You know those “ULTIMATE STAKING” guides for Airdrops?
This isn’t one – but I will give you my observations on staking and potentially qualifying for Cosmos Airdrops in the future.
What tokens should I stake for potential airdrops?
At minimum:
Nice to have:
There are tons of ecosystems and tokens in Cosmos, each likely to give you their own Airdrops and opportunities. You should only acquire tokens that you can afford to lose. Do not chase airdrops or spend your rent money on tokens.
Baseline Staking amount
Based on recent airdrop requirements and projecting forward, I would opt for a baseline of $100 equivalent staked in a given token. That’s the minimum. Caveats being that markets fluctuate, prices change, but here is what I would look for in the near term:
- $ATOM: min 15, nice to have: 25+
- $OSMO: min 55, nice to have: 135+
- $TIA: min 10, nice to have: 15+
- $KUJI: 1 $KUJI or more
- $STARS: min 2500, nice to have: 5500+
Each airdrop is different. Some will have a min of 1 token, but more often than not the amount creeps up to $75 or $100. Only stake what you can. These are suggested amounts, without any guarantees. For Airdrops that offer tiered drops, with whale caps, or 1:1 distributions, you will get a larger Airdrop the more you stake, up to the cap. Staking minimum will more often than not result in smaller Airdrop.
Where should you stake
Do not stake with CEX validators, do not stake with 0% APR validators (Sunflower validator says hello!), stake with community validators and validators outside of top 20.
Why?
- Help those that work the hardest with least resources
- Some airdrops look for stakers outside of the top 20 (Hello $NOM Airdrop 2).
- Help reduce stake concentration that affects voting outcomes and puts the chain at risk
To help you on your staking journey, use Kujira’s POD to rebalance your stake on any IBC chain:
If you are looking for a reliable and experienced Validator team, look no further than our Sponsor Enigma Validator – they validate across Cosmos and provide core contributions – from IBC relaying, monitoring bots to data-focused analytics and dashboards. Check them out here:
https://www.enigma-validator.com/#staking
How soon will you be eligible for Airdrops?
Again, each Airdrop is different. However, most of the time projects take time to develop and iterate between various testnets before heading to mainnet and genesis. As such, most of your staked amounts will probably qualify you for juicy airdrops 6-9 months from now, if not longer. There are exceptions – $DYM from Dymension – but for the most part, snapshots for airdrops that you can claim now or will be able to claim soon, took place a long time ago. Be patient.
If you can, increase your stake over time
Make use of REStakeApp if you’d like, and if you can afford to, try to increase your stake over time, even if by a little bit. As we just saw with SAGA , the airdrop requirements were filtering out users that did not increase their stake over the snapshot period. I don’t know how prevalent this will be, but it could add to your activity score, especially if you are swapping and IBCing tokens around.
Participate in Governance
If you can, try to participate in Governance on a given chain. Some projects reward users for voting a certain way. If you can’t keep up with all of what’s going on every chain, we do our best to provide updates on likely proposals that will get you an airdrop – $SAIL – as well as many other reputable content creators in the Cosmos eco.
Liquid Staking and LPs
$stATOM from Stride as well as $milkTIA from Milky Way are probably assets that will be recognized in future Airdrops, and is another way of staking. $stATOM holders got $NTRN Airdrop and will be part of the $DYM Airdrop.
Participating in $milkTIA / $TIA LPs on Osmosis and similar $stATOM pools may help boost your eligibility.
What Else?
The goal of this post was to talk about staking specifically, however, Airdrops are getting more and more complicated and there are a number of trends emerging that are beyond the scope of this discussion. For more:
Airdrop Responsibly – quick tips:
Cosmos Airdrops – Quick 2023 Observations, Heading into the New Year (Geoblock, Registrations, etc.)
Cryptocito’s Cosmos Airdrop Mega Guide 2024
Strongly encourage you to have a look – beyond alpha and details on future and on-going Airdrops, @Cryptocito breaks down some key Airdrop rules that we are 100% aligned on.
What a lot of teams are missing about Airdrops
