put him in the top 6%.

The airdrops received by the top 1% border on the obscene.

Crypto whales published their infographic on Twitter, boasting of airdrops worth tens of thousands of dollars.

OpenDAO garnered a huge amount of attention, and the airdrops have been flowing ever since.

Soul’s airdrop was worth $1,300.

Others got much more.

“I claimed $SOS and $GAS.”

On Monday, Jan. 10, Looks Rare followed.

The lowest tier of airdrop was worth $400, though more active traders received much more.

The airdrop is designed to hype an analytics dashboard tool that fees.wtf will soon launch.

Yet all airdrops are not created equally.

Some tokens become more valuable over time, while others fade to obscurity.

“After OpenDAO’s success, many people have copied,” OpenDAO creator 9x9x9 told me.

“But they use OpenDAO success to raise money for themselves.”

@LooksRareNFTpic.twitter.com/ejAHzh6jFv

9x9x9, who declined to be named, says airdrops are often used to enrich founders.

As is always the case in cryptocurrency, though, there are risks.

The price of fees.wtf’s tokencollapsed in less than an hour, a disaster for early investors.

Worse are the scams.

“Always question any form of free money received in crypto,” said Delphi’s Gedevani.

Soul is ambivalent about the risks, and is instead keen to keep the money flowing.

“These airdrops have me wanting to buy into every new tool.”