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@TheDeFinvestor top airdrop picks for 2026, focusing on selective DeFi farming across perp DEXs and prediction markets with strong upside.
@TheDeFinvestor top airdrop picks for 2026 show that airdrops are far from dead.
In 2025, the total value of the top five airdrops surpassed $4.5 billion.
And let’s not forget that the largest airdrop in DeFi history (Hyperliquid) happened just a little over a year ago.
Indeed, nowadays it’s very important to be selective with what you farm.
You can no longer earn a $10k airdrop from $100 in liquidity, but the right projects still offer strong upside.
In this article, I will cover my top airdrop picks for 2026 and the bull thesis for each one. Let’s dive in:
First of all, my strategy this year is to focus on farming primarily two kinds of dApps:
The reason for this is simple. Both are time-consuming and require active capital management, which makes them significantly harder to farm.
In comparison, whales can just deposit a few hundred million dollars into a stablecoin protocol, do nothing else, and get most of their airdrop. But deploying high amounts of liquidity to farm an app like Polymarket or Variational is way more challenging.
Some of the best DeFi airdrops came from perp DEXs like Lighter and Hyperliquid because they required active trading.
Now let’s talk about the dApps I am farming:
I have covered this many times because I see it as one of the best farming opportunities right now.
To farm this perps DEX, you have to generate volume. The more you trade, the more you earn. A fixed number of points is distributed every week.
The best way to generate trading volume, in my opinion, is by opening delta-neutral positions between multiple perps exchanges. For example:
In this way, you can farm multiple perps airdrops with no directional risk.
I’ll cover a few other perps DEXs I am farming alongside Extended later in this post. But for now, let’s focus on Extended.
A few reasons why I am bullish on Extended:
The primary reason why this is my favorite perps DEX to farm is the high double-digit APR I am getting on my collateral.
If you trade actively, you’ll earn up to 20-40% APR on your money deposited into the Extended vault, while also earning points for your trading activity. This yield is subsidized with trading fees.
This is possible because Extended is the first perps DEX to allow using its market making vault shares as collateral.
Even without the airdrop, the high yield alone makes this one of the best DeFi opportunities.
You can use my invite link here for a 10% points boost.
Polymarket doesn’t need an introduction.
The platform secured major sports partnerships, regular CNN coverage, and $2 billion in funding at a $9B FDV.
Still, despite all of this, its TVL is only $299M according to DeFiLlama.
Polymarket dominates CT discussion, but a $9B FDV and just $299M in TVL suggest the airdrop remains underfarmed.
Polymarket CMO confirmed in Oct. 2025 that they plan to launch a token and do an airdrop. I would expect the TGE to happen this year.
If Polymarket launches an airdrop, it could become one of the largest ever, given its latest funding valuation and a likely $10B+ FDV at launch.
I am personally farming it by doing two things:
You can make good money by finding inefficiencies like this in prediction markets.
If there’s interest, I’ll write a full guide on exactly how to find these kinds of opportunities and farm prediction markets.
GRVT is a perps DEX that I started farming just a few weeks ago.
It’s a top 10 perps DEX by trading volume. However, I’ve seen only a few posts about it on CT so far, so I wouldn’t say it’s a consensus farm.
This can be both bullish and bearish, depending on how you look at it:
Low CT attention could limit buyers at TGE, but growing adoption could make early point farming pay off.
Speaking about why I chose to farm it, there are several reasons:
If you want to farm it, you can get a 30% points boost with an invite link.
As I explained earlier, my strategy to farm perps DEXs like GRVT is to open delta-neutral positions between it and other DEXs to collect funding rates.
Paradex is a perps DEX that has getting a lot of attention lately and that I’ve also covered a few times in the past.
In short, this is why I’ve been farming it:
However, rumors suggest its TGE could happen within the next few weeks, although the team has not officially confirmed this.
So there’s not much time left to farm it.
You can use my invite link here for a points boost.
Opinion is the third largest prediction market platform.
When Hyperliquid started gaining significant traction, CZ and Binance began heavily promoting Aster, a DEX competitor on the BNB Chain.
This drove ASTER token’s valuation to insane levels, making Aster’s first airdrop one of the best airdrops of 2025 in terms of ROI.
Now we’re seeing the same thing happening with Opinion.
Prediction markets are gaining massive traction, and I believe Binance and CZ are now trying to capitalize on this trend too.
Opinion is a prediction market platform built on the BNB Chain and is backed by YZi Labs (formerly known as Binance Labs). Less than 2 weeks after its official launch, it suddenly became the 3rd largest prediction market platform.
I suspect that its rapid growth is due to insiders heavily farming it. It has a points program, so an airdrop is basically confirmed.
If CZ starts heavily promoting Opinion after its TGE, just like he did with Aster, I believe its airdrop could be worth a lot.
I am farming Opinion primarily by looking for arbitrage opportunities between the prediction markets on Polymarket and Opinion. Almost all markets from Opinion are also available on Polymarket, so it’s quite easy to find mispriced markets that are available on both platforms.
Variational is a perps DEX with a unique RFQ model.
The majority of perps DEXs use a central limit order book (CLOB) model, which simply matches the buy (bid) and sell (ask) orders on the platform.
In contrast, in an RFQ model, traders request a price for their trade, and market makers respond with executable quotes and compete to fill it.
Technical details aside, the great thing about this is that it enables Variational to offer much deeper liquidity than other perps DEXs. When you trade on Variational, the slippage is minimal.
A few other things you should know about it:
A few days ago, one trader closed a position with a $30,000 unrealized loss and got incredibly lucky when the platform refunded the entire amount.
There’s one more thing I should mention:
Its team didn’t announce anything regarding when the TGE could happen or what % of their token supply will be allocated to the first airdrop.
This makes it hard to estimate its airdrop potential. But we know that 50% of its total token supply will be allocated to the community, which is great.
Variational is invite only, but you can use this link to get access.
(first come, first served, as I have a limited number of invites)
A few other tokenless protocols I am farming:
And that’s it.
Those are the main airdrops I am farming at this moment.
I put a lot of effort into this article, so I hope you found this helpful!
@TheDeFinvestor
Crypto Analyst. Sharing DeFi updates and crypto strategies. Subscribe to my blog to stay on top of trends: https://t.co/qrKYXe3Uxo
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