I don't think airdrops are ponzi-schemes but they are premined scams.


People are trusting the devs that they'll distribute the coins fairly while there are no guarantees at all for that. And cryptos should be absolutely trustless so airdrops (and ICOs) are taking a huge step backwards.

Also, people can buy bitcointalk accounts (legal but discouraged) and participate in airdrops multiple times.

So the "devs" might have 50 sockpuppet accounts they ask coins to. It's basically the next iteration of the "x% premined" scam as it is not that transparent.


There's also the argument that if a dev creates coins/tokens out of thin air for absolutely free (airdrop/ICO), those coins are worthless. The dev is just convincing people they're not worthless as if he would sell rocks lying around telling people they're valuable. With mining at least creating a coin actually costs money which creates a floor price.