Rainbow Wallet Teases Airdrop on Ethereum in 'Fox Hunt' Against MetaMask

Ethereum wallet Rainbow announced the launch of its Rainbow Points rewards program on Tuesday, calling it “the first step towards including our community in the future success of Rainbow”—and potentially teasing a future token airdrop ahead.

All Ethereum users were airdropped points based on their on-chain activity, Rainbow said, including their wallet balance, with extra rewards for switching from the popular MetaMask wallet to Rainbow, and for holding at least one Rainbow NFT at the time holders on Monday.

Rainbow’s points-based incentive model recalls that of leading NFT marketplace Blur, which stole away dominant market share from OpenSea by giving out points that eventually led to the BLUR token airdrop. Blur has since given out hundreds of millions of dollars worth of tokens to users since earlier this year.

It’s considered a form of “vampire attack.” A vampire attack is when a new project or protocol provides more incentives or rewards to use its comparable service over that of an established market leader—in this case, MetaMask.

In its announcement, Rainbow said users who import their MetaMask wallet into Rainbow could receive up to 150,000 extra points. Rainbow “true believers,” or dedicated users of the wallet, will “get the most” points per a tweet thread. That recalls Blur’s own model, which revolves in part around a “loyalty score” for traders who exclusively use the NFT platform.

In a tweet thread announcing the rewards initiative, Rainbow cheekily reframed the notion of it being a vampire attack, calling out MetaMask’s prominent fox mascot.

“This isn’t a vampire attack. It’s a fox hunt,” Rainbow wrote. “Are you a MetaMask user looking to enjoy, not suffer through, Ethereum? We're here to help!”

Rainbow has not yet responded to Decrypt’s request for comment, including on whether the points program should be taken as a first step towards a future token airdrop. MetaMask said in early 2022 that it plans to launch a token, but nothing has come of it yet.

What is an airdrop?

Airdrops refer to free cryptocurrency tokens sent to wallets already holding a cryptocurrency like Ethereum or Solana, or to the wallets of early users or contributors to a new protocol or app.

Who receives an airdrop can vary depending on the stipulations of the groups sending the tokens. Similar to play-to-earn tokens, airdrops from protocols like Blur and Pyth Network reward users who participate in the network.

Airdrops are very popular in the DeFi space; last month, a single user received $8.4 million worth of BLUR in the “second season” of Blur NFT marketplace airdrops.

Last week, Jito, a DeFi protocol on the Solana network, announced an airdrop of 90 million tokens in anticipation of the JTO token being listed on Coinbase. After the listing on Coinbase, the combined value of the distributed tokens hit $225 million.

Edited by Andrew Hayward