One of the crypto narratives everyone in the space is talking about is restaking. This means that by staking your ETH, you get additional benefits in the form of airdrop points as your ETH is restaked across other platforms.
Probably the biggest name, and perhaps the first to offer this, is Eigen Layer. They have an insane amount of ETH currently staked(worth ~$5b) even though they aren't fully live yet. The rumor has it that the Eigen Layer airdrop is gonna be a massive one and many are hunting those Eigen Layer points at the moment.
One could simply stake on the EL platform to start collecting those desired points but there's an even better way - re-restaking ETH. This can be done on various platforms such as EtherFi which just concluded their Season 1.
EtherFi
When the airdrop is done and the token allocation is revealed, comes the debate. Usually, some argue that the drop favored the larger accounts and stakers while rarely it's the opposite.
Just a couple of hours ago, EtherFi revealed the final token eligibility and to my surprise, they've changed the formula to favor the smaller fish such as myself.
A couple of days ago this was the amount of $ETHFI I was going to receive but after the change, it went up to this:
I was staking about $100 worth of $ETH and ended up with ~9,000 EtherFi points and 31 EigenLayer points.
I was just reading their Discord and even though I'm extremely happy with my new allocation, I can feel for those who staked way more, were left out from the higher tier, and ended up with the same amount as I did.
Meanwhile, some argued that the new system also favors the Sybil farms as they could've farmed this with multiple wallets and with a 0.1 ETH stake. A valid point there. It's probably really difficult to come up with a system that considers the smaller accounts while still trying to fight Sybil farms. The only thing that comes to mind is KYC and nobody wants that...
Price Speculation
If you are new to airdrop farming, you probably wonder why I am doing this especially when Ethereum mainnet fees are involved when bridging to EtherFi. Well, these can be highly lucrative and the rewards can be worth so much more than the initial deposit.
Let's do some calculations: as I mentioned, I staked about 100$ worth of ETH, paid 20$ in gas for bridging, a couple of more dollars for signing, and another 20$ when re-re-restaking on Pendle Arbitrum. So I'd say the total amount was about $150.
In a few hours, I'll know what the price of $ETHFI will be on launch but it's already trading on Whales Market at the lowest price of $4.64/token.
With this valuation, I'll make 8 times more than my initial stake and obviously still get to keep my deposit. On top of that, my EtherFi points migrate to Season 2 as well as my EL points. Not bad!
There's supposed to be some new stuff coming up on Season 2 but not much has been revealed yet. I'll keep you posted on Inleo so keep following my blog posts! 🧐
Testnets & Other Ideas
Enough with the EtherFi, if you are on a budget, there are also lots of options to get airdrop exposure with little or zero initial capital. Most of them are done on testnets and projects will then reward active users with airdrops once the mainnet goes live.
One of the latest ones I'm interacting with daily is the Elys Network. All you need is a wallet (Kepler f.e.), and some basic stuff such as X & Discord accounts and you are good to go.
Elys Network is a NextGen oracle-based decentralized perpetual trading and lending platform featuring native $USDC
Currently, we can only swap and stake Elys testnet tokens so doing this should only take less than a minute per day.
$ELYS will also be dropped to $ATOM stakers so if you are doing that, interacting with their testnet could be a good idea to maximize your airdrop allocation.
COST: free
REQUIREMENTS: Discord, X, Telegram, and a Cosmos wallet like Kepler
TIME: less than a minute/day
Tabi
This one is also worth giving a try. Tabi is a blockchain constructed on Cosmos SDK and CometBFT consensus engine, capable of scaling and compatible with EVM.
Tabi is an innovative gaming blockchain on Cosmos that boasts EVM compatibility and exceptional scalability with Millions of TPS. It has raised $11m in investments and one of the backers is Binance Labs. Even though it's not announced yet, we could perhaps expect a listing on Binance.
As for the testnet itself, it's pretty straightforward: get testnet tokens from the faucet, connect social accounts, and do small quests.
After you've finished a quest, you get to open a chest that contains an NFT. To claim that you will need a little bit BNB in your wallet to pay the fees. If I recall correctly, for me it was $0.37 so definitely not that much.
COST: $0.37 - $3
REQUIREMENTS: wallet, Discord, X, Reddit
TIME: 5 minutes/quest
Grass
Okay! This one is interesting:
Grass is the underlying infrastructure that powers AI models. By installing the Grass web extension, the application will automatically sell your unused internet to AI companies, who use it to scrape the internet and train their models. The result? You share in the growth of AI, earning a stake in the network for selling a resource you didn’t even know you had.
I'm still not 100% sure what to think of this but decided to give it a shot anyway. Grass is probably the easiest airdrop opportunity I've ever come across. You just add their Chrome extension, log in with an email, add your device and it starts doing its thing.
My only concern was that would it slow down my computer while running in the background but unlike with those BTC GPU mining apps, I haven't noticed any change with this one.
I haven't yet had time to read about the token that much but I did saw it already trading on the Whales Markets pre-sale some time ago.
AI + crypto during the bull market could potentially be a winning combo and even though Grass is probably very diluted because of how simple it is to start with, I can see some great potential with it.
COST: free
REQUIREMENTS: email
TIME: passive
Conclusion
One thing I forgot to mention about EtherFi and other restaking protocols when you are restaking, or re-staking, it always adds another layer of risk which is good to keep in mind.
That being said, I find this way of farming airdrops very promising as there are still many protocols and chains yet to drop their tokens. Eigen Layer is the one everyone is of course eyeing right now but there are others such as MODE, a chain on which you can farm multiple future airdrops simultaneously!
In fact, MODE is the topic of my next blog post so tuned.
Thank you for reading, leave a comment, and don't forget to follow for more!
Ongoing Airdrops:
🔸 Elys Network - easy 1 minute/day testnet
🔸 Grass - perhaps the easiest way to gain exposure for a potentially very big airdrop!
🔸 Tabi - easy tasks. Need some BNB to claim NFTs($0.37 for me!) & Reddit account
🔸 DOP testnet
🔸 GRVT ZkSync Mystery Box - just log in and claim your first mystery box
🔸 Ether.fi - stake ETH for Points & EigenLayer points
🔸 Mode airdrop
Disclaimers:
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