The biggest airdrop in the crypto world is given by Yuanbao

Author｜Golem (@web3_غولم)

“xxx sent you a cash red envelope!”

After the Yuanbao cash red envelope event started on February 1st, many long-dead project/research communication groups completely transformed into “grab Yuanbao wool” mutual aid groups.

Transitioning from a distinguished تشفير trader to a wool-gatherer snatching Yuanbao red envelopes is also a helpless move for those in the crypto space.

Starting January 31st, global financial markets plummeted. Previously surging precious metals crashed rapidly, with spot silver nearly erasing its year-to-date gains, and spot gold once falling below $4,500. The crypto market fared no better. Bitcoin broke below the $75,000 support level on February 2nd, touching a low of $74,604. ETH fell to a low of $2,157.14, and SOL even lost the $100 level, touching a low of $95.95.

According to Coinglass data, the total liquidation amount in the crypto market on January 31st reached $2.5615 billion, setting a record for the highest single-day liquidation since the “1011 crash.” Therefore, “too devastated to speak” became the true psychological state of many in the crypto space (like the suddenly silent Yi Lihua).

For those in the crypto space who just experienced a bloodbath, grabbing Yuanbao red envelopes, while a drop in the bucket for recouping losses, can still provide some psychological comfort, offering a temporary escape from the harsh market reality.

Jokes in group chats

تشفير إنزال جويs: From Swallowing Losses to Passionate Rights Protection

Saying Yuanbao’s cash red envelopes are the biggest airdrop for crypto enthusiasts today is not a gimmick.

The cash red envelope amount Yuanbao can distribute to each user isn’t large, mostly ranging from a dozen to a few dozen RMB. However, its value lies in its simple interaction and being truly cost-free. Users only need to spend some time recruiting people and systematically experiencing product features to receive cash red envelopes. The task cycle is short, allowing for quick returns.

In contrast, airdrops from crypto projects are primarily distributed in token form. Real profit is only realized when the tokens are sold. While the nominal amount received is often much larger than Yuanbao’s, after deducting costs like time, research, opportunity, slippage, and the potential risk of being left holding the bag, how much remains?

A user who accompanied Infinex for 406 days has deep feelings about this. On January 31st, the decentralized perpetual contract trading platform Infinex announced its TGE and airdrop claim. The project team successfully cashed out, but the community was collectively “rug-pulled.”

One Million is a Cat (X: @RXu107) is a typical example of being rug-pulled. On February 1st, they تم نشره that they spent over $11,900 (approximately 82,000 RMB) participating in this project (4,400 USDT buying NFT, 7,500 USDT participating in public sale) and deeply accompanied the project as a community member for 406 days. But on TGE day, not only did they fail to recover their costs, but their paper loss also exceeded 100,000 RMB (2,900 USDT + 11,284 locked INX tokens).

Faced with the rug-pull, the blogger had no choice but to repeatedly express their distress to friends.

The rug-pulled blogger expresses distress to a friend

Infinex’s fully diluted valuation at TGE was only $150 million. The total investment in Yuanbao’s New Year red envelope event is approximately $140 million when converted to USD. What does this mean? It’s equivalent to Tencent directly buying Infinex at its maximum valuation and giving it away for free to the entire nation.

Faced with the pain of being rug-pulled and deceived, most people in the community choose the same approach as “One Million is a Cat”—swallowing the loss silently. However, some choose to stand up and confront the project team.

Crypto blogger Ice Frog (X: @Ice_Frog666666) is a typical representative. He started by farming airdrops, but ironically, in 2025, Ice Frog was either fighting for airdrop rights or on the way to fight for them. He is currently still negotiating with the prediction market project Space (Odaily Note: Space raised $20 million in public sale, with the team privately taking $13 million) and has even taken legal measures.

Web2 Can Afford إنزال جويs, Web3 Can’t Keep Promises

The most ironic point is that today’s imbalance between “input and return” in crypto airdrops is not due to the “moral bankruptcy” of a single project, but the result of a whole set of industry structural changes.

In 2020, Uniswap opened the era of crypto project airdrops. Since then, major airdrops kept coming in the crypto space. Stories of getting a car, buying a house, or achieving wealth level A8 through airdrops attracted batch after batch of people into the airdrop farming track, presenting a beautiful scene of “the industry in an upward cycle.”

But by 2025, this changed. سوق narratives dried up, primary financing weakened, secondary buying power was insufficient. Airdrops were no longer about sharing the future with early users, but more like mortgaging the future for present data, creating an exit path for the project team itself or securing the next funding window. Thus, major airdrops disappeared, small airdrops shrank, and “being rug-pulled” became the industry norm.

So-called airdrops are essentially rewriting advertising budgets into reward pools, bypassing third parties to directly establish growth relationships with users. Whether it’s the 1 billion RMB given by Web2’s Yuanbao or the fixed airdrop allocation in Web3 project tokenomics, the essence is this same logic.

But the difference is that Web2 giants use cash to buy user certainty, while Web3 uses token returns as a possibly redeemable promise. This results in the same tactic leading to two different fates.

The certainty of Yuanbao’s cash red envelopes comes from cash flow and constraint mechanisms. Tencent’s strong cash flow ensures Yuanbao “can pay out.” Mature legal constraint mechanisms ensure Yuanbao “cannot renege.” Coupled with the “simple and mindless” barrier-free interaction, users naturally understand it as a “welfare.”

In contrast, crypto enthusiasts not only pay costs several times higher than Web2 wool-gathering (e.g., capital, time, effort) but also worry about being flagged as a Sybil, token vesting periods, and ever-changing airdrop rules. The most ironic part is that the returns from all this in the end are not even as good as Yuanbao’s.

Therefore, today’s crypto airdrops have long degraded from direct growth rewards to promises with constantly deferred, or even unfulfilled, redemption responsibilities. If this situation does not change in 2026, user retention will be sacrificed along with it.

From User Acquisition to Retention, Airdrop Utility Can Only Sustain the First Half at Most

Using airdrops for user acquisition has always been the most common and direct tactic in the business world to counter strong competitors.

Tencent invested 1 billion RMB in cash to support Yuanbao because its competitor Doubao is strong enough. By the end of 2025, Doubao was the first AI product in China to surpass 100 million daily active users. The same goes for Web3. In the prediction market track, Polymarket dominates. To compete for users, projects like Opinion, predict.fun, and Limitless also adopted points airdrops for user acquisition, directly pulling users into their products.

In the short term, airdrops can indeed create a massive user influx entry point. But in the long run, what determines user retention is still factors like product-market fit, user experience, and ecosystem synergy. In Web3’s business history, there are no shortage of project cases that were bustling before the airdrop and deserted afterward. Therefore, both Web2 and Web3 face the same “post-airdrop problem”: how to retain users.

Ten years ago, Tencent, a company adept at imitation and then surpassing, used “WeChat Red Packets” to push WeChat Pay into a national-level entry point, proving its deep familiarity with the “acquisition → retention → habit” chain. Whether they can recreate Yuanbao’s miracle in the same way today is debated, but they at least have ample experience in “how to convert airdrops into retention.”

To this end, Odaily contacted a Yuanbao insider, asking from a product perspective how Web3 project airdrops should improve. The answer was pragmatic:

“As one of the internet companies with the largest market cap, Tencent’s experience may not be directly applicable to Web3 projects. But the core of user acquisition methods like airdrops is still improving retention. This requires a series of post-airdrop synergies. For example, PR and marketing need to think about how to further disseminate the玩法, and the product side also needs to take more actions to achieve this.”

From the perspective of a Web3 practitioner, focusing only on traffic tactics feels shallow. What product features, beyond the token, can truly retain users is worth more careful consideration.

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