I saw few newbies have asked in Altcoins section "Why airdrops?"
So i post this detailed explanation for all of them here..
As far as i know there are few types of Airdrops and few intentions of them.
1. Before ICO Air drops These are done before launching an ICO.
To get public awareness of the project, get telegram members , get Twitter followers , get likes for the Facebook page etc..
2. After ICO Airdrops Some projects airdrop their unsold tokens to ICO participants without burning them, to avoid decrease the number of total tokens. ( ex: SP8DE )
Some projects do this after a successful ICO in specific exchanges to attract traders. (Arckblock did this)
3. Totally Airdrop coins. Some projects doesn't conduct a ICO instead they Airdrop the coin among general public or bitcointalk user.
Actually this is a very good strategy instead of ICO's because ICO's are hrdly getting successful these days and marketing a ICO is very expensive.
Twist coin( Twist.network ) is this type of coin and it is pretty amazing, now the price is 0.1$. They airdropped 85% of total tokens.
4. When doing a hard fork on existing block chain. When a hard fork is done forked coin is Airdropped among original coin holder.
As a example when a hard fork of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, gave current Bitcoin holders an equivalent amount of Bitcoin Cash.
MoneroV is upcoming airdrop and Hardfork in Monero block chain. Airdrop ratio 1 Monero : 10 MoneroV
5. Referral programs. Those are very bad in my opinion. Some projects use give very little amount of coin to airdrop registrants an if they refer someone give more coins.
These are very aggressively used to pump up telegram members.
Ex;-Current media network became the largest telegram group using 4M$ airdrop and a referral program.
6. Scams Most of the airdrops are scams for getting telegram users and email addresses. Don't do those airdrops.
In my opinion, It's a good idea or information, because I started to join cryptocurrency and with this information, I will Learn how to participate in airdrop and bounty is very important to get legit rewards. In addition, now everywhere many ICO is fraud. So I have to be more careful myself if I want to join ICO.