Delphi Digital: The era of airdrops is over, token distribution is now performance-driven

Foresight News reports that, according to analysis by Delphi Digital, the era of traditional airdrops has ended. The method of distributing tokens to users to build a holder base has mostly resulted in sell-offs. In the largest airdrops, 78% to 94% of tokens received in wallets were sold within 90 days. Although Hyperliquid and Jito are often cited as successful airdrop cases, their success did not stem from the airdrop itself. Hyperliquid conducted buybacks with over 1 billion US dollars in revenue, thus absorbing sell pressure from recipients; meanwhile, Jito's pool of eligible users was small enough to avoid large-scale token farming. Tokenomics now require real protocol performance, with MegaETH locking 53% of its supply based on performance targets and Pendle using roughly 80% of its revenue to buy back staker tokens. Token distribution is shifting from simple giveaways to performance-based models.