Top 5 Most Expensive Cryptocurrency Airdrops of 2024. What Are They?

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

Sometimes you don’t even need to do anything to participate in the giveaway. For example, in early 2024, we received a lot of new meme tokens in the Solana network for hundreds of dollars because we pre-ordered the Solana Seeker cryptocurrency smartphone. Moreover, such users can be easily found in the blockchain, because the project representatives sent them unique non-transferable NFTs shortly after the device was paid for.

So, here are the five biggest giveaways of 2024.

Hyperliquid $10.84 Billion Airdrop

The Hyper Foundation took first place by a wide margin. They generously rewarded Hyperliquid Network users in November by distributing tokens called HYPE.

Users of the first-layer network, optimized for active interaction with DeFi platforms, received 31 million HYPE, initially valued at $1.6 billion. This airdrop became one of the most valuable in history. However, after a few weeks, the capitalization of these tokens grew to 10.8 billion, as the hype around the project was especially strong in the last days of December.

The network’s flagship app is the decentralized exchange (DEX) Hyperliquid, which offers perpetual futures trading with up to 50x leverage. Since its launch, the exchange has attracted over 312,000 users, with this figure growing sharply and steadily.

Starknet Giveaway of 3.09 Billion

According to Decrypt sources , the Starknet project launched its mainnet in 2021. However, it was only three years later that an airdrop of native STRK tokens was carried out, equivalent to 700 million tokens transferred to investors.

Last month, Starknet launched its first phase of staking. It also became the first layer-two network to allow users to earn rewards for participating in the transaction validation process, which means they can directly participate in what happens on the network.

Pudgy Penguins Aidrop of 3.064 Billion

With a market cap of over $500 million, the Pudgy Penguins NFT collection has become one of the most famous in the Ethereum ecosystem. The project has become especially popular after the release of toys in the form of the characters in Walmart and Target stores.

In mid-December, the project launched on the Solana network, along with a PENGU token that was designed to strengthen the connection between fans and the brand. About half of the maximum supply of 88.88 billion PENGU were given to members of the Pudgy Penguins community, other communities, and holders of FTT, the native token of the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX.


We also got the PENGU token distribution. The dollar equivalent of the tokens accrued to three addresses was $850, and as a result, the asset rate increased.


Apparently, the crypto was obtained for active interaction with the Solana network. Therefore, in the future, we can recommend conducting transactions more often and getting acquainted with various platforms.

Notcoin: $2.274 billion

Tapalka Notcoin made a huge contribution to promoting The Open Network (TON) last year, attracting masses of players on the Telegram mini-app. While the long-awaited airdrop was not without its problems, it ended up being the largest gaming token launch of 2024.

Following the launch of the Notcoin token in May, around 80.2 billion NOT were distributed among players. The asset also almost immediately appeared on major crypto exchanges like Binance, which only spurred the growth of its capitalization.

Since then, the tap-game 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 accrued amounts were small, and the HMSTR rate fell rapidly after the distribution.

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

Jupiter JUP Token Giveaway: $2 Billion

Rounding out the top five largest airdrops of 2024 is a Solana-based decentralized exchange aggregator called Jupiter. Its developers distributed 1 billion JUP tokens in January 2024.

Jupiter representatives have committed to issuing another 3 billion JUPs, which will be distributed this January, and the corresponding initiative has been approved in recent weeks.

The first Jupiter community conference, Catstanbul, will take place in Istanbul from January 25th to 26th. The name refers to the anonymous founder of the project, who goes by the pseudonym Meow.

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


We also got a JUP airdrop, but for a small amount. There were 200 tokens in total, which initially translated into about $120.


Among other projects that distributed free tokens in 2024, there were at least four airdrops that peaked at over $1 billion in value – Movement, ZKsync, Eigenlayer, and Wormhole.

Airdrops are one of the important components of popularization of cryptocurrencies, because essentially everyone wants to receive free coins. Therefore, the main recommendation for accrual of tokens in the future is more active use of various popular platforms in the selected network. Most likely, in this way it will be possible to claim the accrual of at least some meme tokens.