Moonbirds’ announcement yesterday about being added to the pre-TGE leaderboard made me curious:

What actually happened to all the other NFT collections that launched an airdrop at some point?

The results are pretty interesting:

1) While it's not surprising, it's obvious that Pudgy Penguins are the big winners here. With $PENGU, they not only massively expanded their distribution by orders of magnitude but also grew the overall pie by almost 3x for the community.

2) Miladys and Doodles have moved more or less sideways when you compare today’s ecosystem valuations with the day of their airdrops. Still, $DOOD at least managed to broaden distribution while $CULT holders are rather insignificant.

3) Contrary to what many might believe, Bored Apes and Azuki come out as the big losers here. Since their TGEs, both $APE and $ANIME heavily diluted valuations, while the overall brand value has basically been cut in half compared to then.

What can we learn from this?

Launching an airdrop as a brand is no joke. Sure, it can be a powerful tool to spark hype and drive floor prices in the short term, but sustaining that momentum is incredibly difficult. In the long run, it can even turn out net negative for the brand and community.

The absolute playbook here is what @LucaNetz executed with $PENGU. While everyone tries to copy it, the reality is that it took top-tier marketing, years of work, and consistent value creation to build a truly aligned and loyal community - one that isn’t just chasing short-term profits.

That’s the real moat for NFT brands. Without it, there’s no way to maintain momentum and distribution over the long haul.

It’ll be interesting to see how @spencer plays it with $BIRB.