Optimism excluded 17,000 wallets from its airdrop. Collectively, those wallets lost an estimated $18.6 million in OP tokens. Not because the project was stingy—because those farmers tripped detection systems that flagged them as fake.
Most airdrop farming guides tell you what to do. This one covers what not to do, using real examples from projects that actually punished these mistakes.
1. Running Multiple Wallets From the Same Source
This is the fastest way to get flagged as a Sybil attacker.
The concept is simple: you create ten wallets, fund them all from one exchange account or one main wallet, then run the same farming tasks across all of them. You think you're multiplying your odds. What you're actually doing is creating an on-chain paper trail that links every single wallet back to you.
Hop Protocol was one of the first major projects to publish its Sybil filtering methodology. They looked at wallet funding patterns, transaction timing, and interaction overlap. If multiple wallets received ETH from the same address within a short window, all of them got excluded. Arbitrum ran a similar process before its ARB distribution and published the criteria publicly.
On-chain analysis tools have only gotten better since then. Wallet clustering algorithms now trace funding paths several hops deep. Sending ETH from your Binance account to a burner, then from the burner to ten farming wallets, does not hide the connection.
If you're going to farm with one wallet, farm well. That single wallet with genuine, sustained activity will almost always outperform ten wallets with thin, identical histories.
2. Doing Everything in One Day
You find out about a promising project on Monday morning. By Monday night, you've bridged funds, made three swaps, provided liquidity, staked tokens, and voted on a governance proposal. Productive day, right?
To a Sybil detection system, that looks like a script.
Real users don't compress weeks of organic activity into a single session. Projects specifically look for wallets that have bursts of concentrated activity with nothing before or after. Optimism's filtering criteria included flagging wallets with less than three weeks of activity history. If your entire on-chain footprint for a protocol fits inside 48 hours, that's a red flag.
Spacing matters more than volume. A wallet that interacts with a protocol twice a week for two months signals genuine interest. A wallet that crams 30 transactions into one afternoon signals farming.
3. Using Identical Transaction Amounts
This one is subtle, and a lot of farmers miss it.
Say you bridge exactly 0.1 ETH to five different wallets, then swap exactly 50 USDC on each one, then stake exactly 100 tokens on each one. Each individual action looks normal. But when you view them side by side, the pattern is obvious.
On-chain clustering tools flag wallets that share identical transaction amounts, especially when combined with similar timing. It serves as secondary confirmation—if your wallets were already under suspicion for shared funding sources, identical amounts across them seals the case.
Vary your amounts. Vary your timing. Vary the order of operations. The less your wallets look like copies of each other, the better.
4. Skipping Steps on the Farming Checklist
Airdrops don't give partial credit.
A project might require you to bridge funds, make a swap, provide liquidity, and hold a position for 30 days. Miss the liquidity step and the rest doesn't count. Miss the holding period by two days and you're out. The criteria are usually binary: you either completed the task or you didn't.
This is where a tool like JeetDrops' task checklist helps. Farming across five or ten protocols simultaneously makes it easy to lose track of which steps you've done where. One missed action on a project that ends up distributing a major token is an expensive oversight.
Before you consider a protocol "farmed," go back through its requirements one more time. Check the project's official docs or Discord for any updated criteria. Requirements shift, and what counted as sufficient six months ago might not anymore.
5. Ignoring the Gas Math
Gas fees are the silent reward killer.
You bridge to a new L2, make a few swaps, provide liquidity, claim some testnet tokens, interact with three dApps. Each transaction costs a small fee. It adds up. On Ethereum mainnet during a congestion spike, a single complex transaction can cost $50 or more. Run that across ten protocols and you've spent $500 before you've earned anything.
The uncomfortable truth: most airdrops are worth less than what aggressive farmers spend chasing them. The median airdrop value for casual farmers who hit one or two protocols is modest. The farmers who profit consistently are the ones who track their costs and focus on protocols with strong token economics and confirmed launch timelines.
Before farming a new protocol, estimate your total gas spend. If the project hasn't raised significant funding, has no clear token plans, and you'd need to spend $200 in gas to complete all tasks—the math probably doesn't work.
6. Connecting Your Wallet to Unverified Sites
Airdrop farmers are high-value phishing targets, and scammers know it.
The attack pattern is predictable: a fake Twitter account or Discord message announces an "early claim" for a popular airdrop. The link goes to a site that looks legitimate. You connect your wallet, approve a transaction, and your tokens are drained.
This happens constantly. It happens to experienced users, not just beginners. The fake sites are getting better, the social engineering is getting sharper, and approval phishing—where you unknowingly grant a malicious contract permission to move your tokens—is now the dominant attack vector.
A few rules that eliminate most of the risk: never connect your main wallet to a site you found through a Discord DM or a reply on Twitter. Bookmark the official URLs for every protocol you farm. Use a dedicated farming wallet that doesn't hold your long-term assets. Check your token approvals regularly and revoke anything you don't recognize—tools like Revoke.cash exist for exactly this purpose.
Our airdrop safety guide covers this in more detail, including how to verify contract addresses before signing.
7. Farming Dead Projects
Not every project with a Discord server and a testnet is going to launch a token. Some have no product, no community traction, and no clear funding. Farming them is a waste of gas and time.
The signals that a project is worth farming aren't complicated: recent funding rounds from reputable VCs, active development (check their GitHub), growing community engagement that isn't just bot-filled Telegram channels, and ideally some indication that a token is part of their roadmap.
Projects that go quiet for months, pivot their product repeatedly, or never ship beyond a testnet are unlikely to deliver a meaningful airdrop. Your time is finite. Allocate it to protocols where the eligibility criteria are clear and the team has a track record of shipping.
The points programs tracker on JeetDrops is one way to filter for protocols that are actively distributing points—a strong indicator that a token event is coming.
Every mistake on this list cost real people real money. The 17,000 Optimism wallets, the farmers who spent hundreds in gas on projects that never launched, the people who lost their holdings to a phishing link that looked exactly like the real thing.
The airdrop meta in 2026 rewards patience and authenticity over volume. One wallet with three months of genuine protocol usage beats fifty wallets with identical two-day histories. The projects worth farming are getting better at telling the difference.
