Is This Airdrop Worth Farming?
Farming costs money whether or not the drop comes: gas on every transaction, bridging in and out, the yield the money you park would have earned, and hours of your time. The calculator sets that against what the drop is likely to pay, after the chance there is none, the chance your wallets miss the cut or are flagged as sybils, and tax - and gives the drop per wallet you need just to break even.
Is this airdrop worth farming?
What the campaign costs you whether or not it pays - gas, bridges, the yield your parked money gives up, your hours - against what it is likely to pay. The figures in it are an example: put in your own.
Work the fee out from gas
21,000 is a plain ETH transfer on Ethereum. For a swap, mint or bridge, read "Gas Used" off one you already made on the block explorer. On a layer 2 the fee also pays for posting data to Ethereum: put in the "Transaction Fee" the explorer shows instead.
Your top tax rate on income; the airdrop tax calculator works it out.
- Gas
- Bridging
- Yield given up
- Spent whatever happens
- Expected drop, after tax
- Your hours
- Profit after your time
- You earn an hour, on average
- Break-even drop a wallet
- Chance of getting anything
If the drop comes, and every wallet gets it
More wallets or fewer
The same costs and chances a wallet. In practice the sybil risk climbs with every wallet you add from the same source; raise it as you add them.
Expected values: what the campaign pays on average over many like it, not what this one will pay. Most farms end with the costs and nothing back; a few pay many times over.
The example in the calculator, worked through
The figures it opens with are an example, not a forecast: three wallets farmed for six months, twelve transactions a wallet a month at $0.10 each on a layer 2, $3 a wallet to bridge in and out, $200 parked in each that could earn 4% a year elsewhere, an hour a wallet a month at $20 an hour; and the guesses: an even chance there is a drop, 60% that a wallet qualifies, 20% that the three are cut together as a sybil cluster, $500 to each wallet that is paid, and 22% income tax on it.
| Step | Amount |
|---|---|
| Gas: 3 wallets × 6 months × 12 transactions = 216, at $0.10 | $21.60 |
| Bridging: 3 × $3 | $9.00 |
| Yield given up: 3 × $200 × 4% × 6/12 | $12.00 |
| Spent whatever happens | $42.60 |
| A wallet is paid 50% × 60% × 80% of the time | 24% |
| Expected drop: 3 × 24% × $500, less 22% tax | $280.80 |
| Expected profit in cash | $238.20 |
| Your 18 hours at $20 | $360.00 |
| Expected profit after your time | −$121.80 |
| Break-even drop a wallet: $42.60 ÷ (3 × 24% × 78%) | $75.85 |
On those guesses the farm is worth it for the money - the costs are small next to the drop - but pays about $13 an hour on average, below the $20 the example puts on an hour. And 63% of the time it pays nothing at all: the chance at least one wallet is paid is 50% × 80% × (1 − 0.4³), or 37%. That is the honest shape of most farming: cheap to enter, expensive in hours, paid off by the occasional big drop.
Working out the gas
A transaction's fee is the gas it uses times the gas price, the network's base fee plus your tip. A plain ETH transfer uses 21,000 gas; at a 10 gwei base fee and a 2 gwei tip that is 252,000 gwei, or 0.000252 ETH, and a gwei is a billionth of an ETH (ethereum.org, Gas and fees). Swaps, mints and bridge deposits use several times more gas than a transfer, and how much depends on the contract, so the "Work the fee out from gas" box takes the gas used from one you already made: the block explorer prints it as Gas Used. On a layer 2 the fee also pays to post the transaction's data to Ethereum, so the simplest figure there is the Transaction Fee the explorer shows in dollars. How much gas money you need to farm airdrops goes chain by chain.
Guessing the chances honestly
- Is there a drop? A project that has said it will distribute tokens, or runs a points program it says converts, is not the same as one with no token that people hope will launch one. Retroactive airdrops vs announced drops sets out the difference.
- Will a wallet qualify? Criteria are usually published only at the snapshot. Arbitrum's, published with its 2023 drop, gave points for things like bridging, transacting in several distinct months and the number and value of transactions, and wanted at least three points (Arbitrum Foundation). Steady use spread over months is what most published criteria have rewarded.
- Will the wallets be cut as sybils? Arbitrum took a point off wallets whose transactions all fell within 48 hours, and off those holding under 0.005 ETH that had used no more than one contract, and disqualified addresses flagged in Hop Protocol's sybil hunt (same page). Clusters funded from one wallet and acting in step are cut together, which is why the calculator applies one chance to all your wallets. How many wallets is too many and how sybil detection works go into it.
- How big is the drop? Past drops are the only guide, and they vary hugely. Uniswap gave 400 UNI to every one of 251,534 addresses that had used it (Uniswap); Arbitrum gave from 625 to 10,250 ARB a wallet by points (Arbitrum Foundation). Tokens are often worth far less a few weeks after launch than on the day, so a careful guess is the price you expect to sell at, not the launch price. The biggest airdrops of 2025 lists recent ones.
Reading the two tables
The first table shows the outcomes that actually happen, rather than the average: nothing, in which case you are down what you spent, or a drop of a given size to every wallet. The second keeps every cost and chance per wallet the same and changes the number of wallets: costs, hours and expected profit all grow in step, and only the chance of getting something improves. What it cannot show is that each extra wallet funded from the same place makes a sybil cut likelier; raise that chance as you add wallets and watch the profit column.
Before you start
- Keep it cheap to be wrong. Farm on chains where a transaction costs cents, park only what you can leave idle, and use a burner wallet rather than the one holding your savings.
- Count the tax before the drop. In the US the drop is income at its value the day it lands, even if it falls afterwards. The airdrop tax calculator shows what that means for your figures.
- Claim carefully. A fake claim page costs more than any farm earns. The wallet signature checker reads what a claim page asks you to sign. Airdrop farming strategies explained and farming testnet airdrops cover the farming itself.
What the calculator leaves out
The chance that the money you park is lost to a hack, a depeg or a bad bridge; gas prices that change over the months; points that convert at a rate nobody knows in advance; and a drop locked or vested over time. It treats the wallets as all qualifying or all missing on the same odds, each independently, and the sybil cut as all or nothing. It is a way to put your own guesses side by side, not a prediction.
General information, not financial advice. Airdrops are uncertain and many campaigns pay nothing; farm only with money and time you can afford to lose.