Looking back at the major airdrop distributions across recent years really shows how the DeFi landscape has shifted. Uniswap dominated 2020 as the standout moment—that airdrop basically defined an era for decentralized trading. Then 2021 brought ENS into the spotlight, adding another institutional-grade token to the mix. Moving into 2022, Optimism captured attention as layer-2 scaling solutions started gaining serious traction. Arbitrum followed suit in 2023, reinforcing the dominance of L2 protocols in reshaping Ethereum's ecosystem. Fast forward to 2024, and Hyperliquid emerged as the notable contender, tapping into the derivatives and perpetual futures market surge.

But here's the real question nobody's asking loud enough: out of all these airdrops, which project actually held its community's trust? Which team resisted the temptation to rugpull or dilute token holders down the road? That's the metric that actually matters—not just who airdropped the biggest numbers, but who genuinely built infrastructure that didn't betray the early believers. As we head into 2025, that integrity test might be the only scorecard worth keeping.