HOW TO MANAGE YOUR WALLET AS A NEWBIE AIRDROP HUNTER.

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In my previous [post](https://inleo.io/@nonsowrites/airdrop-farming-risk-and-reward), I spoke briefly about the importance of having a holistic view of your activities in the Web 3 space as an airdrop farmer. By the end of this post, you will know some basic things about crypto wallet and addresses; how to mitigate the risk of hacks and manage your wallet in the long run (as an airdrop farmer).

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A WALLET AND ADDRESS.

A crypto address is your link to the crypto space. There are several types of addresses for different blockchains e.g. an EVM address native to Ethereum and its EVMs, and vice versa. However, in the case of crypto wallets, most are interpolable i.e they can house different types of addresses. So there are instances where an address can get compromised but the wallet housing it is safe.

As an airdrop farmer, you need to keep your crypto wallet safe. Airdrop hunting is a long-term investment. Most projects take 2-3 years to move from testnet to mainnet. So it would help if you secured your time investment by protecting your time investment. In addition, your wallet serves as your digital identity and these days most projects require that your address is KYC’ed to reduce Sybil attacks. So you dont want someone else doing nefarious things with your identity.

Aside from the fear of hacks, managing your wallet properly is more important to you as an airdrop hunter than the airdrop itself. There are several aspects to a wallet that make it a long-term investment like a good credit score. These are just some of the things you think about before starting your journey as an airdrop hunter. Below as some of the steps you can take to manage your wallet(s).

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1. HAVE MULTIPLE WALLET

As a rule of thumb, you need multiple wallets to be an effective airdrop hunter. Now, i must state here that i do not encourage sybil attacks, and my previous statement has nothing to do with it. Having multiple wallets is the safest way to protect yourself as an airdrop farmer, and it simply comes from the fact that you cannot outsmart hackers most of the time. You are often a link or two away from getting hacked based on the sheer volume of transactions and interactions you make.

In addition to having several wallets, have these wallets on different devices that hardly or never interact. This also applies to email. Have as many as possible. Two things should never be hacked. The first is your email and the second is your crypto wallet because they are almost impossible to recover. So in a nutshell, you need multiple wallets on multiple devices and well-secured email addresses.

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### 2. HAVE A PAPER WALLET

Aside from having multiple wallets, it is also important to categorize your wallets. For instance, there are wallets you use for testnets. It should be different from the wallet you use for retroactive airdrops. This can also be subdivided into high and low-risk activities. In addition to that, you need a holding wallet where you keep most of your tokens and this is where paper wallets come into the picture.

A paper wallet is an offline mechanism for storing your cryptocurrencies. You need one to hold a majority of your funds. This type of wallet is suitable for tokens you want to hold in the long run and that are of high value like Bitcoin. Every airdrop hunter must have one.

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3. RETIRE WALLETS/ADDRESS

As your wallet address gets older it becomes more valuable based on the data it possesses eg transaction history. They improve your chances of earning airdrops and you must guard them jealously. I suggest retiring a wallet after 1-2 years, and by retiring you should use it less often and for only important situations.

Using a 2-year-old wallet to run testnet interactions is not advisable. By doing that you are giving more value to a a project that may not see the light of day and by doing so opening yourself to hacks. Now, I understand airdrop hunting is becoming more technical and most major projects require some form of KYC so having to verify multiple wallets can be cumbersome.

However, most Verification Channels now allow users to link multiple wallets. This is not ideal for anonymity but it is just one of the many compromises you have to make in this space.