Airdrops are one of the key reasons that the number of DeFi “users” keeps breaking records practically every day. They have become one of the most popular ways for platforms to thank users for their participation. Uniswap, the leading decentralized exchange in DeFi, was perhaps the biggest DeFi platform to do this. 

On September 16, 2020, Uniswap announced the launch of its governance token UNI, and that it would retroactively distribute the token to users of the platform. Anyone who had interacted with the protocol prior to a snapshot taken on September 1, 2020 was eligible for the free money. 

This included liquidity providers, traders, and holders of the SOCKS NFT, a non-fungible token backed by physical Uniswap-branded socks.

This meant that most people could go to Uniswap, connect their Ethereum wallet, and collect 400 UNI tokens. At that time, that was roughly $1,200 in free money. Today, 400 UNI tokens will get you more than $10,400.