51 big crypto airdrops in 2026: three in four tokens are down

01 · One dropSeven in ten, within the hour

In early January, Brevis opened its airdrop on Ethereum, and some 80,000 wallets claimed BREV over the next few weeks. The median claimer got tokens worth about $50 at the first week's price.

Most did not keep them long. Seven in ten claimers moved their BREV within an hour of claiming, and nine in ten within a day. About a third sent it straight to an exchange. A month later, one claimer in 20 still held at least half of what they had claimed. BREV now trades 78% below its first week.

Brevis was one of 51. Bitquery indexes every token transfer on the chains it covers, so we went looking for every airdrop of 2026 that paid at least 5,000 wallets and $1 million, and followed each claimer's tokens. Most drops went the same way, if not as far. Claimers moved fast, few held, and three in four tokens old enough to judge now trade below their first week. A small share of claimers took most of the tokens, and in some drops one group took almost all of them.

02 · The listWhat counts as a big airdrop

An airdrop is a free handout of a new token, usually to people who used a project early. Some projects push tokens straight into wallets. Most open a claim page, and each user sends a transaction to collect.

We started from the chain itself rather than anyone's list. We looked at every token handout on eight chains this year and kept the ones that reached at least 5,000 wallets and were worth $1 million or more when claimed. Payouts from DEX pools, exchanges, bridges and staking do not count, and neither does spam.

Fifty-one drops made it, on four chains. Polygon, Optimism, Robinhood Chain and Arc had none that cleared the bar. We also left out three pushes that were not really airdrops: two on Robinhood Chain that went to addresses with no other activity, padding holder counts, and a KITE transfer that re-sent an existing holder list.

The dollar total needs a warning. Seven of the tokens have no market listing, so their value comes from DEX trades, and one of them, a BNB Chain token called CAT, accounts for $352 million of the $848 million on its own. That is paper value, and the medians below say more than the total does.

Take CAT out and the other 50 drops handed out about $496 million at claim-day prices. Now to what claimers did with their tokens, starting with day one.

03 · The first dayGone within a day

The median drop saw 73% of claimers move some or all of their tokens within a day of claiming, and more than half within the hour. Where the tokens went first depends on the chain.

Many first moves simply went to another wallet. Of the rest, far more claimers on BNB Chain and Base sold into a DEX than sent tokens to an exchange, and on Ethereum it was the other way round. The three drops where exchanges led most were all on Ethereum: ZK Coin, Sentient and ROBO, where more than half of claimers sent tokens to an exchange within a day.

Four drops paid through Binance Wallet's own reward contract show the DEX habit most clearly. In each, half to 70% of claimers routed the tokens into Binance Wallet's swap router within a day, and only 5% to 8% sent them to an exchange. The router carries an exchange's name, but what it does is a DEX swap, so those sales show up on-chain. It is the same app we looked at in our Binance Alpha points farming investigation.

04 · HoldingA month later, one in four

A month after claiming, 23% of claimers in the median drop still held at least half of what they had claimed. Three months on, it was 8%. Just over a quarter of the drops old enough to judge kept more than half of their claimers.

The top of that list is mostly tokens pushed straight into wallets rather than claimed. PlasticHeroes, EarthMeta, LABUBU and Elsa all show more than nine in ten recipients still holding. For three of them we checked the recipients, and at least 86% had not signed a transaction or moved anything since last July. Holding, there, means nobody touched the token. Leave those three out and the median at 30 days drops to 18%.

05 · The priceThree in four are down

Holding only pays if the price holds. We compare each token's price now with the median of its first seven trading days, which smooths out launch-day swings. Five drops from September are too young for that test, so this section covers the other 46.

Thirty-five of the 46 trade below their first week. Twenty-two are down by half or more, and six by 90% or more. The median change is a fall of 48%. For a claimer, selling in the first week beat holding to today in three drops out of four.

The exceptions stand out because they are rare. Bitway's BTW is up about 93 times since its first week, a move we checked against its own trading pairs. ENA, Unitas and staked ENA more than doubled, and Cap roughly doubled. At the other end, CREATOR and ODIC lost almost everything, and Beat, River and TermMax more than 90%.

Price is half the story. The other half is who got the tokens in the first place.

06 · Who gets the tokensA few wallets take most of it

Airdrops are pitched as wide distributions, but the tokens rarely land that way. In the median drop, the top 10% of claimers took 73% of the tokens, and the top 1% took about a third. Some of that is by design, since projects often reward their heaviest users most.

The most even drops, such as Perle, OpenGradient and Cap on BNB Chain, gave most claimers similar amounts. An even spread does not prove a fair drop, though. Beat was one of the most even, and it turns up again in the farm chart below.

Some drops also carried large blocks the project sent out itself, on top of what users claimed. On Aligned's Ethereum contract, six such blocks took 92% of everything paid out. At Spacecoin, ETHGas and Zenchain the blocks took more than two thirds. We count those separately and leave them out of every claimer figure above.

07 · FarmsOne group, many wallets

Free tokens draw farmers: people who run thousands of wallets and pose as separate users, a trick known as a sybil attack. We linked claimers that were funded in the same burst of payments from one source, deposited to the same exchange address or sent their tokens to the same collection wallet. In the median drop, 11% of claimers sat in such groups, and 4% on the strongest links alone.

A few drops were far worse. ROBO was the clearest case, first flagged by Bubblemaps in March: one group, paid for through seven exchanges, took 87% of everything claimed and later sent it all to Bitget. We traced it end to end in our ROBO investigation. At Beat every claimer sat in a group funded in the same bursts, and at River seven in ten claimers sat in linked groups.

Wallet counts can mislead here. At EDGE, 57% of claimers sat in linked groups, yet those groups took less than 1% of the tokens. The farms were numerous, and the money went elsewhere.

08 · LeftoversUnclaimed tokens and fakes

Most drops paid out nearly everything they set aside. Among the drops paid from a simple claim contract, the median paid out 87% of its pot. Only four took back more than 1%, led by Espresso, which returned 85% of its pot in June.

Zenchain's low figure is a different story. It sent most of its pot back to its own treasury the day after launch.

Launches also drew fakes. In more than half of them, tokens with the same name or symbol as the real one were pushed into wallets, 5.6 million times in all, often before the real claim opened. Opinion's fakes started four weeks early. It is a close cousin of the spam in our address poisoning investigation, and the safe rule is simple: claim only from the link the project itself posts, and check eligibility with a trusted airdrop checker.

09 · The answerHow we checked, and what it means

We used Bitquery's own archive of token transfers, from January 1 to September 29, 2026. Exchange and DEX addresses come from our address labels, and prices come from our price data, with DEX trades for the seven unlisted tokens. Drops that were already paying out in 2025 were left out. "Moved" means a claimer sent any of the token onward; "held" means the wallet still had at least half of what it claimed. A drop can score high on both when claimers moved a small part and kept the rest. The per-drop list below has the headline figures, and the full data file has every measure for every drop.

So were 2026's airdrops worth holding? Most claimers did not wait to find out: they moved their tokens within a day. On the price record, selling in the first week beat holding in three drops out of four. The tokens that held their value were the exception, and several of the drops that kept their holders were pushes into wallets nobody uses.

Brevis's claimers, seven in ten gone within the hour, were only a little quicker than most. For projects the lesson is harder: a month after the median drop, three claimers in four had let most of their tokens go. If you are sizing up a new airdrop, the token holder data and our guide to airdrop analysis show who actually holds it, and how fast they are leaving.

Value at claim-day prices. Price change: now against the first week. * Unlisted token, valued from DEX trades. "Too new": the drop started in September. #1 and #2: two rounds of the same token. Claimer counts and every other measure are in the data file.

FAQ

How many big crypto airdrops were there in 2026?

We found 51 on Ethereum, BNB Chain, Base and Arbitrum in the first nine months of the year, each paying at least 5,000 wallets and $1 million at claim-day prices. Polygon, Optimism, Robinhood Chain and Arc had none that cleared that bar.

Did 2026 airdrop tokens go up or down?

Mostly down. Three in four of the drops old enough to judge trade below their first-week price, and the median is down 48%. Bitway (BTW), ENA, Unitas, staked ENA and Cap were the main exceptions.

Do airdrop claimers sell right away?

Most move fast. In the median drop, 73% of claimers moved some or all of their tokens within a day, and 23% still held at least half a month later.

Were 2026 airdrops farmed?

Some heavily. In the median drop, 11% of claimers sat in linked wallet groups. In the worst case, ROBO, one group took 87% of the tokens.

How do I avoid fake airdrop tokens?

Claim only from the link the project posts. Fakes with the real name or symbol hit more than half of the launches, often before the real claim opened.