It's been three months since Sui mainnet launched. For those who lived in regions that were able to participate in Sui's community sale, some folks made a decent chunk of change off of the coin launch, in spite of there truly being no airdrop for this project. For others, like me, who had taken the calculated risk to put in the effort to attempt to qualify for individual project airdrops on Sui...well, maybe others did well, but I wasn't so lucky.

My Decision to Participate in Sui Testnet

To recap, I made a few decisions leading up to the Sui mainnet launch. The first is that I wanted to participate in testnet and quest activities in case there was going to be a surprise airdrop, in spite of the fact that Sui Network made it clear that they were not planning one. That was a calculated choice on my part, and one that I knew was a long shot. I also participated in the Sui testnet for two other reasons: one, because I wanted to learn more and believe that my (and your) efforts to test new networks is beneficial to the cryptocurrency community in general, and, two, because I wanted to see if I could benefit from Sui in other ways through the potential airdrops from individual projects building on Sui.

General Thoughts on Potential Airdrop Activities

There are a few reasons that I may not have been on the receiving end of specific airdrops, so I think it's important to go over them in general terms before I dive into the specifics of what I did.

• User error. A lot of my potential airdrop qualifying activities were in the form of collecting OATs and CAPs that offered/promised shares of future project token airdrops. However, in some cases claiming the digital asset wasn't all there was to any individual offer. Some projects requested that claimants post their OAT and wallet address on their Twitter announcements. Others had users connect their wallets via bots like CollabLand to verify their assets on Discord. And the list goes on. So it's entirely possible I (and you?) may not have received airdrop rewards by missing these additional steps not included on the Galxe OAT page, etc. 
• Rug pulls & other scam projects. A handful of the projects I interacted with early on during the Sui testnet phase turned out to be scams, while others simply failed. So not only did the airdrop offers or other benefits offered not come to fruition on their own projects, they damaged the ability for collaborative partners to make good on their promises, too. (I noticed many Sui projects on Galxe did team-up offers among two or more projects building on the network, rather than doing single offers on their own.)
• Rewards still may be incoming. As I mentioned above, it's been about three months since the Sui mainnet launch. In the grand scheme of things, it's perfectly possible that some projects are still waiting to launch their tokens or NFTs due to technical issues or other considerations, so there's still a small possibility some of these projects may surprise us with a late drop or two.

Rewards from Sui Network Project Testnet Activities

With all of the above in mind, here are my stats from my attempts to qualify for potential airdrops from projects building on or interacting with Sui Network.

I participated in:

• 82 OAT campaigns on Galxe
• 11 CAP campaigns on TaskOn

I (so far) have received:

• 1 token airdrop ($TFI from TrustFi's OAT celebrating the launch of Sui. Received on Polygon Network.)
• 1 NFT airdrop (Community Access Program drop from Sui directly.)

So, as you can see, the fruits of my labors in regards to airdropped assets were fairly low.

I'm not going to get into every single project and campaign that I participated in this article, as covering the details of 93 campaigns from 62 projects would be far too much for one reading. I thought about highlighting just a handful of those projects, too, but again - I think that might be a bit much for the purpose of this article. Instead, I'll leave you with a few specific experiences, and how they'll influence my testnet activities moving forward. 

My Red Flags Before a Scam 

One of the NFT launchpads building on Sui was my first red flag in the Sui ecosystem; they were one of the first projects I noticed that disappeared around the time of the mainnet launch. There was chatter on Twitter debating whether it was simply a project that fell apart, or an outright scam. I tend to lean toward the latter due to my own experience.

I participated in this particular platform's testing phase, and like with all of the other projects I was testing, I tried to give feedback when appropriate. For this particular project, I posted in their Discord that they might need to talk to their image hosting provider, because the antivirus software on my laptop and my phone were both flagging the their NFT images as phishing links. I had a few folks respond to me making some small jokes about it, and I joked back a bit without thinking much about it. The next day I found that there was a huge announcement posted about how they were NOT a scam and I was just FUD'ing their project.

Yikes. I felt bad at first - to be honest, I had had a few beers the night before when I posted about the antivirus issues, so I realized my comments and jokes might have been taken out of context. It is the internet, after all - no one can read tone on here, ha! So I posted an explanation and apology, and...nothing. No reply, no change to their accusations, nothing. It was only a few weeks later that I and others found that this platform's site and social media accounts had disappeared.

So, ok, one thing that I've learned in crypto specifically (and life in general) is that a person's response to adversity is a good clue about their own intentions. Folks who tend to immediately jump to conclusions that someone's constructive feedback is actually hostile behavior has, in the past for me at least, been a good indication that they tend to have shifty behaviors themselves. That's one of the reasons I tend to get wary of crypto projects who have objectively bad customer service - if a company or project is treating their user base like they're the enemy, there's a good chance it's because they would be interacting with bad intentions if they themselves were the users. (Your experience may vary, of course; this is just my two cents.)

How Many Is Too Many?

If you read my stats above, you can imagine that I sunk a lot of time into a lot of different projects on Sui. From my count, out of the 62 projects I interacted with, at least 23 of them are no longer functioning, be they scam projects or ones that just fell apart. Oof. When I was doing my testnet and quest activities, I decided to jump on almost every Sui-related project that I saw on Galxe and TaskOn. Moving forward, I'm trying to be more judicial about which platforms I want to test out, and to keep my list of projects smaller. For instance, for Linea, I focused on only six projects; for Base, I focused on 10.

If They Say There's No Airdrop, Believe Them. Maybe.

As I mentioned above, I went into my hunt with my eyes open about Sui's stated intentions, so I knew it was a longshot. It seems many folks on the official Sui Discord server and Twitter accounts, however, were not as kind in their response. I saw many express frustration and feelings of unappreciation by the Sui team. Perhaps for individual projects building on Sui, it shouldn't be a surprise if many of them followed Sui's example in the end and cancelled their own drops?

I mentioned above that I participated in testnet and quest activities for Linea and Base. Linea, like Sui, had publicly confirmed that there was no new token or airdrop planned on their network...but, surprise! Many of us qualified for an NFT airdrop from Linea from participating in a specific Galxe quest. So, for some of us...the hope of airdrops even when we're told there won't be, lives on.

Considerations for Future Airdrop Hunting

To sum up, as I've been airdrop farming over the last few months since my experiences with Sui's ecosystem, I've kept a few things in mind:

• Trusting my instincts when I think something's not right with a project. If a team seems very unorganized and/or hostile, I bail.
• Keeping my interactions to a reasonable number of projects. I keep an eye on official channels for various networks as well as other crypto writers, and try to use my best judgement to choose a handful of projects building on a new network that I think might give me the best chance for an individual project token drop in addition to the main token airdrop I'm farming for.
• Researching an ecosystem's potential plans for an airdrop or community access program. For instance, after Sui I did some research into Sei and soon learned that while an airdrop was planned, that participants in my country would be excluded. So I knew very early on not to waste my time farming for a drop that I wouldn't qualify for.

How about you? What lessons have you learned while airdrop hunting that you'd add to my experiences above? I'd love to hear your thoughts - referral links are always welcome in the comments below.

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Valdyr is a "crypto-curious" blogger living in Texas with her husband and their ancient dachshund, Henry. When she's not working as an audio/visual technician or stagehand, you'll frequently find her traveling, hiking or enjoying a good craft beer. For more reading, check out www.laurahofford.com/blog/