decrypt.co
The smell of airdrops is again in the air as countless crypto projects try to drum up interest and excitement in their new endeavors by—essentially—giving out free money. Or “money.”
Crypto traders love being rewarded for making blockchain transactions with more crypto, and the Pixels gaming community is no exception.
Interest in the browser-based retro MMORPG game surged when Pixels migrated to Axie Infinity’s Ronin blockchain back in October. While the game has seen some bot activity, Pixels also saw over $3 million in NFT land sales in the past month, per CryptoSlam data.
Its founder, Luke Barwikowski, told Pixels fans late last year that the game’s team would be “loud as hell” about its planned airdrop for its second crypto token launch, PIXEL, and wouldn’t offer any surprise airdrops (“surprise” crypto airdrop scams are devastatingly common across social media).
Now, we have all the details on the upcoming PIXEL airdrop.
“Pixels has been around for two years, but we’re just getting started,” Barwikowski wrote in a blog post published early Friday. “We have ambitious goals, including the establishment of a sustainable Web3 ecosystem with PIXEL.”
Barwikowski shared that gamers and crypto traders will have to actually play the Pixels game in order to qualify for the PIXEL airdrop. Dubbed the “play-to-airdrop” (P2A) method, Pixels will reward players who complete “challenging tasks” or otherwise “contribute to the ecosystem’s growth.”
FYI: You will not have to sign any transactions to claim airdrops from Pixels.
The allocation will be done off-chain and will use our existing withdraw/deposit infrastructure.
Be especially careful of any scam links that ask you to sign something over the next month.
— Luke Barwikowski 🚜 (@whatslukedoing) December 22, 2023
What does this mean? Players will have to play Pixels long enough to achieve as many badges as possible and work their way up the game’s P2A 2.0 leaderboard from now until January 19. The top 7,000 players on the leaderboard will be included in the upcoming PIXEL token airdrop, according to the post.
1,000 other random Pixels players will be “randomly selected” for the PIXEL airdrop as well, and players with higher “reputation scores” will receive more rewards. To earn points, Pixels players can also do things like refer their friends to play the game.
Pixels previously established a similar P2A leaderboard for its prior airdrop—those who participated and qualified for this first airdrop will automatically qualify for the upcoming PIXEL airdrop, no participation required.
The full whitepaper for PIXEL has not yet been released, but the token will be a “premium currency” for the game, allowing players to participate in pet NFT mints, guild features, and offer other gameplay perks.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.