Track airdrop eligibility

Start from primary sources

1. Official project docs beat rumor tweets. Note snapshot dates, contract addresses, and eligible chains before you trust third-party “checker” sites—many are phishing.

2. Open your burn/farm wallet in a block explorer for each chain you used—How to Read a Blockchain Explorer.

3. Export or bookmark txs that match required actions (swap, LP deposit, bridge, vote). You are building evidence, not vibes.

Dune and analytics dashboards

4. Search Dune for the protocol name plus “eligibility” or “snapshot”—use dashboards with cited SQL, not anonymous reposts. Cross-check wallet counts and criteria against official posts.

5. Compare your wallet’s activity timestamps to rumored snapshot blocks. Missing interactions (for example no bridge tx before cutoff) are cheaper to learn pre-announcement than post-denial.

6. Extend skills from How to Analyze On-Chain Wallet Data—read-only analysis never requires your seed phrase.

Sybil and privacy hygiene

7. Avoid uploading private keys to “batch checkers.” Legitimate tools query public addresses only.

8. If you used multiple wallets, assess whether clustering might link them—see Sybil attacks guide. Sometimes consolidating narrative to one clean wallet beats ten mediocre ones **before** snapshot—project-dependent, never guaranteed.

9. Label addresses in your spreadsheet (TESTNET, MAIN BURN, COLD)—mislabeling causes false strategy conclusions.

Turn gaps into a plan

10. List missing criteria (volume, holding period, governance vote). Estimate gas to complete genuinely—not spam.

11. Set a stop-loss on further gas if criteria costs exceed plausible allocation value at conservative FDV assumptions.

12. When claim time arrives, verify claim contract on explorer, use simulation, and document claim txid for taxes—How to Calculate Capital Gains and Prepare Crypto Taxes.

From gap analysis to a safe claim plan

13. After you list missing criteria, estimate gas and time to fill each gap *once*—not with spam retries. Rank gaps by official weight if the team published a scorecard; otherwise prioritize fee-paid, retained usage over vanity mints. If the cheapest path still exceeds your speculative budget at conservative FDV assumptions, mark the campaign “observe only” and stop signing.

14. Build a claim runbook before TGE week: official URL sources, the exact farm address that should claim, whether KYC is required, and which approvals you will refuse. Store that runbook offline. When phishing clones flood search results, you follow the runbook—not adrenaline. Pair with How to Connect a Wallet to dApps Securely.

15. Use explorers and Dune in **read-only** mode forever. Any site that asks you to “verify ownership” by signing a blind message or importing a seed phrase is hostile until proven otherwise. Paste addresses, never keys. If a dashboard requires a connected wallet just to view public stats, prefer the SQL/embed view or an explorer instead.

16. After claim (or after you decide to skip), archive txids, token amounts, and USD estimates for taxes and post-mortems. Review what the on-chain record actually shows versus what Discord promised. That feedback loop improves the next campaign more than chasing every new points leaderboard the same week.

17. Maintain a private “official sources” list (docs URL, verified social, governance forum) updated before snapshot rumors peak. When a third-party checker disagrees with your explorer history, trust the explorer and your txid log—not the checker. If you must interact with a claim contract, verify the bytecode address on the explorer against the official announcement, simulate the call, and keep claim size and gas notes for tax records even when the token later goes to zero.