Delphi Digital says the airdrops are over, after finding that 78% to 94% of recipient wallets across six major tokens sold most of their allocation within 90 days.

The research firm tracked 3.7 million wallets over five years, arguing that free token giveaways now produce sellers rather than committed holders.

Airdrops became a standard way for projects to seed communities and reward early users. However, the model has faced scrutiny lately.

Delphi studied Uniswap (UNI), Arbitrum (ARB), Jupiter (JUP), and Pudgy Penguins (PENGU), among other tokens spread across four chains. Exit rates rose over time rather than settling down.

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Delphi found real dump rates ran 4 to 11 percentage points higher at day 90 than at day 30. The widely cited 30-day figure, therefore, understates the number of recipients who leave.

The firm made four core arguments for why it could get worse for airdrops. First, the cost of running fake “sybil” wallets is collapsing toward zero as automated tools make farming cheap and detection unreliable. 

Second, the next wave of issuers, including tokenized treasuries and regulated DeFi, won’t send tokens to anonymous wallets. Third, the acquisition math fails, with Arbitrum paying an estimated $1.16 billion to users who left within a month. 

Finally, the firm also said that outlier wins prove little. Hyperliquid (HYPE) absorbed sales through buybacks, funded by more than $1 billion in revenue. Jito (JTO) avoided farming because its eligible group stayed small.

“Token economics are starting to require real protocol performance. MegaETH locked 53% of its supply behind performance targets. Pendle routes roughly 80% of revenue into buybacks for stakers. Token distribution is moving from handouts to performance,” Delphi added.

Independent tracking had already pointed the same way. A trader previously logged 30 airdrops received since December 2024, finding only one still trading above its launch price at the time. Several had collapsed almost entirely, reinforcing the pattern.

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The post Delphi Says Airdrops Are Over as 94% of Wallets Dump Within 90 Days appeared first on BeInCrypto.

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