Wiki / Concepts / Claim-based airdrops

Claim-based airdrops

From the Bitcoin Takeover Wiki · ✓ 5 sources · 0 podcast anchors · built 2026-11-13

Coins that were not chain splits but let Bitcoin holders claim new tokens: CLAMs, Byteball, Stellar, Bitcore, BTCH, MimbleWimbleCoin and HEX.

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The wiki's angle: claims like MimbleWimbleCoin's asked holders to sign with their Bitcoin keys — the opposite of the 2019 fork reviewer's rule of never importing a private key.[4][1]

Contents

  1. How they differ from forks
  2. Examples
  3. Key safety
  4. References

How they differ from forks

A claim-based airdrop starts a new ledger and lets holders of an existing coin prove their balance to receive tokens; no Bitcoin history is copied. The 2019 fork list keeps such coins apart in its “Honorable mentions” section[1]. There it says Bitcoin holders “could have claimed free lumens until August 27th, 2017” for Stellar, and quotes BTCH: “It is technically NOT A FORK, but a merged airdrop.”[1]

Examples

CLAMs, announced in May 2014, said “Every person who had Bitcoin at block 300,377, Litecoin at block 565,693, or Dogecoin at block 218,556 was given ~4.6 CLAM”[2]. Byteball's 2016 plan paid bytes to Bitcoin holders “who link their bitcoin and byteball addresses before the launch”[3]. The fork list says the Byteball distribution was “cut short suddenly and without any prior announcement”[1]. MimbleWimbleCoin required “the ability to sign a message from the BTC address that you registered”[4]. The SEC's complaint says HEX tokens were deposited into wallets that Richard Heart, the defendant, “identified as significant holders of Bitcoin”[5].

Key safety

The fork reviewer explained that “Since I never import any private key” even a malicious client could not leak his keys[1]. The MimbleWimbleCoin guide, by contrast, required a signature from the registered BTC address[4].

References

  1. secondary“My list of 43(+3) reviewed Bitcoin forks”, Bitcointalk topic 2777849 (last update 26 Feb 2019) [archived]
  2. primarySuperClam, “[ANN][CLAM] CLAMs, Proof-Of-Chain, Proof-Of-Working-Stake, a.k.a. “Clamcoin””, Bitcointalk topic 623147 (24 May 2014) [archived]
  3. primaryByteball announcement text of 5 Sep 2016 as quoted in reply #18 (EpyxZ, 5 Sep 2016), Bitcointalk topic 1608859 [archived]
  4. primaryMWC Qt wallet, “Claiming” guide for the airdrop, GitHub mwcproject/mwc-qt-wallet DOC/claiming.md [archived]
  5. primarySEC complaint, SEC v. Schueler, No. 1:23-cv-05749 (E.D.N.Y., filed 31 Jul 2023) [archived]

Related

Snapshot forks vs chain splits
Why some “forks” share Bitcoin's history and others only copy its balances, and why it matters for claiming co
CLAMs (CLAM)
A 2014 proof-of-stake coin that gave about 4.6 CLAM to every Bitcoin, Litecoin and Dogecoin address with a bal
Byteball / Obyte (GBYTE)
A DAG ledger announced in September 2016 with no mining, which promised 98% of its coins to Bitcoin holders wh
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