Berachain Airdrop Bustration
Feb 19, 2025The great airdrop disappointment
Are you an airdrop farmer? Did you participate in Berachain hoping for an airdrop? This is one of the wildest airdrop tales I've seen in crypto. I got a zero allocation and many farmers vented similar frustrations after a year's worth of testnet work.
Behind the "bustration"
Just like Berachain likes to do a play on words like Bear and the letter "B" I wanted to give them a nod. Berachain airdrop was a bust for many—leading to frustration—so that's why I call it the Berachain bustration. Let's examine what happened and end with a positive takeaway.
Voices of discontent
First, let's take a look at my top 5 "bustration" posts on X, starting with my favorite. They're all good and some are equally as good as others. You'll notice a common theme of hundreds of test transactions for over a year with zero results. It makes me wonder: Who got an airdrop allocation from using the testnet and how much did they get?
My top five Berachain bustrations:
1. Wasted countless hours nothing for everything.
2. We are sorry, being loyal doesn't pay.
3. We are sorry, total waste of time.
4. We are sorry, one year of work for zero Bera.
5. We are sorry, short and sweet.
Key Takeaway
You only have so much time to farm airdrops or do anything in crypto. Figure out your best use of time, which is your most valuable asset. Use a testnet, but don't spend a year doing hundreds of fictitious transactions that could have been on a real DEX.
The NFT golden ticket
There were basically two ways to get the airdrop, be an NFT holder or use the testnet. Berachain morphed from a bear-themed NFT project from 2021 with about 4,300 NFTs across six series. Those NFT holders got millions in airdrop allocations and it appears the testnet users got the shaft.
The tale of two allocations
According to PANewslab, "Six NFT holders received $306 million worth of NFTs, with the highest single address receiving $55.77 million… The minimum allowance for testnet users may be $60." This is what you call a mega disparity. ****
All you needed to know was grab an NFT and wait. I don't know if this was published, but with so few NFTs, who do you think knew about this? I'll let you fill in the blank.
The whale's game
Then you've got the private investors who seemed to reap handsomely from the launch. Crypto.news summed it up like this, "Critics argue that private investors, who hold over 35% of the total BERA supply, can stake BERA, earn BGT, burn BGT for additional BERA, and sell it, creating a potential loophole that allows early backers to extract liquidity while regular holders bear the downside."
They further highlighted a frustrated trader who remarked, "Wait, so insiders can cycle through the token mechanics and dump on retail? This can't be real."
The inside job
Finally, the icing on the cake is the alleged Berachain co-founder who received and dumped airdrop tokens. "A cofounder [DevBear] is selling tokens from one of his doxxed addresses. He got around 200,000 BERA from the airdrop (this is a really bad thing since he, or the core, designed the airdrop) and then he swapped some of those tokens for WTCB, ETH, BYUSD, etc." Ericonomic claimed .
Co-founders must recuse themselves from participating in their own project's airdrop campaign. We need more integrity and transparency in the space especially in the face of the blatant fraud and scams.
Key Takeaway
Your goal is to manage risk not returns. If you can get good returns from a project that just left a bad taste in your mouth, then you should take those profits. Even out your highs and lows and stay focused on your game. LFG. WAGMI.