‘Free’ crypto tokens can mean weeks of unpaid work, Leicester study finds

Offers of ‘free’ cryptocurrency can require weeks or months of unpaid online work with no guaranteed reward, according to new research led by the University of Leicester. 

An international team led by Dr Alberto Cossu analysed 37,519 YouTube videos and 928 Telegram messages to explore crypto ‘airdrops’, distributions of digital tokens intended to attract and reward users of blockchain projects. The researchers argue that airdrops reveal a new phase in how finance works, which they call post-speculative finance. 

To qualify, participants may set up digital wallets, test new networks, make repeated transactions, create tutorials and recruit other users. The researchers describe a process that can take weeks or months, with participants investing time, effort and sometimes transaction fees in the hope of receiving tokens. 

Known as airdrop farmers, these users create content, share knowledge and build communities while trying to qualify for tokens. Their activity also helps promote projects and build the tokens’ perceived credibility and value. 

This is what the researchers mean by post-speculative finance. Speculation has not disappeared – it has been put to work. Rather than simply buying an asset and hoping its price rises, participants labour towards a possible reward, and that unpaid labour helps create the very value they hope to share in. Value, the study argues, is increasingly produced through sustained online participation on platforms, not only through bets on price. 

The study brought together researchers from the UK, Germany and Italy. Janna Joceli Omena of King’s College London led the study’s digital methods – the techniques used to collect, map and analyse tens of thousands of videos, channels and messages across platforms. The team also included Johnnatan Messias of the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems and Riccardo Ventura of Politecnico di Milano. 

The YouTube sample covered 11,785 channels discussing seven airdrop campaigns, including Arbitrum, Optimism and Starknet, with content in multiple languages. The separate Telegram analysis focused on ZKsync. 

Across tutorials, updates and memes, the team identified a global network of users producing and circulating airdrop content. The campaign with the highest engagement in the dataset attracted more than 50 million likes and comments on YouTube. 

Video thumbnails often depict wallets filling with tokens, creating what the researchers call an ‘illusion of simplicity’. In practice, participation can involve safeguarding wallet recovery phrases, navigating networks, paying transaction fees and completing repeated tasks. Tutorials and community discussions also document frustration over work that goes unrewarded. 

The researchers call for regulators and platform operators to work together to improve transparency and accountability across blockchain projects and social media, including how token rewards are allocated and how promotional information circulates. They also recommend involving communities in designing safeguards, providing accessible, multilingual guidance and designing participation tasks that recognise a wider range of contributions, rather than favouring technical expertise or large transactions. 

Dr Alberto Cossu, Director of the Centre for Media Futures at the University of Leicester, said: “We tend to picture crypto as traders staring at price charts. What we found is something closer to a workplace without contracts. Across many languages, people are teaching, testing, posting and recruiting, unpaid, in the hope that a project will one day reward them. That work is what makes these tokens credible as money. This is what we mean by post-speculative finance: finance is no longer only something you bet on. It is something you perform, online and in public. 

“Seeing this at scale was only possible because of the team behind the study. I was lucky to lead a group of outstanding colleagues, and Janna Joceli Omena’s leadership of the digital methods was central to tracing how airdrop content travels across platforms, languages and communities.” 

The study was published in Finance and Society on 23 October 2026. It builds on Dr Cossu’s wider research into crypto cultures. His forthcoming book, Magic Money Men: Crypto as Speculative Masculinity, will be published by Bristol University Press.