Free tokens attract scammers like nothing else in crypto. Almost every airdrop-related loss comes down to one of two things: a signature approved on a fake site or a seed phrase typed somewhere it never should have been. Both are preventable. These are the rules we follow ourselves, based on what we have seen since 2017.
The golden rules
- Your seed phrase never leaves your head or your paper backup. No airdrop, no wallet support team, no “verification bot” ever needs it. Anyone asking for it is stealing from you.
- Never send crypto to receive an airdrop. “Send 0.1 to get 1 back” was a scam in 2017 and it still is.
- Only claim through links from a project’s official channels or our listings. Fake claim sites are the number one way farmers get drained.
- Farm with a burner wallet. Keep your holdings in a separate wallet, ideally a hardware wallet like Trezor or Ledger.
- Read every signature before you approve it. If you don’t understand what a request does, reject it.
- Use app-based 2FA everywhere. SMS codes can be stolen through SIM swaps.
The scams that actually catch people
Fake claim sites. Scammers clone real claim pages so well you can’t tell them apart by looking. The URL is the only difference. They buy search ads so the fake ranks above the real site and they reply to official announcements from lookalike accounts. Never claim through a search result or a link posted in replies.
Drainer signatures. Modern drainers don’t need your seed phrase. One malicious signature is enough: a token approval, a permit signature or a setApprovalForAll for your NFTs can empty a wallet in a single transaction. This is why reading what you sign matters more than anything else on this page.
Scam tokens in your wallet. Tokens showing up that you never claimed are bait. Trying to swap or sell them leads to a phishing site or a malicious approval. Hide them and never interact with them.
Hacked official accounts. Even verified project accounts on X and Discord get compromised and post “surprise claim” links. Be suspicious of any drop announced out of nowhere with a countdown attached. Real claims don’t expire in 30 minutes.
Fake support. Nobody legitimate DMs you first. Not admins, not wallet support, not us. Anyone messaging you privately with an offer to help you claim is setting you up.
Recovery scams. After a wallet gets drained, accounts appear offering to recover the funds for a fee. On-chain transactions are irreversible. Recovery services are a second scam aimed at victims of the first one.
Wallet setup that keeps you safe
The setup we recommend is simple: a hardware wallet for everything you want to keep, plus one or more cheap burner wallets for farming and claiming. If a burner gets drained, you lose lunch money instead of your stack.
Write your seed phrase on paper and store it offline. Never photograph it, screenshot it or save it in a cloud note. Check your token approvals every few weeks with a tool like revoke.cash and revoke anything you no longer use.
Before you claim anything
- Confirm the announcement on the project’s official site or X account, not through a reply or a DM
- Cross-check the drop on airdrops.io. We link only to official claim pages
- Check the URL character by character before connecting a wallet
- Read the signature request. If your wallet warns you or the request looks unrelated to claiming, reject it
- Ignore countdown pressure. Urgency is the scammer’s favorite tool
If you think you’ve been drained
Speed matters. Move whatever is left to a fresh wallet from a clean device, then revoke all approvals on the compromised wallet. Treat that wallet as burned and never use it again.
