A retroactive airdrop is a token reward for early and active participation in Web3 projects.
Projects use this mechanism to test the product, attract users, and distribute tokens without traditional sales.
Users receive assets, while projects gain an audience and product validation. Income is generated by correctly selecting promising projects and entering early.
The total value of distributed retroactive airdrops grew more than 4.8x over 5 years: from $7.3B in 2020 to $35.3B in 2025.
Uniswap, Arbitrum, ENS, Optimism, and Blur launched via retroactive airdrops, distributing hundreds of millions of dollars among early users.
How crypto projects distributed tens of billions of dollars to users
Retroactive airdrops have evolved from an experiment into a full-fledged investment tool.