Crypto Influencers Lured by $350K Airdrop to Launch Solana Meme Coins

Crypto influencers with major reach on X (formerly known as Twitter) have the opportunity to claim hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of tokens from Boop.fun, a new token launchpad and Pump.fun competitor on Solana—but they have to launch a token to do so. 

The platform’s launch and airdrop mechanism has generated a lot of attention among crypto participants, but created an ethical and moral dilemma for some users in the process. 

“If you were offered a $200,000 airdrop to launch a token, would you do it?” posted pseudonymous crypto personality and trader CirrusNFT on X, who later asked the same question at a $350,000 value as the underlying BOOP tokens rose in price. 

Others grappled with the dilemma of whether or not six figures worth of crypto tokens was worth the potential trade-offs, with pseudonymous artist Bold Leonidas saying “pass” at the idea at first because of the token launch mechanic. 

Notable pseudonymous crypto personality Cobie offered a word of advice to those debating a launch suggesting, sharing a disclaimer that included potential phrases like, “I am launching this token solely to unlock my airdrop,” and “Do not buy it, as complete loss of investment is guaranteed.” 

The airdrop offered to X personalities was one of two tranches of airdrops provided by Boop.fun to encourage users to launch and buy tokens from its platform, which debuted Thursday morning.

Working with data platform Kaito, Boop.fun divided active crypto influencers into tiers based on their followers, engagement, and “meme stuff” on X. Only a select number of users from each tier are then able to claim the airdrop, which requires users to launch a “cult” or token to claim. 

However, the token claim for X personalities is not immediately available. Instead, users must wait 30 days to unlock their respective BOOP allocations—that is, unless the token they create grows to meet select market cap criteria, bumping down their wait. For example, if a creator gets their token to a $5 million market cap, then it brings down the wait by five days.

Beyond the moral dilemma though, users attempting to launch tokens also said that they ran into issues with claims and token migrations on the platform, due to demand. Pseudonymous platform leader Dingaling said that “migration and airdrop issues should be fixed soon.”

The platform attempts to differentiate itself from other token launchpads on Solana, offering daily BOOP token rewards to users of the platform, with stakers of the BOOP token also earning a portion of trading fees and a percentage of tokens for every meme coin that graduates the bonding curve on its platform. 

BOOP is currently trading at a $231 million market cap on nearly $50 million in trading volume. The highest-tier BOOP airdrop, valued at a peak of about $350,000 worth of tokens earlier Thursday, is now worth about $162,000.

Edited by Andrew Hayward