New research by Dragonfly Capital reveals that U.S. users may have missed out on as much as $5.02 billion in potential revenue from geo-blocked airdrops.

Back in the early days, before the crypto industry got overcrowded with grief memecoin pseudonymous creators, blockchain developers came up with a way to reward users for supporting and growing projects. That method became known as the airdrop.

Airdrops allowed projects to drum up early interest by encouraging engagement — like interacting with a protocol by sending to it on-chain transactions — or to retroactively reward users of blockchain products. Sometimes, these airdrops turned out to be highly lucrative for the most active supporters. Sometimes, they weren’t. One way or the other, airdrops eventually became too big to ignore, so they ran into political roadblocks, shutting out U.S. users.

Now, data from Californian venture firm Dragonfly Capital shows that geoblocking may have cost crypto addresses linked to U.S. users billions of dollars, as fearing regulatory crackdowns from U.S. watchdogs, many blockchain startups decided to block access for them altogether.

Billions in missed out opportunities

Of an estimated 18.4 to 52.3 million crypto holders in the U.S., between 920,000 and 5.2 million active users were affected by geoblocking in 2024 alone, the data shows. Dragonfly Capital estimates that 22-24% of all active crypto addresses worldwide belong to U.S. residents, many of whom have been excluded from airdrop participation.