Airdrops as we know them are over. Giving tokens away to build a holder base has mostly created sellers. Across the largest airdrops, between 78% and 94% of recipient wallets had sold off most of their allocation by day 90. People cite Hyperliquid and Jito as proof airdrops can work, but neither succeeded because of the airdrop. Hyperliquid had over $1B in revenue funding buybacks that soaked up the selling from recipients. Jito’s eligible cohort was small enough to avoid industrial farming. Token economics are starting to require real protocol performance. MegaETH locked 53% of its supply behind performance targets. Pendle routes roughly 80% of revenue into buybacks for stakers. Token distribution is moving from handouts to performance.(Delphi Digital)