NFT projects are so popular at the moment and there’s no sign of slowing down anytime soon.
In 2021, we saw the total sales volumes of NFTs recorded $24.9 billion. NFT art by Beeple was sold for $69.3M at Christie’s. And someone bought the Genesis Land plot at Axie Infinity for $2.33M. So many NFTs from many popular collections are valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars.
That’s why some people see NFTs as an asset class that is too expensive.
But, did you know that you can get a free NFT? Many NFT project teams, artists, and creators will give away some of their creations as a free NFT; sometimes in order to reach new audiences and sometimes to reward their early believers.
There are numerous paths that reward you with a free NFT. We’ve compiled some of the the most popular and lucrative ones for you below.
#1 – Participate in a Free NFT Drop (Airdrops)
Most NFT projects use free NFT drops (knowns as “Airdrops”) as a marketing strategy to attract more investors and raise more awareness about their project.
As a rule of thumb, the team sets some conditions to be eligible for the airdrop and sends the free NFT to the crypto wallets that fulfill those conditions. Usually, owning an NFT from the earlier collections, or the cryptocurrency of that particular project are the prerequisites.
Let’s take for example the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection. It’s one of the most expensive and iconic NFT collections of all time. In 2021, the team honored the owners of the genesis Ape NFTs by gifting them a dog NFT from the spin-off collection Bored Ape Kennel Club. Ape owners had the right to claim the dog NFTs, and during the airdrop period, it was the only way to acquire them. Now, they can be bought from the secondary market on OpenSea at a floor price over 8ETH.
Rewarding the early believers in this way is very common among free NFT drops. By sending a free NFT, the project team also strives to encourage people to hold their crypto assets longer or buy even more.
Sometimes, the conditions are not even that high. Early 2022, the Enjin team sent three free NFT drops to those who simply downloaded the Enjin wallet and claimed their NFTs.
Besides NFT collection projects, artists and creators also distribute free NFT drops to their loyal fans. Take for example the well-known crypto-art creator Pak. Through their Lost Poets collection, they rewarded the ASH owners, a cryptocurrency issued by Pak. The wallets with at least 25 ASHes received the Page NFTs, also created by Pak, proportional to the total ASH balance.
Damien Hirst was also among the artists who rewarded his fans with airdrops. He sent an NFT from his Great Expectation collections to each of the 10,000 owners of his previous collection The Currency.
#2 Participate in Community Giveaways
Another way NFT teams promote their new projects and gain new following quickly is to host giveaways. Therefore, free NFT giveaways usually take place before the project officially kicks off.
To be eligible for giveaways, you typically need to follow the project on social media, retweet, tag friends, and sometimes create posts tagging the NFT project. Its usually necessary to get on a whitelist as well.
Generally, artists, project teams, or influencers announce the conditions to enter the NFT giveaway in a tweet like this:
It’s also a common practice that several NFT projects collaborate to expand their reach by leveraging the audience of the partnered projects. For instance, the IDO launchpad Scaleswap partnered with six blockchain companies: Envelop, Cirus, Torum, PureFi, Art Wallet, and Hacken. The team distributed 25 exclusive NFTs wrapped with cryptocurrencies to the community of these project partners.
Giveaways are extremely common in the blockchain ecosystem. In the past, even Twitter gave away 20 NFTs which were minted on the Rarible platform.
There are zillions of things happening in the NFT world. The trick to participate in free NFT drops and giveaways is to follow the upcoming promising projects as close as possible and catch them in their presale periods when their marketing efforts are the highest. The best places to accomplish this are the project’s official Discord, Telegram, and Twitter accounts.
There are also websites built for keeping visitors up to date about free NFTs, such as airdrops.io, airdropalert.com, and the giveaway section of the nftcalendar.
Another way to keep up with free NFT drops and giveaways is to follow crypto and NFT influencers, particularly the gaming YouTubers. They provide their audience exclusive NFT giveaways that you can’t access otherwise.
You can also follow the #nftgiveaway hashtag on social media.
#3 Mint NFTs for (almost) Free
Free minting is a concept similar to giveaways and airdrops, but in this case, you have to pay gas fees for the NFT minting process. So it’s not 100% free. Particularly on the Ethereum blockchain, gas fees can be usually very high. If you’d like to participate in free mints, you should watch out for the gas fees at the time of minting. Cryptosaurs and Metablobs are two projects that allow free minting.
#4 Play-To-Earn (P2E) Games
P2E NFT games are having their moment. Per the January 2022 Industry Report by Dapp Radar, NFT games account for 52% of the whole blockchain usage. Research by Grayscale, a prominent blockchain investment firm, foresees that the NFT games and metaverse market could grow to $400B by 2025.
Thanks to this popularity, there are always many opportunities, including free NFTs. Many projects are either in development or presale periods and therefore offer giveaways and airdrops for early adopters. This is the case for the NFT games as well. To discover upcoming NFT games with such opportunities, you can visit sites like playtoearn.net.
In addition, you can earn free NFTs by actively participating in P2E games. Here are the most common ways to do that:
Mine or discover NFTs
Some games allow players to mine, extract, or discover NFTs while completing the game tasks.
In Alien Worlds, for instance, players make money by mining the in-game token Trillium and while playing, they can discover NFT assets which help them mine more Trillium. Whether players will be able to get NFTs depends on the tools and lands they use. You can consult websites like alienworlds.tools to examine which land and tool combinations will enable you to earn a free NFT in Alien Worlds.
Another example is Wax blockchain-powered Farmers World. This is a farming simulation game where players can farm in-game tokens and NFTs through a mining process or by playing the game.
Convert game assets into NFTs
In some NFT games, you can create your own NFT assets.
For example, in the most popular trading card game on the Ethereum blockchain Gods Unchained, players can create new cards by forging two identical cards. The new card is a rarer and more valuable NFT that can be traded in the marketplaces. A similar process exists in Splinterlands where card owners can trade their assets in the project’s native marketplace.
Breed NFTs
All monster battling NFT games have a breeding process where you can create new generations of characters by breeding two parents’ NFTs.
Axie Infinity is the most well-known game of this sort. HeroFi and Starmon are just two of the others offering breeding opportunities.
You can sell the newly created offspring NFTs in the marketplace for profit.
Gaming Guilds
An interesting component of the blockchain gaming world is gaming guilds. These organizations help strengthen the ecosystem by providing gaming scholarships to millions of gamers around the world. The feedback gained from the scholars helps the games improve and more importantly, these gaming guilds create a positive impact on the lives of scholars who mostly come from countries with low average incomes.
Many NFT game projects partner with such gaming hubs to extend their reach. Either they give away free NFTs exclusively to the guild’s community of players or the guilds invest in the NFT assets of the game. Either way, as a scholar you’ll have the chance to reap the benefits of play-to-earn opportunities in the most popular NFT games without making any investment.
Here are the most popular NFT game guilds you can explore if they’re a good fit for you.
#5 Collect POAPs
POAP is a proof of attendance protocol. Organizing POAP events, companies or artists can distribute NFTs to their communities. By participating in POAP events, you can collect these NFTs as badges to prove that you participated in that event.
In theory, the POAP NFTs don’t have any commercial value. But, depending on the event you took part in, they may offer future benefits, which in turn bring you financial benefits. Take for example Adidas’ POAP NFT “adidas Originals: our future started here”. By itself, this NFT may not cost much if you try to sell it to others, but its holders were granted early access to the “Into the Metaverse” drop.
Conclusions
We presented you with some of the popular ways to get your hands on a free NFT. We realize that these methods require much research time and effort. However, by focusing on the projects which are at their early stages and also closely following the projects you already got involved with, you can avoid missing attractive NFT airdrops, giveaways, free mints, play-to-earn opportunities, and interesting POAP events.
A caveat is that in the world of NFTs, there are always scammers and fraudsters who want to exploit you. That’s why it’s very important to do your own research and be sure the projects you participate in are legitimate.