As January 2026 ends, crypto airdrops are shifting from simple giveaways to strategic reward models that favor real user engagement, loyalty, and capital commitment. Upcoming distributions from projects like Rainbow Wallet, Spacecoin, Solana Mobile, THORWallet, and SillyPong highlight a new era where points systems, hardware ownership, liquidity provision, and even stablecoin rewards define how users earn value from airdrops.

The meme coin market saw a sharp surge in trading activity this week, with 24-hour volume jumping over 30% to $3.47 billion despite a slight dip in total market capitalization. Traders rotated out of established leaders like DOGE and SHIB into high-risk newcomers, including PolitiFi tokens and Solana-based memes, with some Chinese-language meme coins posting gains above 48,000% in the past month.

On January 23, 2026, Solana Mobile Seeker (SKR) traded near $0.0388 after hitting a $0.060 high on January 22, 2026. Projections outline a 2026 peak of $0.082737 and a 2032 range of $0.330949–$0.358528, with averages specified for each year. Trading volume rose 154% over 24 hours, while sentiment and key levels point to caution around $0.040 support.

Fight.iD has opened the $FIGHT token airdrop claim portal as of January 22, 2026, allowing eligible users who earned Fighting Points (FP) before the January 19 snapshot to claim their Solana-based tokens. The airdrop rewards early participation in Fight.iD’s UFC-linked fan engagement campaigns, with claims available for 30 days and tokens usable for governance, staking, and ecosystem utilities after claiming.

On Jan. 22, 2026, former Ripple CTO David Schwartz rejected circulating claims from some Ethereum supporters that the XRP Ledger is centralized because it operates with 134 permissioned validators. He reiterated an earlier explanation from September 2023, stressing that XRPL nodes independently verify transactions and ledger rules, while validators only help resolve conflicting valid transactions rather than control the network or enforce upgrades.

According to U.Today, XRP’s monthly chart against Bitcoin has printed a rare macro golden cross for the first time since January 2018, when a similar signal preceded a surge of about 972% in the XRP/BTC pair. If the current pattern repeats and XRP revisits 0.000228 BTC while Bitcoin trades near $90,000, projections suggest XRP’s price could climb above $17, although this remains speculative and dependent on market behavior.

On 23 January 2026, Circle's CEO Jeremy Allaire argued that stablecoins should be treated as neutral financial infrastructure, similar to open protocols, rather than a competing payments product. He highlighted collaboration with banks and card networks and noted that regulatory clarity could determine which issuers become long-term infrastructure providers.

Binance launched a four-week WLFI airdrop on January 23, 2026, running through February 20. The exchange will distribute $40 million, allocating $10 million per week to users holding USD1, with rewards sent to Spot wallets by 18:00 UTC on Fridays. Eligibility requires net USD1 balances and full KYC, with certain regions excluded.