Back in September 2021, thousands of crypto users signed up for the Elemon x CoinMarketCap airdrop, hoping to get free ELMON tokens. It seemed like a simple win: join a gaming project, claim some tokens, and maybe cash in later. But today, that same airdrop feels like a ghost story. The tokens are still in wallets, but no one’s trading them. The price crashed from over $3 to under a penny. And the trading volume? Zero. For months. This isn’t just a failed airdrop-it’s a case study in how early GameFi hype often fades faster than the blockchain ledger can update.

What Was the Elemon Airdrop?

The Elemon x CoinMarketCap airdrop ran for just five days: September 24 to September 28, 2021. It wasn’t a big, flashy campaign like some of the later ones, but it had something rare back then: legitimacy. CoinMarketCap, the go-to site for crypto prices and data, was backing it. That meant people trusted it. You didn’t need to buy anything. You didn’t need to stake tokens. You just had to connect your wallet and follow a few steps on CoinMarketCap’s site. That’s it. In return, you got ELMON tokens-no strings attached.

Elemon’s pitch was simple: a casual, idle RPG game where you collect digital monsters called Elematris. You didn’t have to grind for hours. Just leave your wallet connected, and your monsters would earn you tokens passively. It sounded like the perfect play-to-earn game for people who didn’t have time for Axie Infinity’s daily quests. The idea was to combine NFTs with lazy earning. And for a few weeks, it worked.

How Many People Got Tokens?

We don’t have exact numbers on how many people claimed the airdrop, but we do know something more telling: how many still hold the tokens. As of October 2025, CoinMarketCap shows 37,930 unique wallets holding ELMON. That’s not a huge number compared to top-tier tokens, but for a niche GameFi project with a five-day airdrop? That’s a solid base. It means tens of thousands of people got tokens, kept them, and never sold. Why? Maybe they still believe in the game. Maybe they forgot. Maybe they’re waiting for a comeback that never came.

The total supply of ELMON is 2 billion. Around 645 million are in circulation-so roughly a third of all tokens were distributed. That’s a lot of tokens floating around with almost no buyers. And that’s the problem.

Where Is ELMON Trading Today?

If you check CoinMarketCap right now, ELMON is listed at $0.000710. Binance says $0.000677. Either way, it’s less than a tenth of a cent. That’s down over 99.9% from its all-time high of $3.32. That’s not a correction. That’s a collapse.

And here’s the kicker: the 24-hour trading volume is $0. On both CoinMarketCap and Binance. That means no one is buying or selling ELMON. Not today. Not yesterday. Not last week. Not last month. The token is effectively frozen in time. No liquidity. No buyers. No sellers. Just wallets full of tokens that can’t be traded.

This isn’t because the exchange delisted it. It’s because no one wants it. The market moved on. New GameFi projects with better graphics, better tokenomics, and stronger communities replaced Elemon. The idle RPG model didn’t hold up. Players wanted more than passive income-they wanted engagement, community, and real gameplay. Elemon didn’t evolve.

Why Did the Airdrop Fail to Sustain Value?

Airdrops are great for getting attention. But they don’t create value. Value comes from utility, community, and consistent development. Elemon had none of that after the initial buzz.

First, the game itself never improved. The graphics stayed basic. The mechanics stayed shallow. The “earn while idle” idea sounded nice, but without regular updates, events, or new monsters, players got bored. No one stays engaged when the game feels like a screensaver.

Second, the token had no real use case. You couldn’t buy in-game items with ELMON. You couldn’t stake it for better rewards. You couldn’t vote on game updates. It was just a balance in your wallet. No utility = no demand.

Third, the team went quiet. No blog updates. No Twitter threads. No Discord events. By mid-2022, the project had vanished from public view. That’s death for any crypto project. People don’t invest in silence.

The CoinMarketCap partnership gave it a great launch. But it didn’t give it a future.

What Can You Do With Your ELMON Tokens Now?

If you participated in the airdrop and still have ELMON in your wallet, here’s the truth: you can’t do much with it. You can’t trade it on major exchanges. You can’t use it in the game anymore-because the game’s updates stopped years ago. You can’t stake it. You can’t lend it.

Your only option is to hold it, hoping the team wakes up. Or, you can try to sell it on a decentralized exchange like Uniswap or PancakeSwap-if they still list it. But even there, you’ll likely get zero bids. Or worse, you’ll pay gas fees to send it to a wallet that won’t accept it.

Some people have tried to dump their ELMON on NFT marketplaces like OpenSea, listing them as “free tokens from 2021 airdrop.” No one’s buying. Not even as a joke.

Is Elemon Still Active?

The official Elemon website still loads. The game still opens in your browser. The monsters still sit there, doing nothing. But the last update was in 2022. The Discord server has 1,200 members-but only 5 are active. The Twitter account hasn’t posted since January 2023.

There’s no evidence the team is working on anything new. No whitepaper revisions. No roadmap updates. No hiring announcements. Nothing.

This isn’t a dormant project. It’s a dead one. And the airdrop? It was the funeral.

What Can You Learn From This?

The Elemon airdrop isn’t just a footnote. It’s a warning.

Airdrops are not free money. They’re marketing tools. The real value isn’t in the tokens you get-it’s in the project behind them. If a project has no team, no roadmap, no updates, and no utility, then the tokens are just digital confetti.

Don’t chase airdrops because they’re “free.” Chase them because you believe in the project. Check the team. Check the code. Check the community. Check if the game actually works.

And if you already got tokens from a project that went silent? Don’t hold onto false hope. Write it off. Learn from it. And next time, ask: “What happens if this project disappears tomorrow?”

The Elemon airdrop gave people tokens. But it didn’t give them a future. And that’s the difference between a hype cycle and a real project.