Airdrop

Airdrop — a free distribution of a project’s tokens to users based on a predefined set of criteria. In the TON ecosystem, airdrops have been the primary way of converting Telegram’s audience into on-chain users: millions of people received their first jettons through Notcoin, Hamster Kombat, DOGS and Catizen drops.

Why projects give tokens away

An airdrop solves several problems at once:

• Token distribution. A team cannot just sell its entire supply — without real holders and a broad free float a token cannot list properly or develop a market price.
• User acquisition. The promise of a free asset is a powerful marketing tool. Notcoin pulled in tens of millions of players largely because of the expected drop.
• Reward early adopters. Drops are often aimed at people who used the product before the token launch, on the logic that they helped the project grow and deserve a share.
• Regulatory framing. In several jurisdictions a free distribution is easier to structure than a sale — no funds are raised, so the event is harder to classify as an ICO.

Types of drops

• Retroactive. Rewarding past activity: DEX trades, protocol usage, NFT holding. The classic EVM examples are Uniswap UNI and Arbitrum ARB; in TON several DEX aggregators and DeFi protocols have done retroactive jetton drops.
• Mini-app farming. Game-style activity in a Telegram bot: accumulating points, completing quests, daily check-ins. Notcoin, Hamster, Catizen and DOGS all followed this pattern.
• Social. Channel subscriptions, reposts, X/Twitter linking, Galxe or Layer3 quests. Often combined with mini-app farming.
• Holder snapshot. A balance snapshot at a given block: anyone holding more than N tokens of an existing asset gets a share of the new one. Common with forks and cross-chain drops.
• Lockdrop / merit-based. You lock up an asset for a period and receive proportionally more in return. Less common in TON.

Typical criteria for TON projects

Telegram games tend to use a similar set of conditions:

• Telegram account activity (age, Premium status, absence of obvious bot signals).
• In-game balance — internal points are converted into a share of the token at a publicly announced rate.
• Referral statistics — invited friends increase a multiplier.
• Social actions — channel subscriptions, wallet binding, lightweight KYC for larger drops.

The math is usually non-linear: top players receive disproportionately more than average ones, so the project avoids spraying tokens across tens of millions of dust accounts.

Taxes and regulation

This is highly jurisdiction-specific and not legal advice. General considerations:

• In some countries receiving the token is treated as income at the time of the drop, valued at market price. A later sale is then a separate taxable event.
• In others income is recognised only on disposal.
• Sanctions filtering. Projects often exclude addresses on OFAC lists or residents of specific jurisdictions; the rules are spelled out in the drop terms.

What recipients should watch for

• Fake claim pages. The bulk of TON-related scams are fake “claim your drop” sites that connect via TON Connect and ask the user to sign a transfer of all their jettons. Real drops are usually credited automatically or through an official Telegram bot.
• Verify the jetton contract. Multiple jettons can share the same ticker; only the official contract address counts. Look it up on the project’s verified channels.
• Record-keeping. It is worth saving screenshots of the receiving transaction and the price at the moment of receipt — that simplifies tax reporting if your jurisdiction requires it.

Airdrops in TON are not a one-off event but a whole category of marketing activity; they have already reshaped the Web3 onboarding landscape and continue to do so with each new generation of mini-apps.