USDHow to farm points before an airdrop without getting Sybil-filtered
Points farming sounds simple until you realize most “points” aren’t on-chain, rules change mid-season, and eligibility can vanish because you linked the wrong wallet or tripped an anti-Sybil filter. The practical problem is getting your activity counted at snapshot time without spending more on fees, time, and risk than the airdrop is likely to return. This playbook focuses on repeatable habits, not gimmicks.
TL;DR
- Build a “human” usage pattern on a few wallets, link accounts early, and keep activity consistent.
- Expect weeks to months of steady usage; setup takes about 30–60 minutes per project.
- The most common mistake is farming with VPN/datacenter IPs or multi-account patterns that get filtered.
Points farming is basically pre-launch loyalty mining. Projects track usage with points/credits (often off-chain), then later decide how those points convert into an airdrop allocation—sometimes with intentionally vague rules so people can’t min-max the system. The hard part isn’t clicking buttons; it’s staying eligible through changing seasons, anti-wash rules, and anti-Sybil detection that can retroactively zero you out.
What you need before you start
You need three things: a clean wallet setup, a way to pay gas on the right network, and a tracking routine so you don’t miss a snapshot.
Wallets: use a mainstream wallet that matches the ecosystem you’re farming. For Solana DePIN-style programs, Phantom or Solflare are the common choices (Grass explicitly mentions both). For EVM apps, MetaMask is the default, but power users often prefer Rabby for clearer transaction previews. If you use a hardware wallet like a Ledger Nano X, that’s fine—just remember many “points dashboards” require message signing, and hardware signing adds friction.
Gas: points are frequently off-chain, but claims and some qualifying actions are on-chain. Grass specifically recommends keeping about 0.01–0.05 SOL available for future claim transaction fees. If you’re farming trading/deposit programs, you also need enough buffer to avoid getting stuck mid-action when fees spike.
Identity and “narrative”: modern campaigns increasingly reward sustained, real activity (deposits, trading, uptime, actual network usage) and punish patterns that look like farms. Zipmex calls out that projects now use “AI-powered Sybil detection” and favor strong “wallet narratives” over volume manipulation. That means fewer wallets, consistent behavior, and avoiding obvious automation footprints.
Security baseline: airdrop hunters are targeted. Zipmex cites Hacken’s 2025 security report that users lost $3.1B to crypto scams in H1 2025, and flags airdrop phishing as a common attack vector. Treat every “claim” link as hostile until proven otherwise.
Step-by-step
Set up a dedicated farming wallet (or two) and keep them boring. Use one primary wallet per ecosystem instead of spinning up dozens, because multi-account patterns are exactly what anti-Sybil systems look for. If you want separation, use one “interaction wallet” for signing and approvals, and one “storage wallet” that rarely touches dApps—then move funds between them deliberately.
Only use official entry points, then bookmark them. For Grass, that means starting at app.grass.io and downloading the desktop app from the official site (the MEXC guide notes the browser extension is gone). This step matters because phishing pages often look identical, and the easiest time to get drained is when you’re excited and moving fast.
Register, verify, and link accounts early—before you rack up points. Grass explicitly warns that “Unverified accounts have been cut from eligibility checks before,” and tells you to verify email right away. The annoying reality is that points can accrue in a dashboard while your account is still in a state that fails eligibility checks later.
Pick the point model you’re actually optimizing for (uptime, real usage, deposits, trading) and commit to consistency. Grass changed its model at Epoch 11 (October 2025) to split rewards into Uptime Points (connected time) and Network Points (only when bandwidth is actually used), with Network Points coming from a fixed daily pool of 1,000,000 distributed pro-rata by usage. That’s a strong signal of where the industry is going: passive idling gets de-emphasized, and “real demand” gets rewarded.
Avoid Sybil triggers in your setup: residential IP, no VPN/datacenter routing, and one account per connection. Grass is blunt here: it “flags datacenter IPs and VPN traffic,” and recommends “one account per IP subnet.” If your home internet routes through a VPS, or you’re running multiple accounts on the same Wi‑Fi, you’re building a disqualification case against yourself.
Do the minimum on-chain hygiene that keeps you claim-ready. Connect the correct wallet in the project dashboard early (Grass suggests connecting Phantom/Solflare before the snapshot), and keep a small gas balance available (Grass: ~0.01–0.05 SOL). This step matters because snapshots can close abruptly; you don’t want your “eligible” account to be missing the wallet link or unable to submit a claim transaction.
Track seasons, mid-seasons, and cadence like a job, not a vibe. Hyperliquid is a clean example of how campaigns evolve: closed alpha ended Oct 31, 2023 with 446M credits to 11,500 active users; Season 1 ran Nov 1, 2023–May 1, 2024 with 1M points/week; Season 1.5 (May 1–May 28, 2024) ran 2x rewards totaling 8M points; Season 2 began May 29, 2024 with 700k credits/week until Sep 29, 2024; Season 2.5 ran Sep 30, 2024–Nov (end undisclosed) totaling 8.4M credits. The lesson: rules and reward rates can change fast, and “bonus seasons” show up when you least expect them.
Periodically prune risk: revoke approvals, reduce exposure, and keep receipts. If you’re interacting with EVM dApps for points, you’ll often grant token approvals that outlive the campaign. Make it a habit to review and revoke allowances after you finish a phase, especially if you used a hot wallet. Keep a simple log (date, wallet, actions, links) so you can prove to yourself what you did when something doesn’t show up on a dashboard.
What goes wrong
Wrong network or wrong wallet linked: the symptom is points showing in a web dashboard but no eligibility at snapshot time, or a claim page that says “wallet not eligible.” The fix is boring but critical: link the wallet early (Grass explicitly recommends connecting Phantom/Solflare before snapshot) and don’t rotate wallets mid-campaign. If a project later introduces a new distribution wallet (Grass Season 2 is planned via a new in-dashboard native wallet once account-abstraction infrastructure is live in H1 2026), follow the official migration steps and assume late changes can break assumptions.
Sybil filtering from IP/VPN/datacenter usage: the symptom is points slowing, freezing, or an account that looks fine until it’s silently excluded later. Grass specifically warns it flags datacenter IPs and VPN traffic, and recommends one account per IP subnet. The fix is to run on a stable residential connection, avoid VPN routing for the node/app, and stop trying to run multiple accounts from the same household network.
Wash trading or “fake volume” penalties: the symptom is high fees and activity with disappointing point accrual, or later disqualification. Hyperliquid’s system is described as rewarding real engagement (trading, deposits) while penalizing manipulative behaviors like wash trading, and keeping token conversion criteria ambiguous to reduce gaming. The fix is to trade like a real user: fewer round-trips, avoid self-matching patterns, and don’t assume raw volume equals points.
Points don’t convert the way you expected: the symptom is a big points number that turns into a small allocation, or no airdrop at all. This is normal. Hyperliquid kept conversion criteria ambiguous, and many projects do the same to prevent exploitation. The fix is to treat points as probabilistic, cap your time and capital per campaign, and prioritize programs where you’d use the product anyway.
Missing the snapshot window: the symptom is “I was active for months and still missed it.” Grass notes Season 1 eligibility windows “closed abruptly,” and says not to treat a future month as a comfortable deadline. The fix is to assume snapshots can happen without much warning: link wallets early, verify accounts early, and keep gas available so you can act quickly.
Phishing and malicious signatures: the symptom is a drained wallet after signing a message or approving a token spend, often from a fake “claim” site. Zipmex cites Hacken’s 2025 security report that users lost $3.1B to crypto scams in H1 2025 and calls out airdrop phishing as common. The fix is strict link hygiene (bookmarks, official domains), segregated wallets, and refusing to sign messages you don’t understand.
When this isn't the right move
Skip points farming if you can’t keep your setup stable. Node-based DePIN farming, for example, only works if you can keep a device online reliably; Grass even notes that Network Points can swing day to day based on demand, with some days “close to zero.” If you’re traveling, constantly changing networks, or relying on VPNs, you’re paying the highest “ban risk” tax.
Also skip it if you’re planning to brute-force with many wallets. The sources here point in the opposite direction: Grass warns about multi-account patterns (one account per IP subnet; wallet rotation as a detection vector), and Zipmex explicitly says projects are using AI-powered Sybil detection and favor coherent wallet narratives. More wallets can reduce expected value.
Tools and references
Grass official dashboard and app entry point: app.grass.io (as referenced in the MEXC guide).
For campaign research and expectation-setting, use the project’s own dashboard and official docs first, then compare against third-party writeups. Hyperliquid’s multi-season cadence is a good reminder that points programs can run for long stretches and still change reward rates midstream.
If you’re evaluating whether farming is worth your time, keep a skeptical eye on outcomes. The Uniswap example is real history: in September 2020, Uniswap distributed 400 UNI to each wallet that used Uniswap before a deadline, cited as worth roughly $1,200 at the time. That kind of payout is why people farm—but it’s not a promise that the next points program will pay the same way.
