The AirdropBuzz screen I run before touching a wallet: 109 campaigns in, six candidates out

A repeatable 20-minute pass through the Opportunity Scoreboard, the guide TL;DR, the automated checks and the risk tools. Worked example: the six campaigns that scored 70+ at Intermediate effort on 12 November 2026, and why only two of them are free to try.

Disclosure: I am entering this article in the AirdropBuzz Creator Campaign, which pays USDC prizes to ranked entries. This is a contest entry, not a paid partnership, and I am not affiliated with AirdropBuzz beyond it. Rewards are competitive and not guaranteed. I did not connect a wallet, sign anything, or deposit funds while reporting this piece.

Most airdrop writing starts with a project and tells you which buttons to press. The harder part is earlier: deciding which pages deserve twenty minutes at all, and which ones you should close before you connect anything.

This is the screen I use now. It takes about twenty minutes for a fresh batch, it needs no wallet, and it produces one of three outputs for each campaign: act, watch, or skip. I ran it on the full AirdropBuzz catalogue on 12 November 2026 and kept the receipts. The short version: 109 active campaigns, 18 that are not rated Advanced effort, six that also score 70 or higher, and two that cost nothing to try.

The screen, in order

1. Start at the scoreboard, not at a thread. The Opportunity Scoreboard is the catalogue view: rank, score, deadline, last update. On 12 November 2026 at 03:49 UTC the header read 109 active campaigns, an average saved score of 69/100, four with a recorded deadline and 105 without one. That average is useful calibration. In the snapshot I pulled, the median score was 72, so a 72 is the middle of this catalogue, not a strong signal. The methodology page maps the bands: 85-100 is "High opportunity", 70-84 is "Watch closely", and 0-69 is "Research first".

2. Open "Score and evidence" before the guide. Every scoreboard row expands into a panel that says what the number is. The panel on an 88/100 row said: "88/100 editorial score. This is the saved rating, not a calculated payout probability." The same panel adds: "Reward confirmation: not separately verified in this scoreboard. Points, allocations and campaign pools do not guarantee an individual token payout." That is the correct frame for everything that follows. The score sorts reading order. It does not estimate whether you will be paid.

The methodology page is worth one read because it explains the gap between a number and a payout. When a score goes through the evidence-validated review workflow, the server combines five components: fundamentals 30%, traction 22%, task quality 18%, safety 20% and time to value 10%. The page also notes that those weights do not apply retrospectively to every manually entered score, and that where a public breakdown is absent you cannot reconstruct why an exact number was assigned. So the number is an editorial summary, not a model output you can audit line by line.

3. Read the TL;DR (Requirements) first. Not the intro, not the FAQ. The TL;DR is where the entry price lives: a minimum balance, a bridge, a deposit held for a fixed period, a KYC requirement, or a phase that has already closed. If the TL;DR contains a number you are not willing to lock up, you have your answer before spending an hour on tasks.

4. Check the phase, not just the status. A guide can say Active while the part you can actually join is over. The scoreboard says it directly: "Active means published and not past its recorded end date; individual phases may have closed." The "What changed?" block at the top of each guide is the fastest way to see the current phase. Amadeus is the clean example below: the guide is Active at 86/100, and Season 1 earning closed on 31 October.

5. Read the research snapshot as four separate questions. The card above the steps lists Reward status, Effort level, Cost to farm and Timing. All six guides in my shortlist said "Cost to farm: Task-dependent", which is honest and also not a price. The price is in the TL;DR. "Reward status" is the other one people skip: "Speculative watch", "Points program; token rewards unconfirmed" and "Potential" are not the same state as a funded allocation.

6. Read the automated guide checks as a to-do list, not a verdict. The check block ends with a sentence worth memorising: "These checks inspect guide content, not project security or solvency. They are not a safety rating or an audit." A "No docs/whitepaper link found in this guide" flag means the guide did not link the docs. It does not mean the project has no docs, and it does not mean the project is a scam. Go and find the docs yourself, then decide.

7. Verify the official domain from two channels. The guides say it themselves: "Use these as starting points only. Confirm URLs from more than one official channel before wallet actions." An HTTPS claim link only proves the link is HTTPS. It does not prove the destination is the right domain. This is the step that catches the most common phishing pattern, and it costs one search.

8. Use the risk tools as a second opinion. The AI Risk Checker takes a URL and returns a heuristic snapshot. Anonymous visitors cannot run a scan; registered users get three free scans per day. The tool's own FAQ says it "cannot guarantee safety, a token, an airdrop, or profit". Read it the way you would read a spell checker: useful, fast, and not an editor.

9. Write the decision in one line. For each campaign: the entry price, the phase state, and the payout state. If I cannot fill all three, I do not connect a wallet. "Watch" is a real output, and it costs nothing.

The worked example: six campaigns, two free

I pulled all 109 active listings and recorded the score, effort level, step count and network for each. Of the 109, 91 are rated Advanced effort, 17 Intermediate and one Beginner. That leaves 18 non-Advanced guides. Six of those 18 score 70 or higher. I read all six guide pages on 12 November 2026, including each TL;DR and latest update.

Three things fall out of that table that the score alone does not tell you.

First, the two highest scores in the shortlist do not give you a new $0 path to a payout. NEAR needs a sustained balance above $100, and the conversion condition is a price level held for three days. Amadeus is Active, but the Season 1 earning and points-claim windows closed on 31 October and 8 November; only the Road to TGE tasks remain. Both are reasonable pages for someone who already holds the asset or already used the product. Neither is a first airdrop for someone with no capital.

Second, the two free ones have no confirmed payout. Cero says "No confirmed token or airdrop to qualify for" in its own TL;DR, and excludes US residents from its product. Teneo's card says "Points program; token rewards unconfirmed", and its latest update says "Season 5 pool and closing time remain unverified; Beacon participation does not guarantee a draw payout." Free to try is not the same as free to earn.

Third, the middle two are cost questions, not safety questions. Startale's $25 bridge is a real entry price, and the 14-day vault hold is a real lockup, but the guide is explicit about both. World XYZ is not the $117.40 screenshot any more; it is a rebate flow with a possible deposit requirement. Neither page is hiding the cost. The score just does not carry it.

The output of the screen is not "here are six airdrops to farm". It is "here are six pages whose entry price and payout state I can now state in one line each". Three need capital, one is closed for the season, and two are free but unconfirmed. That is a useful result, and it took about twenty minutes.

What "free", "gasless" and "claim" actually mean

This is the part where a lot of airdrop writing, including some of my earlier drafts, gets sloppy. Three distinctions are worth keeping.

A claim has three separate states. An allocation can be announced, a claim window can be open, and a payout can be completed. They are not the same event, and a guide can be Active while all three are false for you. AirdropBuzz's methodology page puts it well: "Points, a token allocation announcement, a claim window and a completed payout are different states." The NEAR guide is a live example: the allocation is visible to eligible users, and no manual claim is currently required, because the reward is deposited automatically once the price condition is met.

On-chain and off-chain claims both exist, and neither word is a safety badge. An on-chain claim is a transaction: it needs gas on the network it settles on, unless a relayer or paymaster sponsors that specific flow. An off-chain claim is usually a signature, an API call tied to a wallet address, or an allocation credited to an account. An off-chain claim can still ask you to sign something, and a signature can still authorize token spending. So "gasless" is a property of one transaction path, not a property of a project, and "requires gas" is not a scam signal either. A legitimate claim can cost more in gas than it pays, and a gasless claim can be a phishing page.

A legitimate flow is not the same as a profitable one. A flow can be genuine and still pay in a token with no market, or pay less than the fees you spent to get there. "Legitimate" answers "is this the real project". It does not answer "is this worth doing".

What I treat as stop signals before anything else: a seed phrase or private key request, a prompt to "validate", "sync", "restore" or "unlock" a wallet, an unlimited approval I cannot reduce, a deposit required to release a claim, a domain that differs from the one in the project's docs, and a deadline delivered by DM. None of those is proof of fraud on its own. Together they are enough to close the tab.

What I do not treat as stop signals on their own: a gas fee, a wallet signature, an X account requirement, an email signup, or a waitlist. Legitimate projects use all of those. The question is whether the prompt matches the task and whether the domain is the one you verified.

What this does not prove

It does not prove that any of the six will pay, that the scores are right, or that the guides will say the same thing next week. It is one snapshot, one reader and six pages, and it does not audit any contract. What it does show is that the screen produces a decision you can defend: a price, a phase and a payout state, or a reason to wait.

The one-line rule

If I cannot state the entry price, the phase state and the payout state in one sentence each, I do not connect a wallet. That is the whole screen. Everything else is tooling that makes it faster.

For the campaigns that pass, the Task Planner is where a guide becomes a checklist: presets for basic and on-chain flows, per-task time estimates, and a Markdown export, so the plan survives the tab closing. Before any bridge or claim, the Gas Fee Tracker checks claim, mint and bridge costs before you pay gas, which is the number that decides whether a small claim is worth touching at all. Airdrop Updates is the change log: 132 guides currently carry a dated note with the reason and a link, and it is the fastest way to catch a phase that closed or a task that moved. Market Pulse is the market context layer, with Binance spot data, support and resistance, Fear & Greed and tracked reads, updated every two hours. It is context, not a payout signal. The watchlist is for the ones that failed on timing rather than quality.

The score gets you to the right page. The TL;DR tells you the price. The update log tells you whether the phase is still open. When those three line up, you have a decision. When they do not, you have a page to watch, and that is a result too.

Sources: airdropbuzz.com/airdrop-opportunity-scoreboard (snapshot generated 2026-11-12 03:49:39 UTC), the six linked guides, airdropbuzz.com/how-we-score-crypto-airdrops, airdropbuzz.com/airdrop-updates, airdropbuzz.com/tools/ai-airdrop-risk-checker, airdropbuzz.com/tools/airdrop-task-planner, all read on 12 November 2026. I did not connect a wallet, sign a message, or deposit funds.