If you are reading this post, then you are undoubtedly asking yourself the million-dollar question. How is it possible to airdrop my ERC20 token to all those thousands of people who participated in the bounty campaign? Well, you simply need to transfer the tokens to all those thousands of addresses one by one. Just joking! Your time is obviously too valuable to embark on such a dreadful task. The real answer to this question is that you need a smart contract!
So how can a smart contract help?
Glad you asked because it is good to understand this. A smart contract is a custom program which exists on the Ethereum blockchain, and each and every smart contract can interact with other smart contracts (if programmed as such by the developers). Having said that, ERC20 tokens are also smart contracts themselves with functionalities which adhere to the ERC20 standard interface. One such function is the transfer function which allows person A to send tokens to person B. Now as previously mentioned, smart contracts can interact with each other so an airdrop smart contract would work as such: you provide a list of recipient addresses and the total amount of tokens to send to each, and then the airdrop smart contract will invoke the transfer function of your ERC20 token multiple times until all addresses have received their tokens.
Now this is a bit of an oversimplification, however, this is how airdrops work with smart contracts. There are of course some limitations. One cannot simply provide a list of 50,000 addresses in one go and expect it work. It would be too computationally expensive and would strain the network. As a result, the miners would simply reject the transaction! This is of course rather unfortunate, though, you can still work within the bounds of this limitation. Generally, you can send tokens to up to 160 - 180 addresses at a time, making your job 160 - 180 times faster.
How to acquire an airdrop smart contract
There are two options for this. Either you hire a smart contract developer to create one for you, or you use already existing solutions such as a token airdrop application. The former option has several disadvantages. Firstly, it can be very expensive to hire a smart contract developer to develop such a contract. In many cases, they charge $400 plus. Secondly, you would have to wait for a few days/weeks before you can start airdropping your token. Thirdly, just because you will be getting a custom smart contract, this does not mean to say that you will get a user interface with it unless you are willing to pay much more for the implementation of a user interface. Without a user interface the smart contract is not so easy to interact with.
Moving on, if you choose the latter option of using a token airdrop application (this is highly recommended), then you can use Dapple Airdrops which has a proven track record and has also facilitated airdrops to over 500,000 people at the time of this writing.
Advantages of using Dapple Airdrops
No registration required - All you need to use Dapple Airdrops is either the MetaMask browser extension if you are using desktop/laptop. Otherwise, you will need a Coinbase Wallet or Trust Wallet. If you have either of these installed, you can start using the DApp right away!
Free trial - That's right! Each and every ERC20 token which has not been distributed before with the Dapple Airdrops smart contract automatically has a free trial of 100 drops (1 drop = 1 token transfer). This way you can test the application prior to spending any of your hard-earned ETH.
Low cost - The price to airdrop tokens to 100 addresses is just 0.005 ETH, which works out as 1 ETH for 20,000 addresses.
Bonus system - You will be rewarded with bonus drops as you spend with Dapple Airdrops. The bonus is set to 20%, so for every 100 paid drops you make, you will get an additional 20 for free.
Pay as you go - You will not be charged any ETH for drops which you do not make. Having said that, you will be required to deposit ETH to use the service (that is if you have used up your free trial of course), however, you will be able to withdraw your funds at any time you wish with no restrictions.
Live chat support - Should you need any assistance in using the DApp, you can use the live chat and speak directly with the developers of Dapple Airdrops who are always more than happy to help!
Save on your gas fees - When it comes to gas fees it’s cheaper to use Dapple Airdrops. The reason for this is because even though you will be paying for the transaction fees for each individual token transfer, the fact that you won’t be doing them manually actually works out cheaper. This is because each and every transaction has an additional 21,000 gas associated with it by default. So you will be saving at least 169 x 21,000 = 3,549,000 gas for a batch transfer with 170 participants.
Open source code - If you would like to inspect the code of the smart contract, you can do so on Etherscan. Click here to view the verified code.